Biel Barceló: Unforgivable Misjudgment

There are worse offences, if you can call going on a freebie to the Dominican Republic an offence. It isn't of course. Anyone is free to go, but the problem can arise when this freedom comes free of charge. You or I would probably bite the hand off of someone generous enough to provide flights and accommodation gratis, but neither you nor I is the vice-president and tourism minister of the Balearics. The largesse of Globalia - Air Europa and Be Live Hotels - would thus be denied us. Shame that. A couple of days in the Caribbean in December might do nicely, being whisked away from any Cyclone Ana which just happens to pummel Mallorca. Happily (one trusts), the hurricane season will have passed in the Caribbean, and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic can be enjoyed at its balmy best - #Punta Cana Better In Winter.

Not that being the vice-president and the minister for tourism had anything to do with either the invitation or the free package holiday. Biel Barceló, sporting Biel, had gone in a private capacity, one of a number of contributors to a sports programme being ... being, well what? It was all a pleasant little jolly, even if there was no requirement to take part in the programme to be made in Punta Cana. And there wasn't.

Why did he do it? Seriously, why did he accept the programme's invitation and the generosity of the CEO of Mallorca's Globalia, Javier Hidalgo? Actually, it's most unlikely that Javi knew anything about it. Or anyone in the higher echelons of Globalia come to that, if the trip had all been arranged by the programme. Why would they have known? Rather like President Armengol didn't know Biel was going, there was no particular reason for them to have known. It was a private trip, after all; not an official vice-presidential one.

Biel has explained, indeed emphasised, that there was no direct or indirect relationship with any company. If by this he had meant Globalia, then one is inclined to accept that this was the case; in part, anyway. One understands what he was saying. He hadn't gone because one of Mallorca and Spain's leading travel and tourism companies had directly arranged for him to go, and that he had said, thanks very much and there's no potential conflict of interest. But there was a relationship, whether he agreed with the assertion or not. Globalia paid. Or the programme paid. There was, therefore, a direct relationship with the company behind the programme, even if it was one with which he has been associated for a decade.

There are times when politicians (and others) simply don't get it or are blind to the pitfalls of decisions. The trip to Punta Cana was one such time. Biel had suggested that there was a misjudgment. There was no suggest about it. Swanning off to the Caribbean when there was an important debate to be had in parliament was bad enough. To have missed that debate on account of a freebie was frankly unforgivable. It was a serious misjudgment, and when politicians are guilty of misjudgments they are therefore guilty of an offence of ruined credibility.

Podemos and others were waving the corruption banner. I don't buy that for one moment. Naive, stupid, ill-considered, but hardly corrupt. No, make that absolutely not corrupt. Forget any suggestion of corruption. But there are the ethical codes of Més and the government to consider. These may or may not have been transgressed, but there is a factor as important if not more so. What the citizens made of it all. For some, it will have been evidence of all politicians, despite their fine words (including those of Biel), being in it for themselves. For others, astonishment. There may have been no wrongdoing, but for goodness sake it didn't look good.

Maybe, who can tell, Biel had thought that no one would ever know he'd gone. More fool he, if he did. This is the era of Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes, Wayne Rooney and far too many others to mention. People do find out, and it was on Instagram. He really was naive, and having been naive and made a serious misjudgment, his capacity for other judgment was placed under the microscope. And unfortunately for Biel there had been previous.

He may have had nothing to do with the Més contracts, but he had really only survived that affair because Podemos backed off. They weren't about to now. But there were other questionable decisions, such as the appointments of both Pilar Carbonell and Pere Muñoz, both now no more.

I have no axe to grind with Barceló. I disagree with the tourist tax but I agree with other tourism policies. A generally reasonable and agreeable fellow, but this wasn't enough. He had to resign.

The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum

Carlos Delgado. Now, you must remember him. Ex-mayor of Calvia. Small bloke, copped some flak for having been photoed with two deer's balls on his head. Where had Carlos been for the past eighteen months since resigning as tourism minister? Not a peep out of him. Then suddenly he does reappear. Lunatics, fanatics, he calls the Partido Popular rebels. Pot, kettle, black. The lunatics were taking over from the lunatics. Shut it, Carlos, the lunatics responded (or words to that effect). The only ally Carlos seemed to have was the fading PP political boss of Palma, José María Rodríguez. With friends like him ... .

Mateo Isern and Biel Company, chiefs among the lunatics, arrived on a high-powered motorbike. "I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride. Wanted, dead or alive." There was to have been a lynching. Not high noon but high seven in the evening. Algaida. José Ramón was to have been marched to the top of the Randa and strung up. In the end, the lynch mob was stood down. Get out of town, JR. And so he will. One day he will be here, the next he will not be. Like a character in "Neighbours" who suddenly disappears with a cursory explanation that he or she has gone to Brisbane, JR will have gone to Madrid, never to be seen again.

The thing is that it was all so predictable. I'm not going to say that I told you so, but I did. Even before JR became president of the government. Division, division, division, with Delgado pulling the strings. And Madrid. Joan Riera in "Ultima Hora", who has been providing a post-electoral daily chronicle of, among other things, the PP implosion, has highlighted the ideological differences. Bauzá's fall has been predicated on ideology - one of anti-regionalism, driven by the PP in Madrid - rather than on anything personal. True. That's how it started, how it had started before the 2011 election, then it got personal though. Rafael Bosch, Toni Pastor, Mateo Isern, how many more do you need?

The lynch mob should have gathered a long time ago, and they know they should have. They could see where it was all heading. And if they hadn't, they could once trilingual teaching became the cause célèbre of the Bauzá administration: JR's own death warrant. Wanted. Dead or alive. Don't be fooled. It wasn't just because Podemos and others emerged from the political woodwork. Had there not been all the personal stuff, PP mayors might now still be mayors or at least part of pacts. Ah yes, pacts. There could never have been any. Not with, say, El Pi. Personal. Pastor, Jaume Font. Someone said that if Bauzá had just picked up the phone and spoken to Font, patched things up, the results would have been different. But Bauzá was not the one who could have made that call. It had to have been someone else. The lunatics know it. And they knew it then.

MALLORCA TODAY - Mesquida blames problems with appointments for resignation

The story of Antoni Mesquida's resignation as Balearics health minister moves on. There are now more than just personal reasons behind his departure, Mesquida attacking obstacles put in his way for making appointments that have come from within his own Partido Popular party as well as from outside. He has said that he is "sick" of the pressures but accepts that he made a mistake in taking on the ministerial job.

See more: El Mundo

The Ministry Of Unhealth

What on earth is going on at the Balearics health ministry? To lose one health minister may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose a second one within three months looks like carelessness.

I can't think when I have used Lady Bracknell before in referring to a ministerial merry-go-round in the Balearics. Or can I? Ah yes, the tourism ministers who were regularly passing through the revolving door with a corruption exit (except Ferrer, the last of the Unió Mallorquina fun tourism three in the last government, who had to go because the whole of the UM was shown the door).

There is nothing like the same reason as to why the Partido Popular has lost Carmen Castro and now Antoni Mesquida in unseemly short order. There is a same reason, but not the same one as with the tourism ministers. This same reason is personal. Mesquida has followed Castro in citing personal reasons. Oh pull the other one.

President Bauzá says that he doesn't believe that Mesquida has walked as a result of budgets. Which probably means that this is exactly why he has gone. He has been replaced by Martí Sansaloni Oliver. Any bets on how long it is before he develops personal reasons? Hmm, not sure, he has been the director general for pharmacies and budgetary control. Which sounds as though he might be just the person Bauzá has been looking for.

There are all manner of odd things happening health wise. None of them really to do with health as such. Pensioners from the IB-Salut public health agency in the Balearics did a sort of sit-in protest this morning in a meeting room at the health ministry. They are upset at the loss of up 40% of their monthly pension, which sounds as though they have good reason to protest.

The pensioners are one thing, another is the ongoing row about allegations regarding President Bauzá and his pharmacy business. PSOE is now demanding to know how much his pharmacy has billed IB-Salut for over the past few years. This sounds like one for the pharmacy and budgetary control expert who has now been parachuted into the health minister's job. Good luck, Sr. Sansaloni.

It is of course just possible that personal reasons are the genuine reason, though the equation of same ministry and three months apart does make one slightly suspicious that they might not be the reason. Moreover, there isn't really a great tradition of citing reasons other than personal ones for resigning, not just in the Balearics health ministry but also in Spain as a whole. How about Esperanza Aguirre, president of Madrid? Now no longer president of Madrid. With a tearful farewell, she resigned in September (personal reasons and a previous serious illness), seemingly set for quieter days with family and being retired to graze. Then, lo and behold, barely 48 hours had passed and she was getting her feet under the table with a nice little earner at the Turespaña national tourism agency.

It all points, I'm afraid, to hints of a lack of transparency. Mesquida's resignation will be seen as being for any reasons other than personal. There really needs to be a bit more fronting up and telling it how it is, but lack of transparency is a Spanish way.

Meantime, the Balearics health ministry, subject to major cuts, heavily in debt lurches from one crisis to another. If it isn't a minister resigning, it is a hospital director. It is a most unhealthy situation.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Rodríguez resigns because of corruption allegation

The national government delegate in the Balearic Islands, José María Rodríguez, has resigned as a result of an investigation into his alleged involvement in a corruption case dating back to when he was interior minister in the Jaume Matas government in the Balearics. Calls had been made for Rodríguez to resign but he had until today rejected them.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Delgado's girlfriend loses her job at tourism ministry

Lourdes Reynés, the girlfriend of Balearics tourism minister Carlos Delgado, has been removed from her post as technical advisor in the ministry, only days after her appointment was received with outrage and calls for Delgado to resign. The parliamentary spokesperson for the Partido Popular has admitted that the appointment was an error, but has said that her removal (resignation in fact, or so it would appear) was not on account of any ethical code having been broken.