Communication Breakdown: Balearic Government

The government of José Ramón Bauzá has many failings, but its greatest is arguably its inability to communicate effectively. In this it only has itself to blame, while by its own design it has allowed communication in a more general sense - media, the man and woman in the street, social networks - to be dominated by the battles it has sought.

If only. If only Bauzá had not bulldozed headlong into the great wall of Catalan, he might now be looking at higher poll ratings and looking forward to receiving the mandate which would allow him to realise his ambition for a second term - to complete what he says he has started. Instead, he chose his battles and he will die by the sword he has waved. If only he had not revised history by insisting there was a mandate for trilingual teaching when there was not. His constant reference to a manifesto which set this out, but which did not, has merely added to the discontent that TIL has aroused; he has constantly taken people for fools, those who have bothered to read the manifesto, that is. If only he had approached TIL in a consensual evolutionary fashion. If only he had not torn down the symbols and marked himself out as the enemy of Catalan through a conversion to the philosophies of Carlos Delgado and the Circulo Balear's Jorge Campos.

But this confrontation was wholly expected. Members of the Partido Popular now claim that Bauzá became someone they hadn't selected as leader in 2010 (rather than Delgado). This may be so, but his conversion was indecently swift. In December 2010, five months ahead of the regional elections, I wrote about Bauzá's intention to revise language law and of the divisions this had already created within the PP. Immediately after the election, I said that the good week the PP had enjoyed because of the election results might not look so good "when the divisions that exist within the PP in Mallorca re-surface". Not if. When. If leading lights within the PP had their concerns about the language policy, as many will now intimate, they failed to get it toned down, assuming they even tried.

Several months ahead of the last election, Manacor's mayor, Antoni Pastor (then still in the PP), was already at loggerheads with Bauzá over language and attitudes towards regionalism. When he spoke recently of the "hate" that has been brought to Mallorcan society by the Bauzá government, he was overdoing it, but there is no questioning the division that has been created; division which could have been predicted and indeed was.

Has the inability to communicate effectively been intentional? It seems perverse to believe that it has, but the Bauzá regime appears to have been content to allow the controversies to take centre stage. Perhaps the political ego of wishing to appear tough, even at the expense of social and indeed party harmony, has barged common sense out of the way along with communication that is more positive.

Bauzá inherited a difficult economic situation, and he is now able to say that the Balearics will enjoy two per cent growth in 2015. If only. If only the communication had been more effective, more sympathetic, less confrontational, people might now listen and believe that he has done well. Instead, an announcement of predicted growth sounds more like triumphalism and propaganda neatly timed with the months ebbing away before the election. Yet, he and the government can take credit for the improvement. It has had its luck, such as with the Arab Spring that benefited tourism, but it has also sought to enable growth. The tourism law, while by no means perfect, the farming law, the fishing law, an emphasis on technologies; they have all been examples of policies with investment, greater productivity and growth in mind.

Bauzá now boasts that his has been a reforming government, the most reforming government among the regions of Spain. There has been welcome reform and, even allowing for the mess created by the language policy, this also needed some reform because the bias towards Catalan had gone way too far under Antich. Nevertheless, there will be those who will call it reactionary and not reforming, just as there will be those who will point out that economic growth can increase inequalities, and a report last week highlighted just this.

Boasts about reform will cut little ice with the electorate. Economic good news should do, and it was the economy above all else which was the reason for Bauzá being in government. He should have stuck to the economy knitting and communicated the changes needed to right the economy in a more understanding way. But he hasn't, and so he only has himself to blame for the divisions and ruptures that have been caused and for inadequate communication that has merely intensified them. 

Bearded Wonders And Robot Presidents

President Zapatero, he of the many nicknames, is often referred to as ZP. It makes him sound like a micro-chip, which is about right seeing as how he is the first fully automated political leader in western Europe. The ZP has been inserted into his motherboard, so he has now become Z-3PO, waving its arms around and screaming "reformas, reformas, reformas". The Z-3PO was recently interviewed by the "Financial Times". In the video, one can see it beaming. The original model always beamed a lot, more in confusion than simple affability. The robotic, automated version, now sensing an end to its political career, is beaming at the prospect of retirement, receiving its ex-presidential salary and writing its memoirs.

There is another reason for all the beaming. Astonishingly enough, Spain is groping its way out of recession, and Zapatero is getting the plaudits. The German "iron lady", Angela Merkel, has been praising his efforts, thus also bolstering her fellow countrymen who do, after all, either own much of Spain or wish to sell even more of it to even more of these fellow countrymen. When pressed on quite how this miracle of recovery has come to pass, the Z-3PO is plugged in, beams a lot, and goes off on the "reformas" chant that has been programmed into its circuits.

The Z-3PO is driven by an operating system known as "New Labour". This makes it and the party it heads, the PSOE new model non-ideologues, lean ever further away from any socialist roots. The Z-3PO, fashioned after Tony, smooth-faced, grinning, exaggerated hand movements and any policy it fancies, has taken the party so far towards the centre or in the opposite direction to that which it historically had, that it has been able to more or less tame the ogres of the unions. It may not have been a Scargill or a Clause 4 moment, but the air-traffic controllers' strike was something of a turning-point. Even the barely reconstructed Commies of the CCOO union disapproved of their action (though admittedly they didn't much care for the packet that the controllers were receiving.)

Taming the unions and changing labour law are crucial elements to all the "reformas". And remarkably the unions seem prepared to go along with them, given that they have been cast, for the purposes of public consumption, in the role of pantomime villains, as opposed to those in the banking and finance sectors who should be.

The Z-3PO is quite happy with this. It will be de-commissioned in 2012, which will be something of a pity as it is at least the embodiment, as it were, of a modern political leader: wires and circuit-boards in the right place and increasingly further to the right, a clone of Blair and no facial hair. And this last bit is important.

The leadership of the new model PSOE is likely to pass to one Alfredo Rubalcaba, the beardy vice-president who bears an unnerving resemblance to Solzhenitsyn. He will be up against another beardy, the Partido Popular's Mariano Rajoy - Mr. Grey - who succeeds in making the normally uncharismatic world of Spanish politics seem positively magnetic. Even the robotic Zapatero is full of life by comparison. What a choice faces Spain. Mr. Grey or the Gulag.

Despite having a massive lead in the polls, the Partido Popular faces a problem. Mr. Grey. We have WikiLeaks to thank for knowing that his predecessor, the little accountant José Maria Aznar, had reservations about Rajoy. A lot of people did, and still do. It seems no coincidence that, at what has been a critical period for Spain, Rajoy has been hardly anywhere to be seen. But Aznar has. He has re-emerged, minus, in proper contemporary manner, his old moustache and with his hair even darker than it became during his time as president, so much so that his head is like a Bertie Bassett's, with a thick layer of liquorice on top.

The re-appearance of the lush Aznar barnet is a reminder of a time when a Spanish leader did command some international kudos. Zapatero has just about managed to acquire some of his own. He may have performed an almost complete about-turn on most things, except his praiseworthy and liberal social reforms, but he seems to be restoring some Spanish credibility. It may have all required him being re-programmed, but he has retained, amidst all the "reformas", an affability. It is not one that could be said to be shared by Rajoy, the likely next president, a zomboid, and bearded, Borg.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.