The Temptations Of Power: Podemos

The Spanish noun for power, one of them anyway, is "poder". This isn't a noun to be used for your car or your electricity. It is one to mean authority and might. From authority and might, it is a short step to control, manipulation and finally corruption. All power corrupts.

There is another maxim. Knowledge is power. It is accompanied by "information is liberating". The internet is the ultimate repository of information, a liberating and colossal warehouse for the democratisation of knowledge and thus the wider diffusion and sharing of power. This is both illusion and delusion. The internet is a giant transmitter of propaganda, of distortion, persuasion, untruths, manipulation and corruption via corrupted, prejudiced knowledge. What Joseph Goebbels would have given for the internet. His ministry was one not just for propaganda but also public enlightenment. How wretched that was, a steer on the Enlightenment movement and of the Age of Reason.

It was Kofi Annan who asserted that knowledge is power. Through information and education the peoples of the nations of the world would be liberated. Instead they are being incarcerated by corrupted information. And they willingly abet the process.

Lord Acton's assertion regarding power has itself been corrupted. We use the corrupted version because it sounds more powerful. What he actually said was that all power tends to corrupt. He was prepared to be non-committal, no doubt wishing to give the benefit of doubt. 

"Poder" is also a verb. It plays the role of the English modal "can" and "could" or of "to be able to", which isn't a modal verb as such. The verb "poder" thus has its own innate power. It isn't, as in English, an auxiliary. It exists in its own right. And from its conjugation, one gets "podemos" - we can, we are able to. It's emphatic, and it is a message that Podemos chose to emphasise what they could do, were able to do. Note the grammar. The past of choose requires an alteration to the less emphatic could or the implication of no longer being able to.

The party will of course still believe it can, that is able to, and that it will do so via the collective will: we can, not I can. The power lies in evoking the collective, until there is degeneration, and the individual starts to take over. Having shown to have been able to, the temptation for Lord Acton's tendency to take over is too difficult to resist.

Of course, and let's not delude ourselves, Podemos have always been about being able to and about power. Political parties don't dissolve themselves once they've achieved something. They are organic entities, for which growth is the aim. And growth means power. There is no point to a political party otherwise.

Podemos, in their very essence, proved the power of liberating knowledge and information. They caught other political parties on the hop by using the internet as a means to grow, to disseminate and persuade and to create themselves in the image of knowledge and information democratisation. The internet became the tool for citizen involvement. Podemos were a party of the new age, crafting their niche from this powerful medium; a niche to become, as inevitably it has, part of the mainstream.

Some will say that frictions within Podemos are signs of a maturing as a party. They may be right. But these frictions, however they might be explained in terms of the collective (the "we"), revolve around power. The party, thwarted in the goal of government power - its principle objective from the time of its formation - has fallen into the hole that all parties make. They fight each other, because factions are a consequence of such formation.

I admired Podemos. The admiration was based on their newness, a seductive message for the collective, an assault on the cosy nature of Spain's political system, the abhorrence of the misery of crisis. The admiration has dwindled. Podemos are falling victim to the very things they sought to eradicate. Their desire for power has corrupted them. It has created the fallout between Iglesias and Errejón, both driven by alternate visions of power.

In the Balearics Podemos are desperate to keep hold of the presidency of parliament. Why so desperate? Because it is their greatest success in gaining power regionally. This, in a way, is curious, as they placed less store by regional elections than the generals: it was the latter which they craved. They will probably have their demands met and keep a hold. But in the meantime, the institutional crisis that has been unfolding has exposed the party's fault lines. Factionalism is just one. The allegations of blackmail, the "administrative error" in using Montse Seijas's digital signature, votes and senior officials for the Council of Mallorca, the apparent need to silence critics are others. Seijas is right in saying that this is not the Podemos that the collective had willed.

On Behalf Of The Hoteliers' Party

And now, a party political broadcast on behalf of the Mallorca Hoteliers' Federation. "Good evening. As you know, we have been working tirelessly on behalf of all citizens of Mallorca to improve tourism, to create employment and to raise standards of quality in order to meet the challenges posed in today's competitive environment."

Well, this is not quite how it was, as the hoteliers have only released a leaflet and not taken to the television screens to present their manifesto; sorry, their ... . Their what exactly?

With there being so much talk at present of political pacts and of combinations (or not) of parties' initials, I have a suggestion. Actually, it isn't a suggestion. It has pretty much happened. There's a new pact on the block - the PP-FEHM (Federación Hotelera de Mallorca). The hoteliers' federation has despatched its leaflet, its manifesto in support of the Partido Popular to press outlets, extolling the achievements of the current government. The federation doesn't refer specifically to the PP, but there is little doubt as to where its sympathies lie, and they are not with Podemos.

To the fore in this manifesto are measures adopted, approved and taken by the government: the new tourism law, the decree on mature tourist zones, the decree of urgent measures to combat seasonality, the Playa de Palma redevelopment plan. All of them, by implication, have been required and/or successful. All of them have their virtues, but all of them, by further implication, are of benefit to the hoteliers and principally, the hoteliers.

The broader political message of the hoteliers' document is "the Balearics leads the recovery of growth and employment in Spain". Tourism, it goes on to say, is the "axis for economic recovery". Balearics and Mallorcan tourism has, therefore, been the motor of the nation's stagger towards economic improvement, and it is all, by yet further implication, due to the efforts of the Balearics Partido Popular. And its allies in the FEHM.

The federation in Mallorca has, as I think we all know, a great deal of power, and it is power founded on the strength of the hotel sector. So great is it that hoteliers in the rest of Spain are sometimes rather wary. When the federation turned up in Madrid last May with its fifty-point plan for tourist accommodation, this didn't sit well with organisations such as the national federation. It appeared as if Mallorca was assuming leadership and grabbing the attention of national government.

But Mallorca holds much of the national hotel power. There are of course major chains elsewhere, but no other region comes close to what Mallorca possesses. Its chains dominate the nation's hotel industry. It is little wonder, therefore, that they also dominate Mallorca's politics. When an island is as dependent upon tourism for its economic well-being as Mallorca is, then economics equate to politics, and in Mallorca, it is the hoteliers who truly wield the economic and so political power.

When the hoteliers refer to tourism being the "axis" of recovery, they are not wrong. They are also not wrong in pointing to advantageous measures that the current government has pursued. Some are extremely advantageous in lessening bureaucracy, permitting development and raising standards. But because they are also so advantageous for the hoteliers, the federation is perceived as being indivisible from the government and so the Partido Popular: the PP-FEHM. It is this alliance of commercial and political interests that causes the opposition it does in Mallorca. The hoteliers are perceived as acting only in their interests, with the politicians (those of the PP) in their pocket.

This all said, it has to be accepted that the realities of Mallorca's tourism are based on this hotel power. It also has to be accepted that for Mallorca to remain a genuine competitive force, there has to be a major overhaul of its resorts. Governments will only do so much. The private sector, the hotels and their investors, are key to this revamping of infrastructure.

Dislike in general society of the hoteliers - for their dominance, their perceived arrogance, their grabbing of others' business via all-inclusive, secondary activities and outright hostility to the private accommodation sector - cannot obscure their importance and their role in a remodelling of the island's tourism industry. Undisguised alliance with the PP should also not obscure potential risks that lie ahead with a change in government: the jeopardising of the more positive gains that have been made under the PP and through significant levels of investment made and in the pipeline. The hoteliers' interests are their own but they are not exclusively theirs.

Opposition parties might not disguise their antagonism, a reflection of a societal dislike, but they should be careful what they wish for. The hoteliers, the larger ones at any rate, have plenty of fish to fry, and these are on the shores of more exotic species than those to be found around Mallorca. Work with this power, not against it.