What's The Left's Problem With Fiestas?

Mancor de la Vall, as noted here on 2 July, is not the only village or town where issues have arisen with the organisation of fairs and fiestas because of the actions of left-wing town halls. Mancor's had to do with the lack of a licence for music concerts at the rooms used by the cultural association Arrels. Before a last-minute agreement was reached, it had looked as though last November's Esclata-sang mushroom fair would not go ahead, the Més-led administration having refused to give permission for the concerts.

There are now two further cases. In Calvia village they celebrate Sant Jaume each year (25 July). The residents' association has long organised the fiestas, the agreement dating back to the days of PSOE mayor Margarita Nájera (in office from 1991 to 2003). This agreement was subsequently ratified by the two PP mayors who succeeded her: Carlos Delgado and Manu Onieva.

Responsibility for fiestas at Calvia currently lies with one of the deputy mayors, Israel Molina. He is from Si Se Puede Calvia, a version of Podemos in the municipality, which is part of the administration headed by PSOE mayor Alfonso Rodríguez. Molina has decided to break the agreement, one by which the residents' association had been receiving 28,000 euros each year to organise the Sant Jaume fiestas and others, such as the Christmas market.

Molina's argument is that there needs to be an open tender to decide who organises the fiestas. The residents' association says it won't enter the tender contest because it fears there won't be the same level of budget as previously. It notes that other associations in Calvia have said that they won't enter the contest either because they accept that the residents' association is the organiser. The consequence - unless some other solution is reached - is that the town hall will have to assume responsibility for organisation; otherwise there won't be any Sant Jaume fiestas.

In Port Soller, the cultural association has expressed its annoyance with the town hall over arrangements for Sant Pere (now finished). It says that it won't be organising the fiestas in future, citing lack of support from the town hall: the association has identified an absence of financial assistance and failure to grant permissions. The councillor in charge of fiestas, Laura Celià of Més, says that fiesta organisation has to meet with demands under law. One of these demands may well explain the fact that the fireworks were missing this year.

This is not the first time that Celià has been at the centre of a rumpus over fiesta arrangements. It was she who insisted to changes for the May Moors and Christians (Es Firó). These entailed the closing of bars in the main square during the climax to the battle - the bars had to open stalls in another square - and limits to numbers in the square (identified by wristbands).

Do these examples all point to anti-fiesta policies by some left-wing administrations? The first thing to say is that PSOE doesn't appear to have any issues. It is the further left that does. A second point to make is that, as the Arrels association in Mancor had believed, it might be thought that a grouping like Més with its Mallorcan nationalist identity would be all in favour of fiestas and their traditions.

The fact is that they may indeed be all in favour, but the four cases - Mancor, Calvia and the two in Soller - indicate a rigorous application of rules. For Més and Podemos offshoots there can't be any even hint of flouting rules, of favouritism, of not going by the book: that's the sort of thing that the PP (and PSOE) have been doing for years. These rules relate to the fastidious insistence on tenders and to health and safety, the latter being something that has rarely been diligently observed in the past.

The Calvia case has echoes of a different reason for a tender: licences to operate a business activity. It therefore is not dissimilar to the Gelats Valls ice-cream kiosk issue in Puerto Pollensa. A left-wing administration has gone by the book in saying that permission cannot just be simply rubber-stamped and extended year by year, as has been happening. The left wants to be seen to be working to the letter of the law, even if it angers the locals.

Might there be other examples of fiestas being affected? Quite probably. There are numerous local associations who essentially run fiestas, or parts of them, for town halls. There are also the health and safety and indeed animal welfare issues. If the regional government ever gets round to definitively approving its reform of the 1992 animal protection legislation, might fiestas such as Pollensa's Sant Antoni be jeopardised? The use of the cockerel at the top of the pine is currently permitted because it is a tradition that is over one hundred years old (the definition for use of live animals during fiestas under regional law). But if it is deemed to suffer under the reform, then what?

The Tender Trap

Trains don't have tenders as such any longer. What they do have are tenders of a different type; public ones to arrive at which firm gets the contract for this or that. Or to not arrive at. The tender for the train now arriving at Sa Pobla station has been delayed. We are sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused.

The trains operated by SFM (Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca) and the railway stations on the lines to Sa Pobla and Manacor from Palma are not being cleaned. The contract ran out at the end of June. The new tendering process has not been completed; indeed it seems to have all but run out of steam. As a consequence, the trains and stations are gathering litter and at Inca station the loos are shut because there is no hygiene service.

How is it that there can be such a break in continuity of service? Did someone fail to notice that a new contract was due? The answer is probably down to a failure of bureaucracy.

Though the rail service in Mallorca is pretty reasonable and inexpensive, there is something distinctly not right with it. Apart from the collapse of the extension to Alcúdia from Sa Pobla, it took ten months to get the line between Manacor and Sineu up and running again following an accident which occurred in May last year, and then you have the situation regarding the re-development of the old line between Manacor and Artà. When will it be completed? Will it be completed?

The new track and other facilities were due to have been completed some time between May and September this year. They won't be. They might be completed by the end of next year. Or they might not be. There is, and you might have guessed it, an issue with financing. However, that there is this issue with financing is a slight surprise.

When the Alcúdia extension was scrapped, funding from Madrid was meant to have been transferred to the Manacor-Artà line. If it was, then where is it? Or was there always going to be a shortfall on the budget that has now gone up to 150 million euros? Construction firms involved in the project are being left unpaid, indicative of a general malaise in the island's public sector of non-payment of suppliers, and one that President Bauzà is meant to be tackling.

Coming back to the breakdown in the tendering process for SFM's cleaning service, this highlights an issue as to how well or not the bureaucracy works in making the process happen smoothly. Putting out to tender makes contracts more transparent, but it doesn't always go to plan and indeed you wonder why it is really necessary.

As ever, we can rely on events in Puerto Pollensa to shed some light on the strange world of tendering in a Mallorcan style. Firstly, an example of when there is no tender. This occurred with the granting of a contract (later rescinded) to a firm charged with coming up with a general transport plan for the resort. The firm which was awarded it just so happened to have a family connection with the then town hall delegate for Puerto Pollensa. Something seemed a bit fishy, or so thought a number of people, especially as the firm in question had not previously undertaken such a project.

So much for transparency, something that the new mayor is planning to address. And being transparent and being seen to do the right thing was probably behind the mayor's demand that Sail and Surf should cease operations, only for him to say a couple of days later they could continue.

The story of Sail and Surf is bizarre. The sailing school has been in Puerto Pollensa for 40 years. What happened was that the school wanted a reduction in what it paid to the town hall. It was agreed that there would be a reduction, but, and despite having an annual concession with a four-year extension, the town hall reckoned that this demanded a new contract and therefore a new tender process.

Why such an established business should need to go through the rigmarole was anyone's guess. But the rigmarole was started and then got lost. As a result, the school started up again this year, someone found that everything wasn't quite in order, and the mayor, as I say, probably needing to be seen to be acting correctly, said the school had to stop. Then they could carry on, and an emergency tender notice for the "lot" that Sail and Surf has was posted onto the town hall's website. And the result of all this will be?

Not getting round to a new tendering process, not doing it all, or doing it but then forgetting that it was being done, when it was pointless doing it at all. The tender traps of Mallorca.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.