The Spanish economy shrank again in the final quarter of 2012. The provisional figure for the slump during the whole of 2012 is 1.4%, worse than the Bank of Spain had been predicting only a few days ago. Never mind though, the minister for the economy, Luis de Guindos, says that the slump hasn't been as bad as predicted. You pays yer money, you takes yer choice as to whose version you prefer. If you had any money, that is.
The output figure is one piece of bad economic news, the other is the level of unemployment - 26% of the total workforce, with unemployment among the young now reaching 60%. Sixty per cent. Just hold that thought and ask yourself what the future holds for this unemployed youth.
The lost generation of Spain's youth is increasingly looking abroad for work. Overall, there was an exit of over 40,000 people from Spain during the first half of 2012, and many of them are heading to the UK. As the Trans-Iberian blog from "El País" points out, the volume of applications for UK National Insurance numbers by Spanish migrants is second only to those made by people from Pakistan.
It's not as if the young are going to the UK and finding employment commensurate with their qualifications. They are taking bar work, any menial tasks, but at least there is some prospect of work. What is there in Spain? Nada.
The recessionary statistic for the final quarter should not come as a great surprise. It can be partly explained by consumption having been squeezed into the third quarter in order to avoid the rise in prices as a consequence of the increase in IVA (VAT) at the start of September. There are other factors, though, one of them being an impact of the government's labour reforms. Welcomed by some, these reforms have nevertheless contributed to a further weakening of confidence. If job security is lessened, so is the temptation to consume.
De Guindos reckons that positive growth will return in the second half of this year. He may be right, but you shouldn't put money on this either. De Guindos is prone to talking rubbish. (The IMF haven't said as much but disagree with his forecast.) At the end of April last year, let me remind you, he dismissed the idea of increasing IVA until this year. His rationale, if you can consider it rational, was that growth would have kicked in in 2013 and so the time would have arrived to raise indirect tax. Seriously, this is a minister responsible for economic affairs. Not only was he wrong about the IVA rise, as it was made four months later, he was also wrong in his thinking. If there were growth, the last thing that was needed was to stop it in its tracks by increasing tax.
It is a cliché to suggest that politicians don't know what they are doing. Some do. But as far as Spain's are concerned, they do their utmost in proving the cliché to be right. The austerity measures are taking Spain nowhere, except further inside its own basket case. The enormity of the poverty of political economic thought is matched only by the enormity of the brassnecked spin. Take the Balearics own economic genius, José Aguilo. Tax increases will stimulate the economy, he stated earlier this month. The screeches of laughter were drowned out only by the screams of despair. Aguiló's probably next in line for a Madrid cabinet position.
The Balearics finance (and employment and business) minister believes that the rise in taxes will help entrepreneurs because of a consequent lowering in interest rates. But who will be doing any lending? Entrepreneurship is the current flavour of the month of both the regional and national government. Rajoy has announced tax cuts for young entrepreneurs. So what? Growth measures are what will help these entrepreneurs. And credit. Unavailable credit.
But what about tax cuts for everyone else? There is a growing counter-argument to the austerity strategy imposed by the Spanish Government and imposed on it by forces from outside. Spain's problems with its borrowing rate have been eased thanks to European Central Bank intervention. We know what the pound (or euro) of flesh has had to be for this intervention, but what on earth is austerity ever going to achieve? Consider this. If it takes 2% economic growth to cut unemployment by 1% (a not untypical ratio), how long will it be before the 26% unemployment rate is lowered at all significantly? An awfully long time, always assuming there were such growth. And where's this going to come from?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for January 2013
Balearics tourism promotion action plan - 26 January 2013
Bishop of Mallorca - 12 January 2013
Bradley Wiggins and cycling tourism promotion - 27 January 2013
Broadcasting interference in Spain - 24 January 2013
Floating Spain on the stock market - 2 January 2013
Foodstagramming - 29 January 2013
Glosadors - 13 January 2013
Hainan: where Mallorca can't compete - 4 January 2013
Handball - 16 January 2013
Health and safety and traditions - 9 January 2012
Ill Manors adaptation - 19 January 2013
Luis Bárcenas and Partido Popular corruption - 21 January 2013
Madrid Olympics bid - 3 January 2013
Magalluf and Trip Advisor - 30 January 2013
Mallorcan attitudes and winter tourism - 6 January 2013
Osborne bull vandalised again - 1 January 2013
Paradores - 25 January 2013
Pollensa festival funding - 22 January 2013
Porto Cristo's name - 17 January 2013
Reading and misinterpretation or misunderstanding - 7 January 2013
Sant Sebastià: the legend and gay icon - 14 January 2013
Spain stuck in the 1930s - 28 January 2013
Spanish and Latin rock music - 23 January 2013
Spanish economy and unemployment - 31 January 2013
Spanish military, Republicanism and independence - 11 January 2013
The Truth About Magalluf - 5 January 2013, 10 January 2013, 20 January 2013
Tourism areas developments - 8 January 2013
UK resident population in Mallorca - 18 January 2013
Winter season: will there ever be one? - 15 January 2013
Showing posts with label Unemployment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unemployment. Show all posts
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
Back To A 1930s Future
The world of showbiz is inhabited by those who consider themselves well positioned to make pronouncements on matters far removed from the stage, the cinema or the rock-concert stadium. How many showbiz celebrities can you think of who have adhered to the corruption of the maxim of all the world being a stage and it being one from which they intend to pontificate, often repeatedly? Jane Fonda, Bono, George Clooney, the list is very much longer than these three alone.
Spain has its own celebrity activists. You may not have heard of them, but they are there nevertheless, and one of them is a leading actor called Willy Toledo. If Willy were British, his thoughts would be the target for ridicule by the "Telegraph" or "Daily Mail". Leftist loony, in other words.
Willy Toledo took part recently in an act of solidarity in the city of Gijón organised by something known as the platform against repression and for liberties. He fulminated against the actions of the current national government, one that, he claims, has converted Spain into a "pre-fascist country, if not already fascist".
The fascist narrative is overplayed in Spain. It is the consequence of historical memory in people's lifetimes, a narrative that is nuanced and moulded by this recent memory. It is one that the country cannot break out of. It lives in a fascistic past/present because the counter-narrative, that of a European, democratic, monarchical, free market but ideally egalitarian and clean society and politics, has struggled to consign it once and for all to the cesspit of history.
Toledo supports this fascist groove thing by styling the government as ultranationalist-Catholic, a descriptive picture of government that is suffused with dark colours on a Francoist canvas. It is more than a slight exaggeration. If Spain were either already fascist or pre-fascist, I think we might be more aware of the fact.
Toledo has also mused on the question of the monarchy. He is far from alone in wondering what will happen when the King dies or becomes too infirm to rule; the monarch's health is a subject to which an increasing amount of attention is being paid. Toledo is pretty clear in believing that the King's passing would mean the end of the monarchy. In continuing the historical narrative, he argues that the country should be preparing itself for the reinstatement of "that of which we were robbed", namely the Republic.
So there you have it. In Willy world, Spain is locked in a perpetual battle between a socialist-worker Republicanism and über-Nationalism, with the monarchy somewhere between the two, as, lest we forget, Franco was quite content for the monarchy to be sidelined.
Nevertheless, there are anxieties about the monarchy, and they come from elements of both left and right who have no desire to pursue a return to Republicanism and who are equally disquieted by an overtly nationalist agenda, one that embraces two competing forms of nationalism, one in a neo-Francoist fashion and the other, the nationalist separatism of the Catalans and the Basques. This is the broad centre of both politics and society which doesn't wish to keep re-living the 1930s and wants the European, democratic and, yes, monarchical model to prevail.
The trouble is that the 1930s won't go away. For all that Spain has achieved some sort of democratic modernity, the strains are evident. The position of the monarchy is just one, and it is a position that has deteriorated and may deteriorate further now that the previously dismissed could actually happen, namely Princess Cristina, the wife of the commoner Urdangarin and the King's daughter, being indicted on corruption allegations. Democracy doesn't demand monarchy, but in Spain, a virtuous and benign monarchy helps.
And then there is the economy. The journalist Javier González has made the point that Spain's unemployment is equivalent to the combined populations of its four largest cities - Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla. It is a point that is designed for effect, but the effect is striking, and it becomes even more so given the context in which González has written and for which newspaper he writes - "El Mundo". Right-wing, it, or González at any rate, invokes the same period of history as Toledo in further invoking the Great Depression and what came next in Europe. We are back to the same fascistic narrative.
One cannot and should not neglect the past. One learns from the past. But in Spain, there are some who want that past to reappear and others who have convinced themselves that it will reappear. This is a country stuck in the time warp of its collective memory. God help us.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Spain has its own celebrity activists. You may not have heard of them, but they are there nevertheless, and one of them is a leading actor called Willy Toledo. If Willy were British, his thoughts would be the target for ridicule by the "Telegraph" or "Daily Mail". Leftist loony, in other words.
Willy Toledo took part recently in an act of solidarity in the city of Gijón organised by something known as the platform against repression and for liberties. He fulminated against the actions of the current national government, one that, he claims, has converted Spain into a "pre-fascist country, if not already fascist".
The fascist narrative is overplayed in Spain. It is the consequence of historical memory in people's lifetimes, a narrative that is nuanced and moulded by this recent memory. It is one that the country cannot break out of. It lives in a fascistic past/present because the counter-narrative, that of a European, democratic, monarchical, free market but ideally egalitarian and clean society and politics, has struggled to consign it once and for all to the cesspit of history.
Toledo supports this fascist groove thing by styling the government as ultranationalist-Catholic, a descriptive picture of government that is suffused with dark colours on a Francoist canvas. It is more than a slight exaggeration. If Spain were either already fascist or pre-fascist, I think we might be more aware of the fact.
Toledo has also mused on the question of the monarchy. He is far from alone in wondering what will happen when the King dies or becomes too infirm to rule; the monarch's health is a subject to which an increasing amount of attention is being paid. Toledo is pretty clear in believing that the King's passing would mean the end of the monarchy. In continuing the historical narrative, he argues that the country should be preparing itself for the reinstatement of "that of which we were robbed", namely the Republic.
So there you have it. In Willy world, Spain is locked in a perpetual battle between a socialist-worker Republicanism and über-Nationalism, with the monarchy somewhere between the two, as, lest we forget, Franco was quite content for the monarchy to be sidelined.
Nevertheless, there are anxieties about the monarchy, and they come from elements of both left and right who have no desire to pursue a return to Republicanism and who are equally disquieted by an overtly nationalist agenda, one that embraces two competing forms of nationalism, one in a neo-Francoist fashion and the other, the nationalist separatism of the Catalans and the Basques. This is the broad centre of both politics and society which doesn't wish to keep re-living the 1930s and wants the European, democratic and, yes, monarchical model to prevail.
The trouble is that the 1930s won't go away. For all that Spain has achieved some sort of democratic modernity, the strains are evident. The position of the monarchy is just one, and it is a position that has deteriorated and may deteriorate further now that the previously dismissed could actually happen, namely Princess Cristina, the wife of the commoner Urdangarin and the King's daughter, being indicted on corruption allegations. Democracy doesn't demand monarchy, but in Spain, a virtuous and benign monarchy helps.
And then there is the economy. The journalist Javier González has made the point that Spain's unemployment is equivalent to the combined populations of its four largest cities - Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla. It is a point that is designed for effect, but the effect is striking, and it becomes even more so given the context in which González has written and for which newspaper he writes - "El Mundo". Right-wing, it, or González at any rate, invokes the same period of history as Toledo in further invoking the Great Depression and what came next in Europe. We are back to the same fascistic narrative.
One cannot and should not neglect the past. One learns from the past. But in Spain, there are some who want that past to reappear and others who have convinced themselves that it will reappear. This is a country stuck in the time warp of its collective memory. God help us.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Ill Manors - The Majorca Re-mix
Let's all go on a summer holiday
The telly makes us less than ignorant
So we know it's true
That means off-face pissed and violent
She's got business for more than a hug
On second thoughts you don't wanna get mugged
Oh shit, too drunk that was simply dumb
Whose idea was that balcony
He's lost his life, haven't we all
Be a diver, act the fool
What's holidays all in all
Inclusive gaff, sex rituals
Not all year round, not at all
Fewer months before the Fall
Get away with thieving in town halls
Four figure bungs the minimum rule
We're all liars, piss takers
Every single one expat's not what they say
Keep on believing what you read in the papers
Airhead, air-heeled "girls", sloshed blokes all day
Think you know how life on a paradise island is
From everything you've ever read about it or heard
Well it's all true, but not truth that's nicest
There's no need to set foot on the strip
Truth is here, Stacey lets it rip
The cheats and lies, we've lost our grip
Feed the fear that's what we've found
Crisis reigns, we all fall down
Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!
You'll get found in a beach concrete jungle
New hotels keep ripping up our nature
Whichever road leads to a blinged-up Russian
Hoods in hoods rob blind and fracture
We've got an eco-friendly government
Waste imports help pay Endesa
Built an entire congress centre
Around where we live for sale for rent flats
Take away our money and keep raising tax
Island's health care, yes please many thanks
Petrol tax for health so less in the tanks
Nice knowing there's the FO when we get attacked
Don't give us all that
We're all losing our temper
When'll they close down the consulate centre?
Killing time in what used to be winter
Tourism's confined from May to September
Schools don't work, which language rules, let's get out
People hurting, I predict a riot
Year in year out
No one knows if things'll turn about
What does the King say? Stuff about the youth
Kids on the street no they'll never work, only looking for cheap
Street drinking at botellón proof
All go looting
No not Luton
Stacey, it's closer, cover your eyes
But if you see, you might realise
It'll make you wish you'd stayed outside
Here's what you get for corruption, all the lies
Do what Rajoy does ... smoke a cigar
Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!
We've had it with corrupt politicians
The bloody rich kids always prosper
'Cos of papa's millions in broken Majorca
Everyone else broke in Majorca
What needs fixing is society
And that means all the impropriety
It's not Stacey's television
It's all the crooks who should be in prison
Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!
* With full acknowledgement to Ben Drew (Plan B).
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The telly makes us less than ignorant
So we know it's true
That means off-face pissed and violent
She's got business for more than a hug
On second thoughts you don't wanna get mugged
Oh shit, too drunk that was simply dumb
Whose idea was that balcony
He's lost his life, haven't we all
Be a diver, act the fool
What's holidays all in all
Inclusive gaff, sex rituals
Not all year round, not at all
Fewer months before the Fall
Get away with thieving in town halls
Four figure bungs the minimum rule
We're all liars, piss takers
Every single one expat's not what they say
Keep on believing what you read in the papers
Airhead, air-heeled "girls", sloshed blokes all day
Think you know how life on a paradise island is
From everything you've ever read about it or heard
Well it's all true, but not truth that's nicest
There's no need to set foot on the strip
Truth is here, Stacey lets it rip
The cheats and lies, we've lost our grip
Feed the fear that's what we've found
Crisis reigns, we all fall down
Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!
You'll get found in a beach concrete jungle
New hotels keep ripping up our nature
Whichever road leads to a blinged-up Russian
Hoods in hoods rob blind and fracture
We've got an eco-friendly government
Waste imports help pay Endesa
Built an entire congress centre
Around where we live for sale for rent flats
Take away our money and keep raising tax
Island's health care, yes please many thanks
Petrol tax for health so less in the tanks
Nice knowing there's the FO when we get attacked
Don't give us all that
We're all losing our temper
When'll they close down the consulate centre?
Killing time in what used to be winter
Tourism's confined from May to September
Schools don't work, which language rules, let's get out
People hurting, I predict a riot
Year in year out
No one knows if things'll turn about
What does the King say? Stuff about the youth
Kids on the street no they'll never work, only looking for cheap
Street drinking at botellón proof
All go looting
No not Luton
Stacey, it's closer, cover your eyes
But if you see, you might realise
It'll make you wish you'd stayed outside
Here's what you get for corruption, all the lies
Do what Rajoy does ... smoke a cigar
Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!
We've had it with corrupt politicians
The bloody rich kids always prosper
'Cos of papa's millions in broken Majorca
Everyone else broke in Majorca
What needs fixing is society
And that means all the impropriety
It's not Stacey's television
It's all the crooks who should be in prison
Oi! I said oi!
What you thinking of, you stupid Raj-oy!
We're poor round here, run home and lock our doors
But there's no homes no more, we're getting robbed for
Real (yeah) makes my manors ill
My manners ill
For real
Yeah you know we've taken ill, crisis ill!
* With full acknowledgement to Ben Drew (Plan B).
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
Nothing In Particular: November
If I had a euro for every time someone had said to me how do you manage to write so often and so much, I would have sufficient to buy a pretty cheap lawnmower. People don't really ask me the question that often; it just seems as though they do. The amount that it would come to, possibly in the region of around 80 euros, would get me a lawnmower. Another one. I've got two broken ones sitting in the utility room. If I bought a proper one, an expensive one, they probably wouldn't be broken, but I have better things to waste money on.
Having therefore borrowed a lawnmower and tackled - finally - an overgrown, autumn lawn, I was attacking the grass with a degree of relish, as there is something satisfying about cutting a lot of grass, mixed with resentment at having to spend my time doing so when I should be somewhere else writing whatever it is I am writing today. But what was I going to write today? This was the question I was asking myself, as I deposited some cut grass into the brown container for the umpteenth time.
Was there a clue to hand? As in on my hand. And on my arm. And on my face. And in my ear. It's a title, I thought. Mosquito Coast. Nicked from Harrison Ford, it seemed a good title as here, by the coast and by Albufera, there are mosquitoes. Thousands of them. Millions, for all I know. And during the day.
Mosquitoes are a fact of life because of Albufera, but the autumn dampness makes them an all but intolerable fact of life. They get everywhere. In my car, for example. November is a miserable, horrible enough month as it is without mosquitoes making it even more unbearable. And November was something else that I thought I might be writing about. Its deadness and its sadness. There is barely a soul to be seen. The whole of Playa de Muro has been wrapped in black bin-liners and brown paper and packed away for a few months. You feel as though you are the last person left alive. God knows how people who have fincas in the back of beyond get on. It would drive me nuts.
And at the airport on Sunday, there was hardly anyone left alive there either. The last easyJet flight out of Luton had three people on it. Little wonder really when there isn't much open for anyone arriving and no chance of returning with the same airline to the same airport.
Then I thought about writing about the unemployment queues. But if I had a euro for every time I've written about these in November, I would be able to dine out reasonably well. Not that you could so in Playa de Muro of course, except at the little cafeteria that keeps going with its menu del día through the winter. Oh, and maybe the burger place, but that's normally only open at the weekend. The queues, though, aren't like the queues used to be. There must be a different system for processing all the poor sods hoping for their measly benefits.
Ah but, there are always the autumn fairs to write about. Yep, done them before now as well. The line about the how-big-is-your-pumpkin competition at Muro's autumn fair is wearing a tad thin. Not that it isn't legitimate, as it has been every year since the pumpkin contest was introduced. Nothing ever changes. November comes round, the fairs are as fairs have long been, albeit that Pollensa is having some sort of Wild West competition at its fair for the first time.
Maybe I could write about November being a time for people to relax, start to re-charge, maybe even begin to think about next season. Maybe I could, but I don't want relaxation. I don't want nothingness. Putting it bluntly, I don't want November. I want people not relaxing. I want them working. I want life. Not an empty airport that is so empty it closes part of itself down for the winter. Not the sight of empty houses - so many of them in the neighbourhood going to shameful, obscene waste - and empty hotels, shells of unconscionable non-productivity.
I could write about this, and there would be a few euros knocking around for the number of times I've expressed my disgust at the volume of unused real estate. So I won't. I'll just flick the mosquitoes away, listen to the silence and wonder what I'm going to write about. I know. I'll write about nothing in particular.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Having therefore borrowed a lawnmower and tackled - finally - an overgrown, autumn lawn, I was attacking the grass with a degree of relish, as there is something satisfying about cutting a lot of grass, mixed with resentment at having to spend my time doing so when I should be somewhere else writing whatever it is I am writing today. But what was I going to write today? This was the question I was asking myself, as I deposited some cut grass into the brown container for the umpteenth time.
Was there a clue to hand? As in on my hand. And on my arm. And on my face. And in my ear. It's a title, I thought. Mosquito Coast. Nicked from Harrison Ford, it seemed a good title as here, by the coast and by Albufera, there are mosquitoes. Thousands of them. Millions, for all I know. And during the day.
Mosquitoes are a fact of life because of Albufera, but the autumn dampness makes them an all but intolerable fact of life. They get everywhere. In my car, for example. November is a miserable, horrible enough month as it is without mosquitoes making it even more unbearable. And November was something else that I thought I might be writing about. Its deadness and its sadness. There is barely a soul to be seen. The whole of Playa de Muro has been wrapped in black bin-liners and brown paper and packed away for a few months. You feel as though you are the last person left alive. God knows how people who have fincas in the back of beyond get on. It would drive me nuts.
And at the airport on Sunday, there was hardly anyone left alive there either. The last easyJet flight out of Luton had three people on it. Little wonder really when there isn't much open for anyone arriving and no chance of returning with the same airline to the same airport.
Then I thought about writing about the unemployment queues. But if I had a euro for every time I've written about these in November, I would be able to dine out reasonably well. Not that you could so in Playa de Muro of course, except at the little cafeteria that keeps going with its menu del día through the winter. Oh, and maybe the burger place, but that's normally only open at the weekend. The queues, though, aren't like the queues used to be. There must be a different system for processing all the poor sods hoping for their measly benefits.
Ah but, there are always the autumn fairs to write about. Yep, done them before now as well. The line about the how-big-is-your-pumpkin competition at Muro's autumn fair is wearing a tad thin. Not that it isn't legitimate, as it has been every year since the pumpkin contest was introduced. Nothing ever changes. November comes round, the fairs are as fairs have long been, albeit that Pollensa is having some sort of Wild West competition at its fair for the first time.
Maybe I could write about November being a time for people to relax, start to re-charge, maybe even begin to think about next season. Maybe I could, but I don't want relaxation. I don't want nothingness. Putting it bluntly, I don't want November. I want people not relaxing. I want them working. I want life. Not an empty airport that is so empty it closes part of itself down for the winter. Not the sight of empty houses - so many of them in the neighbourhood going to shameful, obscene waste - and empty hotels, shells of unconscionable non-productivity.
I could write about this, and there would be a few euros knocking around for the number of times I've expressed my disgust at the volume of unused real estate. So I won't. I'll just flick the mosquitoes away, listen to the silence and wonder what I'm going to write about. I know. I'll write about nothing in particular.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Empire Of The Sun: Balearics poverty
The Spanish word "miseria" can have different meanings. Whichever one you take, they amount to much the same thing. Misery, wretchedness, poverty; they are indistinguishable.
The latest survey of poverty makes the Balearics the fourth poorest region of Spain or, if you prefer your translation, the region which, after the Canaries, Extremadura and Andalucía, is the fourth most miserable and the fourth most wretched. Such a conclusion doesn't do much for all the paradise island guff. It also doesn't do much for the poor who are about to be slammed with a rise in the cost of living because of the increase in IVA. To put this rise in some sort of context, it is estimated that it will cost each household a bit over 700 euros more a year. This in a country where the minimum salary is under 700 (it is in fact around 640 euros per month).
The poverty statistics for the Balearics are bad enough, but if you take them for Spain as a whole, then they are even worse. Spain has the highest index of poverty in the whole of the European Union. And this is a country that is meant to be among the world's richest countries, if only determined by IMF figures for GDP. Yet it isn't surprising. I drew a comparison yesterday with the French minimum salary. This comparison, and comparisons with other European countries, together with their respective general rates of value added tax, are being widely made. There is a very good reason why. Rajoy in his address on Black Wednesday had the brass neck to say that the French rate of VAT was higher than Spain's. Yes, it is, but it won't be once the 21% rate comes in, but more pertinent is the comparative level of income. It is typical for politicians to be economic with their facts, and Rajoy is certainly no different.
The misery and additional poverty that the Spanish Government is about to inflict on the Balearics (and the nation) are not matched by the demeanour of these politicians. The PSOE party locally has gone on Facebook to show a photo of an Italian politician in tears when the announcement had to be made of cuts. It is compared with a truly abhorrent, horrible photo of Rajoy being applauded by members of his cabinet after his address on Wednesday. How dare they? They should hang their heads in shame. Italian politicians could empathise with the misery by being miserable. The Spanish ones can't. They are a disgrace.
In addition to the survey on poverty, another report has been issued. This one calculates that one in four people in the Balearics is at the risk of poverty, a figure that has risen by around 20,000 people in three years. And while this risk increases, the aid, what little there is because Spain isn't particularly generous anyway, is being cut. It is said that the cut to unemployment benefit, another element of the Black Wednesday announcement which Rajoy's cronies were so determined to applaud, will hit the Balearics harder than anywhere because of the dependence upon tourism and therefore the high level of seasonal employment (and unemployment).
The Balearics may not be the worst affected, but if not, this will be because either the Canaries or Andalucía is more affected. Two other regions with the highest levels of poverty, misery and wretchedness.
Yet, how can this all be, some will ask. The wonderful weather, the wonderful lifestyle, the wonderful people, the wonderful ... . Oh, do shut up. It is no coincidence that the Balearics, the Canaries and the region that is home to the Costa del Sol have such high levels of poverty. Each is dependent upon tourism and each employs people on low wages who are finding it increasingly difficult to even obtain employment contracts long enough to enable them to qualify for benefit.
The paradise island line is a facade, a statement of unreality. It is one trotted out by ignorant or smug expatriates who have not the faintest idea. Or one used by visitors who are similarly ignorant. They at least can be excused.
It is the facade, the superficiality of beach lifestyle, of the yacht club, of the golf club, of the doing lunch, of the doing dinner. It is one behind which many can shield themselves. Yet it is a facade that is showing signs of cracking. The Empire of the Sun on the paradise island may not be subject to anything as dramatic as an invasion force turning a world of smug aloofness and parties upside down, but the sun is lowering. It is not going down and never will, but no empire ever lasted.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The latest survey of poverty makes the Balearics the fourth poorest region of Spain or, if you prefer your translation, the region which, after the Canaries, Extremadura and Andalucía, is the fourth most miserable and the fourth most wretched. Such a conclusion doesn't do much for all the paradise island guff. It also doesn't do much for the poor who are about to be slammed with a rise in the cost of living because of the increase in IVA. To put this rise in some sort of context, it is estimated that it will cost each household a bit over 700 euros more a year. This in a country where the minimum salary is under 700 (it is in fact around 640 euros per month).
The poverty statistics for the Balearics are bad enough, but if you take them for Spain as a whole, then they are even worse. Spain has the highest index of poverty in the whole of the European Union. And this is a country that is meant to be among the world's richest countries, if only determined by IMF figures for GDP. Yet it isn't surprising. I drew a comparison yesterday with the French minimum salary. This comparison, and comparisons with other European countries, together with their respective general rates of value added tax, are being widely made. There is a very good reason why. Rajoy in his address on Black Wednesday had the brass neck to say that the French rate of VAT was higher than Spain's. Yes, it is, but it won't be once the 21% rate comes in, but more pertinent is the comparative level of income. It is typical for politicians to be economic with their facts, and Rajoy is certainly no different.
The misery and additional poverty that the Spanish Government is about to inflict on the Balearics (and the nation) are not matched by the demeanour of these politicians. The PSOE party locally has gone on Facebook to show a photo of an Italian politician in tears when the announcement had to be made of cuts. It is compared with a truly abhorrent, horrible photo of Rajoy being applauded by members of his cabinet after his address on Wednesday. How dare they? They should hang their heads in shame. Italian politicians could empathise with the misery by being miserable. The Spanish ones can't. They are a disgrace.
In addition to the survey on poverty, another report has been issued. This one calculates that one in four people in the Balearics is at the risk of poverty, a figure that has risen by around 20,000 people in three years. And while this risk increases, the aid, what little there is because Spain isn't particularly generous anyway, is being cut. It is said that the cut to unemployment benefit, another element of the Black Wednesday announcement which Rajoy's cronies were so determined to applaud, will hit the Balearics harder than anywhere because of the dependence upon tourism and therefore the high level of seasonal employment (and unemployment).
The Balearics may not be the worst affected, but if not, this will be because either the Canaries or Andalucía is more affected. Two other regions with the highest levels of poverty, misery and wretchedness.
Yet, how can this all be, some will ask. The wonderful weather, the wonderful lifestyle, the wonderful people, the wonderful ... . Oh, do shut up. It is no coincidence that the Balearics, the Canaries and the region that is home to the Costa del Sol have such high levels of poverty. Each is dependent upon tourism and each employs people on low wages who are finding it increasingly difficult to even obtain employment contracts long enough to enable them to qualify for benefit.
The paradise island line is a facade, a statement of unreality. It is one trotted out by ignorant or smug expatriates who have not the faintest idea. Or one used by visitors who are similarly ignorant. They at least can be excused.
It is the facade, the superficiality of beach lifestyle, of the yacht club, of the golf club, of the doing lunch, of the doing dinner. It is one behind which many can shield themselves. Yet it is a facade that is showing signs of cracking. The Empire of the Sun on the paradise island may not be subject to anything as dramatic as an invasion force turning a world of smug aloofness and parties upside down, but the sun is lowering. It is not going down and never will, but no empire ever lasted.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Local police protest at job losses
Balearics Day didn't see only celebrations, there were also protests, one of them by over a hundred unemployed local police officers. A spokesperson said that at a time when crime was on the increase, it was "surreal" that town halls should use the excuse of economic crisis when the police were needed more than ever.
Friday, March 02, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Balearic Government may introduce health petrol tax
Though it said that it would not increase taxes, the Balearic Government is giving consideration to introducing the so-called "céntimo sanitario", a small tax on the price of petrol that would be destined to pay for the local health service. The government is, meantime, paving the way for more measures to tackle the islands' deficit and parlous financial situation. They are expected to be announced in the next few days. Rather less gloomy, though all things are relative, unemployment in the islands fell by 0.6% in February, but it still stands at over 98,000 people on the dole.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Mariano And The Mess
Who on earth would want to be a Spanish prime minister? Well, Mariano Rajoy for one, though why is anyone's guess. It says much for political ambition that you would willingly enter the lions' den unprotected and smelling of dinner. Deficit, highest unemployment rate in Europe, virtually no growth. Presumably, in the words of the election song of a certain former prime minister, things can only get better. Actually, they can't; they can only get worse, and they already have.
Surprise has been expressed that the markets have reacted with a massive thumbs-down. That's not how it's meant to work. Good, right-wing, slash-and-burn politico takes over, and the markets are supposed to cheer at the fall of the squandering, bumbling incompetents from the left. They might have done were it not for the fact that Rajoy has to wait a few weeks before getting his backside onto the prime ministerial seat. There are procedures, you know, post-electoral ones, and the markets are being blamed for not understanding that it takes weeks for the Spanish to sort these procedures out. Perhaps Spanish politicians should try understanding how markets work, though they have shown little evidence that they do.
The hiatus following the election is just one reason why the markets have reacted so negatively. Another is that they really don't have much confidence in Rajoy and the Partido Popular as they know full well that there is precious little that Rajoy can actually do. Yep, it's a great time to be taking over as prime minister, knowing that you are totally emasculated and are dead meat even before you start.
If he were allowed into the prime ministerial office now, he would be flashing into the night sky over the Gotham City of Spain the distress image of the Euro and getting Angela and Nicolas racing from the ECB Batcave. "There are only 24 hours to save Spain, Robin." Which isn't too far from the truth, as each day brings with it ever more woe. Or perhaps he would be sending out an SOS and hoping that Thunderbird 5 picks it up. "Brains, any ideas as to how we can rescue Spain?" "Er, er, well, er, Mr. Tracy, we'll have to dig very deep. Cut very deep." "Right, Brains. Virgil, take Thunderbird 2's austerity mole pod." "F.A.B., father."
Oh that it was as simple as sending out a distress signal and International Rescue comes and makes everything all right. What am I saying? This is pretty much how it is. The IMF or the European Central Bank buying up Spanish debt as quickly as it can be issued in order to give Rajoy some breathing space to stutter his words of reforms before they cart him off to the Papandreou Home For Distressed European Leaders.
There's the deficit and then there's employment creation. It's not going to happen, because JP Morgan says so. Yes you can always rely on what banks say - they got everyone into the mess and now they can gloat at everyone's misfortune; JP Morgan reckons unemployment in Spain will rise to 27% next year. Rajoy, if and when he can get his scissors out, is going to have to cut so deep that unemployment will continue its upward march and growth its downward slump. Here comes another recession. Not that the first one ever really went away.
In an ideal world, and you may have noticed that the world currently isn't ideal, Rajoy would set in motion much-needed plans to restructure Spain's economy and not just its finances. Investment in new industries to break the dependence, certainly in some regions of Spain, on construction and tourism has been demanded for years. But where would the investment come from now? Even if the banks weren't suffering liquidity problems or weren't applying a squeeze and even if the government had spare pots of cash lying around, the results would take years to bear fruit. And Rajoy hasn't got years. He's barely got days.
Some proposals like tax cuts for smaller businesses could help with stimulating the economy, but what really might would be lowering the burden on social security payments. A reduction in IVA for the tourism industry, however, would be senseless. Tax receipts have gone up this year, thanks in part to the rise in IVA, and they are likely to be up again next year.
Rajoy has inherited a God awful mess. He should demand our sympathy, but then he wanted to be prime minister. So he should get on and sort it. But he can't, not yet, because procedures don't allow it. Incredible.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Surprise has been expressed that the markets have reacted with a massive thumbs-down. That's not how it's meant to work. Good, right-wing, slash-and-burn politico takes over, and the markets are supposed to cheer at the fall of the squandering, bumbling incompetents from the left. They might have done were it not for the fact that Rajoy has to wait a few weeks before getting his backside onto the prime ministerial seat. There are procedures, you know, post-electoral ones, and the markets are being blamed for not understanding that it takes weeks for the Spanish to sort these procedures out. Perhaps Spanish politicians should try understanding how markets work, though they have shown little evidence that they do.
The hiatus following the election is just one reason why the markets have reacted so negatively. Another is that they really don't have much confidence in Rajoy and the Partido Popular as they know full well that there is precious little that Rajoy can actually do. Yep, it's a great time to be taking over as prime minister, knowing that you are totally emasculated and are dead meat even before you start.
If he were allowed into the prime ministerial office now, he would be flashing into the night sky over the Gotham City of Spain the distress image of the Euro and getting Angela and Nicolas racing from the ECB Batcave. "There are only 24 hours to save Spain, Robin." Which isn't too far from the truth, as each day brings with it ever more woe. Or perhaps he would be sending out an SOS and hoping that Thunderbird 5 picks it up. "Brains, any ideas as to how we can rescue Spain?" "Er, er, well, er, Mr. Tracy, we'll have to dig very deep. Cut very deep." "Right, Brains. Virgil, take Thunderbird 2's austerity mole pod." "F.A.B., father."
Oh that it was as simple as sending out a distress signal and International Rescue comes and makes everything all right. What am I saying? This is pretty much how it is. The IMF or the European Central Bank buying up Spanish debt as quickly as it can be issued in order to give Rajoy some breathing space to stutter his words of reforms before they cart him off to the Papandreou Home For Distressed European Leaders.
There's the deficit and then there's employment creation. It's not going to happen, because JP Morgan says so. Yes you can always rely on what banks say - they got everyone into the mess and now they can gloat at everyone's misfortune; JP Morgan reckons unemployment in Spain will rise to 27% next year. Rajoy, if and when he can get his scissors out, is going to have to cut so deep that unemployment will continue its upward march and growth its downward slump. Here comes another recession. Not that the first one ever really went away.
In an ideal world, and you may have noticed that the world currently isn't ideal, Rajoy would set in motion much-needed plans to restructure Spain's economy and not just its finances. Investment in new industries to break the dependence, certainly in some regions of Spain, on construction and tourism has been demanded for years. But where would the investment come from now? Even if the banks weren't suffering liquidity problems or weren't applying a squeeze and even if the government had spare pots of cash lying around, the results would take years to bear fruit. And Rajoy hasn't got years. He's barely got days.
Some proposals like tax cuts for smaller businesses could help with stimulating the economy, but what really might would be lowering the burden on social security payments. A reduction in IVA for the tourism industry, however, would be senseless. Tax receipts have gone up this year, thanks in part to the rise in IVA, and they are likely to be up again next year.
Rajoy has inherited a God awful mess. He should demand our sympathy, but then he wanted to be prime minister. So he should get on and sort it. But he can't, not yet, because procedures don't allow it. Incredible.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Going Benalup: Unemployment and easy credit
There is a town in the province of Cádiz in Andalusia that has the worst unemployment rate in Europe. It is called Benalup (or Benalup-Casas Viejas, to give it its full name). In an article by Giles Tremlett in "The Observer" on Sunday, the collapse of what, for a brief time, had become a boom town is chronicled, and the story of Benalup tells you mostly all you need to know about why Spain is in such a mess and is going to have one hell of a struggle getting out of it.
Benalup is by no means unique, even if it can lay claim to that unwanted unemployment crown. Spain is full of Benalups, and Mallorca shares its problems. To summarise Tremlett's main points, the Benalup belly-up effect was founded on excessive credit and on a glut of construction jobs that paid well and took teenagers out of education.
It won't sit well with the La Caixa bank, known also for its Obra Social good works programmes, that it gets fingered as having triggered a lending war among the banks that flooded into the town in search of mortgage customers, many of them young and having turned their backs on school in the knowledge that they could earn handsome wages in the construction industry.
Construction was the first and most obvious victim of economic crisis, and it took its labour force down with it. In Benalup, those who had left school at sixteen and who had embarked on a side career of avaricious material grab are just part of the almost 50% of Spain's under-25s that are unemployed. This material grab has left Benalup, as Tremlett remarks, "plastered with 'for sale' signs", those of La Caixa's estate-agency arm, which has been forced to repossess.
Much of the construction was centred on the coastal area. The Benalup story, therefore, is a not unfamiliar one of the two heads of construction and tourism that is the economy of much of Spain, Mallorca included. But Benalup, some kilometres inland, doesn't have the luxury of the fallback position of tourism. Without the construction on the coast, it doesn't really have anything.
The dependence on construction and tourism in different parts of Spain is just one factor that has undermined Spain’s economy. Subject to the vagaries of economic cycles, both industries also contribute to a devaluing of the general skills base and of the education system. Easy money can be had, or could, and the state would provide some assistance in the winter for those less inclined to slog around a building site.
The education system is not that great anyway, and in Mallorca it is particularly poor. But through a combination of the system’s inadequacies, a lack of incentive to stay in education and the promise of riches from humping bricks about (now gone), general competitiveness is also undermined.
One solution to the unemployment in Benalup is a state-funded training course, assuming you can get on it. Not that it necessarily opens up subsequent employment opportunities, as the course is for graphic design. In Mallorca, there are any number of young graphic designers. They are two a penny. Many are good, but where’s the work? Economies do not generate wealth or growth through graphic design. It is a pitiable non-solution.
The Zapatero administration presided over the end-game of the great Spanish boom. It deserves to be criticised, but it is not alone. Successive governments have perpetuated an aspirational dream for a country that was in the economic dark ages only half a century ago. One mistake, aided by the banks, was to break with a traditional cash-based society and replace it with one based on credit, and very easy and loose credit at that. The country’s richness, as evident from a lofty position in the IMF GDP league table, obscures a reality of overdependence on certain industries and a lack of competitiveness.
There is fortunately some realism coming from the newly elected government, an acceptance that Spain isn’t that rich and that the mechanisms for granting the population the trappings of aspirational wealth were largely built on sand. Within a framework of this new realism, how, though, can Rajoy set about realising his election promises, such as that to reduce unemployment?
I’ll have a look at that in a further article. But for now, and notwithstanding the fact that the Spanish electorate does appear to “get it” where the country’s parlous position is concerned, I’ll leave you with a piece of history. In 1933, Benalup was the centre of an anarchist uprising and a police massacre.
Thank God it's not 1933.
The original "Observer" article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/20/spain-benalup-unemployment-euro-crisis
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Benalup is by no means unique, even if it can lay claim to that unwanted unemployment crown. Spain is full of Benalups, and Mallorca shares its problems. To summarise Tremlett's main points, the Benalup belly-up effect was founded on excessive credit and on a glut of construction jobs that paid well and took teenagers out of education.
It won't sit well with the La Caixa bank, known also for its Obra Social good works programmes, that it gets fingered as having triggered a lending war among the banks that flooded into the town in search of mortgage customers, many of them young and having turned their backs on school in the knowledge that they could earn handsome wages in the construction industry.
Construction was the first and most obvious victim of economic crisis, and it took its labour force down with it. In Benalup, those who had left school at sixteen and who had embarked on a side career of avaricious material grab are just part of the almost 50% of Spain's under-25s that are unemployed. This material grab has left Benalup, as Tremlett remarks, "plastered with 'for sale' signs", those of La Caixa's estate-agency arm, which has been forced to repossess.
Much of the construction was centred on the coastal area. The Benalup story, therefore, is a not unfamiliar one of the two heads of construction and tourism that is the economy of much of Spain, Mallorca included. But Benalup, some kilometres inland, doesn't have the luxury of the fallback position of tourism. Without the construction on the coast, it doesn't really have anything.
The dependence on construction and tourism in different parts of Spain is just one factor that has undermined Spain’s economy. Subject to the vagaries of economic cycles, both industries also contribute to a devaluing of the general skills base and of the education system. Easy money can be had, or could, and the state would provide some assistance in the winter for those less inclined to slog around a building site.
The education system is not that great anyway, and in Mallorca it is particularly poor. But through a combination of the system’s inadequacies, a lack of incentive to stay in education and the promise of riches from humping bricks about (now gone), general competitiveness is also undermined.
One solution to the unemployment in Benalup is a state-funded training course, assuming you can get on it. Not that it necessarily opens up subsequent employment opportunities, as the course is for graphic design. In Mallorca, there are any number of young graphic designers. They are two a penny. Many are good, but where’s the work? Economies do not generate wealth or growth through graphic design. It is a pitiable non-solution.
The Zapatero administration presided over the end-game of the great Spanish boom. It deserves to be criticised, but it is not alone. Successive governments have perpetuated an aspirational dream for a country that was in the economic dark ages only half a century ago. One mistake, aided by the banks, was to break with a traditional cash-based society and replace it with one based on credit, and very easy and loose credit at that. The country’s richness, as evident from a lofty position in the IMF GDP league table, obscures a reality of overdependence on certain industries and a lack of competitiveness.
There is fortunately some realism coming from the newly elected government, an acceptance that Spain isn’t that rich and that the mechanisms for granting the population the trappings of aspirational wealth were largely built on sand. Within a framework of this new realism, how, though, can Rajoy set about realising his election promises, such as that to reduce unemployment?
I’ll have a look at that in a further article. But for now, and notwithstanding the fact that the Spanish electorate does appear to “get it” where the country’s parlous position is concerned, I’ll leave you with a piece of history. In 1933, Benalup was the centre of an anarchist uprising and a police massacre.
Thank God it's not 1933.
The original "Observer" article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/20/spain-benalup-unemployment-euro-crisis
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
The Dead Time
There can be no more appropriate fiesta than that of 1 November. The day of the dead, or one of them anyway. It's a surprise fiesta for the unsuspecting Brit, for whom All Saints means a girl group. The Brits pour themselves another cup of black coffee, assuming they can find anywhere open to sell it, and freeze the moment. For, from 1 November, time is frozen. It is suspended. In hibernation. The dead time.
Cemetery slabs and stones are swept and cleaned in advance of the laying of flowers on All Saints. While the homes of the dead are spruced up, the resorts, overnight acquiring their winter status as their own cemeteries, suddenly become inundated with the detritus of the dead time, the entrances to the grand hotel mausolea - their windows shuttered out of respect with whitewash - swept by the fallen leaves of the now fallen season.
Each year the dead time becomes more pronounced, more inevitable and more poignant. It is the dead time of an island and its resorts growing old, its advancing years rendering it incapable of renewal, muddling and confusing it as it tries to remember how it once was before the dead time took hold. It is the infirmity of maturity, the malady of being overcome by the youth of destinations only now enjoying their days in the sun. At the rapidly emptying airport, airliners conduct a fly-past and fly-away, drooping their wings in honour of the dead time.
The frantic scramble for places on the last flights out leaves behind the refugees who shuffle in never-ending and slow-moving queues towards the dole office. Over 100,000 unemployed - before the season has finally come to an end - 18% of the Balearics working population. Higher than last year. Time was, not so long ago, when 80,000 was said to be the psychological barrier. No one seems to take much notice now. The collective psychology has been shattered, its self-esteem in tatters; there is a resignation to fate. For the 40% said to be unable to live on what wages or savings they might have, fate has dealt a heavy blow.
The dead time is not the consequence of crisis. It has crept ever closer over years. It is the consequence of lack of foresight, of a failure to appreciate the shifting sands of the island's vital tourism market as it now gets sand in its shoes in lands far away. It is the consequence of complacency, not just that of politicians or employers but also of the employed, those who have colluded with an unbending acceptance that the dead time will come around each year. It is the consequence of the riches acquired by the owners of the grand hotel mausolea, wringing every last cent out of the summer and then escaping to foreign fields to open lavish palaces - the new Columbuses colonising the Dominican Republic all over again.
Without tourism, Mallorca is an empty shell, one all washed up and left on a beach beaten by the turbulence of autumn waves, tossed by Tramuntana winds that scoop it up with the sand and hurl it onto streets. It is neglected through the dead time by municipalities holding out their begging bowls for a handful of coins that might pay for the cleaning machines.
But the dead time arises because of the antithesis of the alive time, the dream time of summer, of tourism thronging to the beaches, beading bracelets from the shells caressed onto the shores by gently lapping and deep-blue waves. The dream time causes an unreality, it provokes the lyricism of the paradisal isle, the lulling into the illusion of ideality. As the dream time comes to its end, it emits a deceptively malevolent lullaby to send the island to sleep, to enter the dead time of what suddenly turns into a nightmare.
The day of the dead marks the end of summer. It is a fiesta of regret, of passing. And with each year the sense of bereavement, rather than diminishing, grows stronger. The mourning starts on the first of every November, a black armband wrapping itself around the island's psyche. But on the day of the dead this year, not even the dead can be honoured as they once were. The florists expect lower sales. Rather than a wreath or a spray, one single rose and its thorns. And through an accident of the calendar and an accidental prick of the thorn, Mallorca's nervous system in winter is consumed by tetanic spasms, throwing it into its now annual intensive care and desperate for the palliative of spring. But a palliative is not a cure, and so the cycle repeats itself. Each year.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Cemetery slabs and stones are swept and cleaned in advance of the laying of flowers on All Saints. While the homes of the dead are spruced up, the resorts, overnight acquiring their winter status as their own cemeteries, suddenly become inundated with the detritus of the dead time, the entrances to the grand hotel mausolea - their windows shuttered out of respect with whitewash - swept by the fallen leaves of the now fallen season.
Each year the dead time becomes more pronounced, more inevitable and more poignant. It is the dead time of an island and its resorts growing old, its advancing years rendering it incapable of renewal, muddling and confusing it as it tries to remember how it once was before the dead time took hold. It is the infirmity of maturity, the malady of being overcome by the youth of destinations only now enjoying their days in the sun. At the rapidly emptying airport, airliners conduct a fly-past and fly-away, drooping their wings in honour of the dead time.
The frantic scramble for places on the last flights out leaves behind the refugees who shuffle in never-ending and slow-moving queues towards the dole office. Over 100,000 unemployed - before the season has finally come to an end - 18% of the Balearics working population. Higher than last year. Time was, not so long ago, when 80,000 was said to be the psychological barrier. No one seems to take much notice now. The collective psychology has been shattered, its self-esteem in tatters; there is a resignation to fate. For the 40% said to be unable to live on what wages or savings they might have, fate has dealt a heavy blow.
The dead time is not the consequence of crisis. It has crept ever closer over years. It is the consequence of lack of foresight, of a failure to appreciate the shifting sands of the island's vital tourism market as it now gets sand in its shoes in lands far away. It is the consequence of complacency, not just that of politicians or employers but also of the employed, those who have colluded with an unbending acceptance that the dead time will come around each year. It is the consequence of the riches acquired by the owners of the grand hotel mausolea, wringing every last cent out of the summer and then escaping to foreign fields to open lavish palaces - the new Columbuses colonising the Dominican Republic all over again.
Without tourism, Mallorca is an empty shell, one all washed up and left on a beach beaten by the turbulence of autumn waves, tossed by Tramuntana winds that scoop it up with the sand and hurl it onto streets. It is neglected through the dead time by municipalities holding out their begging bowls for a handful of coins that might pay for the cleaning machines.
But the dead time arises because of the antithesis of the alive time, the dream time of summer, of tourism thronging to the beaches, beading bracelets from the shells caressed onto the shores by gently lapping and deep-blue waves. The dream time causes an unreality, it provokes the lyricism of the paradisal isle, the lulling into the illusion of ideality. As the dream time comes to its end, it emits a deceptively malevolent lullaby to send the island to sleep, to enter the dead time of what suddenly turns into a nightmare.
The day of the dead marks the end of summer. It is a fiesta of regret, of passing. And with each year the sense of bereavement, rather than diminishing, grows stronger. The mourning starts on the first of every November, a black armband wrapping itself around the island's psyche. But on the day of the dead this year, not even the dead can be honoured as they once were. The florists expect lower sales. Rather than a wreath or a spray, one single rose and its thorns. And through an accident of the calendar and an accidental prick of the thorn, Mallorca's nervous system in winter is consumed by tetanic spasms, throwing it into its now annual intensive care and desperate for the palliative of spring. But a palliative is not a cure, and so the cycle repeats itself. Each year.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
You Have The Poor Always With You
What does the Spanish region of Extremadura have in common with Ethiopia? (And don't say that both start with an "e".)
The two share a strikingly similar percentage in terms of their respective rates of poverty. The measures are different, as greatly different factors come into play, but the percentage of the population of Extremadura currently in poverty is 38%. In 2005, according to figures released by the CIA, Ethiopia, only six notches above the poorest two countries in the world in terms of per capita income, had a poverty rate of 38.7%.
Don't let us confuse the two figures. Local standards of living mean that the poverty rates are calculated quite differently, but even so, if African poverty is considered a bad thing, which it is, should we not be somewhat alarmed by a level of poverty in Spain that, in relative terms, is equally as bad?
Extremadura, as revealed by new figures from the INE (the Spanish national statistics office), is Spain's poorest region. And the Spanish are getting poorer. Provisional figures for 2011 suggest that there has been an increase of just over one percentage point, to 21.9%, of people in Spain who live below the breadline, defined in terms of a two-child family with an income of less than 15,820 euros a year.
The Balearics sit in the middle of the league table of rich and poor parts of Spain;20.6% of the population in 2010 existed in poverty, almost exactly the same as the national average of 20.7% last year. Taking the CIA's statistics, Spain, to put it bluntly, is the poorest country in western Europe. It is poorer than many countries in eastern Europe, and the Balearics are pretty much bang on the same mark.
National and regional wealth do paint a different picture. The Balearics, by GDP per head of population, is one of the wealthiest parts of Spain, and Spain is rated by the IMF as the twelfth richest nation in the world. Not that this necessarily counts for much when a country can get itself into such a crisis of debt. And there is no getting away from the fact that economic crisis has added to the level of poverty and from the fact that, regardless of GDP figures, there is real hardship in the Balearics and an increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth.
Among the various statistics that inform the INE's report is a measure of "delays in payments related to the main dwelling" (by which is meant ability to meet mortgage or rent payments, among others). On this measure, the Balearics are by far the worst region in Spain, by almost five percentage points more than the next poorest performing region, the Canary Islands.
Such a finding can be interpreted in different ways. It could be that people have overstretched themselves where mortgage commitments are concerned - which has certainly been the case - but it might also suggest that the Balearics, and property values in particular, are too expensive, relative to general earnings capacity.
If this is so, and one is inclined to believe it to be so, then the regional government's decision to unblock projects for more luxury property development and the fact that the luxury real-estate market is relatively buoyant at present (buoyant especially where overseas buyers are concerned) put the situation into sharper relief, and it borders on the obscene.
The national government and the regional government in the Balearics operate, by comparison with other European countries, from a low base when it comes to provisions of a welfare state. But what provisions there are, are due to fall to an even lower base. The Bauzá administration is entirely mute on the subject of welfare, save for its wishes to make cuts. And these cuts have so far been more drastic than in any other part of Spain, and we yet to have revealed the full horrors that await under a national Partido Popular government.
In a few days time, we will witness the physical manifestation of the absurdity that is the local economy. The dole queues will be snaking along streets, miles upon miles of humanity, looking for its annual handout from a government that is in no position to make it. Unemployment, greater levels of poverty, cuts to services, cuts to assistance, while all the time the government abrogates responsibility to the private sector and shows not the slightest interest in any form of welfare policy.
One in five people in the Balearics living in poverty, and rising. Two in five in Extremadura. And this is meant to be a wealthy country.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The two share a strikingly similar percentage in terms of their respective rates of poverty. The measures are different, as greatly different factors come into play, but the percentage of the population of Extremadura currently in poverty is 38%. In 2005, according to figures released by the CIA, Ethiopia, only six notches above the poorest two countries in the world in terms of per capita income, had a poverty rate of 38.7%.
Don't let us confuse the two figures. Local standards of living mean that the poverty rates are calculated quite differently, but even so, if African poverty is considered a bad thing, which it is, should we not be somewhat alarmed by a level of poverty in Spain that, in relative terms, is equally as bad?
Extremadura, as revealed by new figures from the INE (the Spanish national statistics office), is Spain's poorest region. And the Spanish are getting poorer. Provisional figures for 2011 suggest that there has been an increase of just over one percentage point, to 21.9%, of people in Spain who live below the breadline, defined in terms of a two-child family with an income of less than 15,820 euros a year.
The Balearics sit in the middle of the league table of rich and poor parts of Spain;20.6% of the population in 2010 existed in poverty, almost exactly the same as the national average of 20.7% last year. Taking the CIA's statistics, Spain, to put it bluntly, is the poorest country in western Europe. It is poorer than many countries in eastern Europe, and the Balearics are pretty much bang on the same mark.
National and regional wealth do paint a different picture. The Balearics, by GDP per head of population, is one of the wealthiest parts of Spain, and Spain is rated by the IMF as the twelfth richest nation in the world. Not that this necessarily counts for much when a country can get itself into such a crisis of debt. And there is no getting away from the fact that economic crisis has added to the level of poverty and from the fact that, regardless of GDP figures, there is real hardship in the Balearics and an increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth.
Among the various statistics that inform the INE's report is a measure of "delays in payments related to the main dwelling" (by which is meant ability to meet mortgage or rent payments, among others). On this measure, the Balearics are by far the worst region in Spain, by almost five percentage points more than the next poorest performing region, the Canary Islands.
Such a finding can be interpreted in different ways. It could be that people have overstretched themselves where mortgage commitments are concerned - which has certainly been the case - but it might also suggest that the Balearics, and property values in particular, are too expensive, relative to general earnings capacity.
If this is so, and one is inclined to believe it to be so, then the regional government's decision to unblock projects for more luxury property development and the fact that the luxury real-estate market is relatively buoyant at present (buoyant especially where overseas buyers are concerned) put the situation into sharper relief, and it borders on the obscene.
The national government and the regional government in the Balearics operate, by comparison with other European countries, from a low base when it comes to provisions of a welfare state. But what provisions there are, are due to fall to an even lower base. The Bauzá administration is entirely mute on the subject of welfare, save for its wishes to make cuts. And these cuts have so far been more drastic than in any other part of Spain, and we yet to have revealed the full horrors that await under a national Partido Popular government.
In a few days time, we will witness the physical manifestation of the absurdity that is the local economy. The dole queues will be snaking along streets, miles upon miles of humanity, looking for its annual handout from a government that is in no position to make it. Unemployment, greater levels of poverty, cuts to services, cuts to assistance, while all the time the government abrogates responsibility to the private sector and shows not the slightest interest in any form of welfare policy.
One in five people in the Balearics living in poverty, and rising. Two in five in Extremadura. And this is meant to be a wealthy country.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Blind Faith
The Germans go big on Mallorca. Watch German TV and most evenings there will be something about the island, even if it's just the weather forecast. And most evenings there will be an announcer referring to the "paradise island". This comes from the same lexicon of blind faith that gives us all those "beautifuls" and "lovelys" to which I referred the other day. There's nothing wrong with blind faith, except blindness. It's another day for you and me in paradise. Paradise lost, paradise to be regained - some time. Sir, can you help me? Or help others. Those in unparadise.
The economic crisis was always likely to cause some tensions. It's just a question of how tense. The CCOO union puts an estimate on the number of workers unlikely to qualify for benefits this winter - 80,000, more than half of them from the hotel sector. That's getting on for ten per cent of the population of the archipelago, to which can be added a similar percentage on the dole. The union is concerned that there will be a winter of discontent, or one of social conflicts, to use its words.
The crisis has also made even more apparent the deep flaw in Mallorca's economy, that of seasonality. Generally it works, just about, but when the season is shorter and workers do not have employment long enough to qualify for winter payments, the flaw, the fault line grows ever wider. As does the gap between the haves and have-nots. The gap becomes a gorge, a vast canyon. And there is no bottom to the canyon, no cement to fill this great gap of unemployment and societal disconnection, especially as the construction industry is right down in the hole as well.
One can overstate the situation, and the union might well be guilty of exaggeration, but it may well also be right. You can also take into account the fact that citizens of the Balearics have slipped from a prosperity in the '90s to one of being poorer than the Spanish average in terms of disposable income. This may be across the board, but that board is broad. One man's lower spending power on luxury items is another one's breadline.
The truth is that many workers receive not a great deal more than subsistence wages even during the summer. At least the paradise delusion of hot days and nights can divert attention from impoverishment. And the safety net of the state has, until now, been there for the colder days and nights of winter. It won't be for many this winter.
The deep flaw in the economy is mirrored by the deep flaw in island society: the extremes in terms of wealth or not. Few societies are immune from such a gulf, but the compactness of Mallorcan geography makes it more apparent, more inescapable, unless you retain that blindness of blind faith.
The lateness - the 1960s - with which an industrial revolution arrived in Mallorca, at a time of a regime only starting to come to terms with true economics, provided little or no preparation for greater diversity. And that revolution was predicated on an industry far removed from the grit of manufacturing. The Mallorcan economy is something of an unreal economy. Rightly so perhaps. Paradise is a state of unreality. Unparadise, however, is the reality confronting many. And some of the wealth that was and has been accrued has an unreality as well. It was as if it was magicked, the consequence of being there, of luck, and of the benevolence of tour operators and visitors from the first days of mass tourism.
One can overstate the situation, and I hope I am, and that the union is as well. But the ingredients for discontent exist, and I keep in mind the actions of those Sardinians, around the time that the crisis broke, who bombarded luxury yachts with wet sand in disgust at displays of ostentatious wealth (16 August 2008: Careful What You Wish For). There might be more than wet sand this winter in Mallorca. Paradise, anyone?
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Massive Attack with Tracey Thorn, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EvM--7Wxa0. Today's title - who were they, and which groups were they in prior to this one?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The economic crisis was always likely to cause some tensions. It's just a question of how tense. The CCOO union puts an estimate on the number of workers unlikely to qualify for benefits this winter - 80,000, more than half of them from the hotel sector. That's getting on for ten per cent of the population of the archipelago, to which can be added a similar percentage on the dole. The union is concerned that there will be a winter of discontent, or one of social conflicts, to use its words.
The crisis has also made even more apparent the deep flaw in Mallorca's economy, that of seasonality. Generally it works, just about, but when the season is shorter and workers do not have employment long enough to qualify for winter payments, the flaw, the fault line grows ever wider. As does the gap between the haves and have-nots. The gap becomes a gorge, a vast canyon. And there is no bottom to the canyon, no cement to fill this great gap of unemployment and societal disconnection, especially as the construction industry is right down in the hole as well.
One can overstate the situation, and the union might well be guilty of exaggeration, but it may well also be right. You can also take into account the fact that citizens of the Balearics have slipped from a prosperity in the '90s to one of being poorer than the Spanish average in terms of disposable income. This may be across the board, but that board is broad. One man's lower spending power on luxury items is another one's breadline.
The truth is that many workers receive not a great deal more than subsistence wages even during the summer. At least the paradise delusion of hot days and nights can divert attention from impoverishment. And the safety net of the state has, until now, been there for the colder days and nights of winter. It won't be for many this winter.
The deep flaw in the economy is mirrored by the deep flaw in island society: the extremes in terms of wealth or not. Few societies are immune from such a gulf, but the compactness of Mallorcan geography makes it more apparent, more inescapable, unless you retain that blindness of blind faith.
The lateness - the 1960s - with which an industrial revolution arrived in Mallorca, at a time of a regime only starting to come to terms with true economics, provided little or no preparation for greater diversity. And that revolution was predicated on an industry far removed from the grit of manufacturing. The Mallorcan economy is something of an unreal economy. Rightly so perhaps. Paradise is a state of unreality. Unparadise, however, is the reality confronting many. And some of the wealth that was and has been accrued has an unreality as well. It was as if it was magicked, the consequence of being there, of luck, and of the benevolence of tour operators and visitors from the first days of mass tourism.
One can overstate the situation, and I hope I am, and that the union is as well. But the ingredients for discontent exist, and I keep in mind the actions of those Sardinians, around the time that the crisis broke, who bombarded luxury yachts with wet sand in disgust at displays of ostentatious wealth (16 August 2008: Careful What You Wish For). There might be more than wet sand this winter in Mallorca. Paradise, anyone?
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Massive Attack with Tracey Thorn, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EvM--7Wxa0. Today's title - who were they, and which groups were they in prior to this one?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Friday, November 07, 2008
Norwegian Wood
The unemployment figures around the various municipalities in Mallorca make for pretty grim reading. The highest increase for October, compared with the same month last year, has been in Estellencs which has registered an increase of 160%. All things are relative of course, and Estellencs is hardly that big a place, but areas that are strong tourism centres have seen rather better figures, if, that is, one can call increases of 47% (Pollensa) and 54% (Alcúdia) as being much better. Nearby Sa Pobla has seen unemployment rise by over 75%, yet the small municipality of Búger has witnessed only a 3 per cent increase (33 as opposed to 32 last year being out of work).
Looking again at the queues in Puerto Alcúdia yesterday, one wonders what these figures will look like for November. It is not a great situation.
Still, there is always something to look forward to that will make everyone's lives that much brighter. And what could be better in achieving this than a bit of Nordic walking. Well, quite a lot probably, but in Alcúdia fans of this curious past-time will now be able to enjoy three different routes, much of them in woodland and forest - in Barcares, La Victoria and the other around Coll Baix. For those who may not yet be up to speed, or down to slowness, with Nordic walking, it is walking with poles in the style of Nordic skiing but without skis and without snow. The real benefit from Nordic walking lies with its being tackled as an aerobic sport, i.e. putting your back into it and making an effort, otherwise it is just, well, walking with a couple of sticks. And walking with a couple of wooden sticks is how one sees it often being practised. Germans of advanced years are regularly to be heard on the streets near me, click-clacking along at a slow speed of Nordic knots. This really is not how to do it. You may as well just walk and forget the sticks. That a way, you wouldn't look quite so ridiculous. And this is one of the problems with Nordic walking; it looks daft. Anything that takes walking and turns it into a sport makes the otherwise straightforward act of one foot in front of another an object of derision - like the walks of Olympic athletics infamy, buttocks raised by the left and then by the right and feet often not staying in contact with the ground. Why not just run?
Anyway, I guess the hope is that these Nordic routes will attract great hordes of stick-bearing tourists. Alcúdia's mayor, Miquel Ferrer (as reported by "The Diario") has entered into a collaboration with the island's tourist authorities for promoting the town as a centre of Nordic walking. There is something to be said for having mates in slightly higher places. Ferrer is second-in-command in the Unió Mallorquina party to Miquel Nadal. And who is head of tourism? Yes, Miquel Nadal. To be fair, this is the culmination of a drive to make Alcúdia a place of Nordic walking wonder - it was, for example, included in the past summer's programme of sporting events in the town - so the fact that Nadal has got the gig as tourism minister is really only a coincidence. There is also the hiking route that links Coll Baix and La Victoria, of which the Nordic routes may be a part or the same; the hiking route referred to back on 7 July (Walking Back To Happiness).
But assuming that this initiative does result in some additional form of tourism, how wide might the benefits be? There is something of the cycling tourism about all this; the cycling tourism that many criticise for not helping local bars and restaurants. This is a fallacy. Cycling tourism can work very well to the advantage of bars and restaurants if they forge strong relationships with the cyclists and their organisers, as is the case with Restaurant Boy in Playa de Muro. The Nordic walkers though will be hacking around parts of Alcúdia where there is barely a watering-hole or hostelry to be found. Red Rum in Barcares or the Mirador in La Victoria may be beneficiaries but that would be about your lot.
Mallorca is not that big an island, and it can seem surprising that it can give rise to very localised weather events. During Tuesday night and into Wednesday there was an intense storm that affected Palma in particular. This is not the first time in the past month or so that Palma seems to have got it in the neck while other parts of the island have not. In the north there was nothing of this storm. And when Palma had an earlier heavy dose, nearby places like Magaluf were calm. There are, of course, all-island weather bouts, and one's impression has tended to be that the north gets the worst of the weather. But this has certainly not been the case just recently. The one part of the island that does seem to escape the worst is the east. The storm of Tuesday night did hit it, but whereas Palma was inundated with some 50 litres of rain, Porto Colom had only seven. It may be a wrong impression, but if you want to avoid the weather at its worst, then head east.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Ian Dury And The Blockheads. No live-performance youtube, but there is one with Phil Jupitus taking the Dury role (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ylvcU3iuUY). Today's title - no clues needed.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Looking again at the queues in Puerto Alcúdia yesterday, one wonders what these figures will look like for November. It is not a great situation.
Still, there is always something to look forward to that will make everyone's lives that much brighter. And what could be better in achieving this than a bit of Nordic walking. Well, quite a lot probably, but in Alcúdia fans of this curious past-time will now be able to enjoy three different routes, much of them in woodland and forest - in Barcares, La Victoria and the other around Coll Baix. For those who may not yet be up to speed, or down to slowness, with Nordic walking, it is walking with poles in the style of Nordic skiing but without skis and without snow. The real benefit from Nordic walking lies with its being tackled as an aerobic sport, i.e. putting your back into it and making an effort, otherwise it is just, well, walking with a couple of sticks. And walking with a couple of wooden sticks is how one sees it often being practised. Germans of advanced years are regularly to be heard on the streets near me, click-clacking along at a slow speed of Nordic knots. This really is not how to do it. You may as well just walk and forget the sticks. That a way, you wouldn't look quite so ridiculous. And this is one of the problems with Nordic walking; it looks daft. Anything that takes walking and turns it into a sport makes the otherwise straightforward act of one foot in front of another an object of derision - like the walks of Olympic athletics infamy, buttocks raised by the left and then by the right and feet often not staying in contact with the ground. Why not just run?
Anyway, I guess the hope is that these Nordic routes will attract great hordes of stick-bearing tourists. Alcúdia's mayor, Miquel Ferrer (as reported by "The Diario") has entered into a collaboration with the island's tourist authorities for promoting the town as a centre of Nordic walking. There is something to be said for having mates in slightly higher places. Ferrer is second-in-command in the Unió Mallorquina party to Miquel Nadal. And who is head of tourism? Yes, Miquel Nadal. To be fair, this is the culmination of a drive to make Alcúdia a place of Nordic walking wonder - it was, for example, included in the past summer's programme of sporting events in the town - so the fact that Nadal has got the gig as tourism minister is really only a coincidence. There is also the hiking route that links Coll Baix and La Victoria, of which the Nordic routes may be a part or the same; the hiking route referred to back on 7 July (Walking Back To Happiness).
But assuming that this initiative does result in some additional form of tourism, how wide might the benefits be? There is something of the cycling tourism about all this; the cycling tourism that many criticise for not helping local bars and restaurants. This is a fallacy. Cycling tourism can work very well to the advantage of bars and restaurants if they forge strong relationships with the cyclists and their organisers, as is the case with Restaurant Boy in Playa de Muro. The Nordic walkers though will be hacking around parts of Alcúdia where there is barely a watering-hole or hostelry to be found. Red Rum in Barcares or the Mirador in La Victoria may be beneficiaries but that would be about your lot.
Mallorca is not that big an island, and it can seem surprising that it can give rise to very localised weather events. During Tuesday night and into Wednesday there was an intense storm that affected Palma in particular. This is not the first time in the past month or so that Palma seems to have got it in the neck while other parts of the island have not. In the north there was nothing of this storm. And when Palma had an earlier heavy dose, nearby places like Magaluf were calm. There are, of course, all-island weather bouts, and one's impression has tended to be that the north gets the worst of the weather. But this has certainly not been the case just recently. The one part of the island that does seem to escape the worst is the east. The storm of Tuesday night did hit it, but whereas Palma was inundated with some 50 litres of rain, Porto Colom had only seven. It may be a wrong impression, but if you want to avoid the weather at its worst, then head east.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Ian Dury And The Blockheads. No live-performance youtube, but there is one with Phil Jupitus taking the Dury role (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ylvcU3iuUY). Today's title - no clues needed.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Storm In A Teacup
Tea. Jeremy Clarkson denounced the drinking of tea in "The Sunday Times" this week. Among the ills that tea has caused, in Clarkson's world, is the virtual collapse of the British banking system. Coffee is the beverage required by sound banking systems - just look at the Spanish.
Tea, you see, is not the first thing that comes to the Spanish mind when about to embark on a strenuous couple of hours of lolling around in a café nursing but one drink. Of course it isn't. The café is the same word as café (coffee). Why would you drink tea in an establishment that is named after coffee? This probably explains the tea that does get served. Because the Spanish don't get it where tea is concerned, they are extremely reluctant to provide it. They may well say that it is tea, but don't be fooled. Whatever that sachet with a piece of string contains, you can be confident that it isn't actually tea. The same applies to those places that bring along a cafetiere of tea. Why, one asks, would you put tea into something that is intended for coffee? But be that as it may. As with the sachet, you need to wait a good half an hour for whatever it is to "brew" and then press the plunger, by which time it is stone cold and when it is poured into milk becomes the colour of sand. Maybe that's it. Tea is sand.
Oddly enough though, if one gets local tea from a supermarket, it does actually taste and look like tea without also tasting or looking as though it has been mixed with engine oil as can be the case with hardcore British tea. Indeed something like the Eroski own-brand "té" is vastly preferable to a Tetley's tea-bag. Put that anywhere near water and the instant result is as if the whole plantation, earth included, is being forced down your throat. There are some who like their tea strong, northerners usually, but this can only be so that they want their jaws glued together with the industrial quantities of tannin that "flood out" of a Tetley's. But actually finding tea in its unadulterated state is becoming increasingly difficult in the supermarkets. Go to the admittedly not vast tea sections and there are pretend teas that require a dictionary to be ready to hand in order to translate whatever obscure herb they are made from. Try finding a pack of "té". So long as it isn't actually tea, the Spanish are quite happy to drink it.
The Spanish love-in with coffee is hard to explain insofar as one would not expect many to still be alive once they've had one. I'm sure it's the case that there is a rule that all bars and cafés must have a defibrillator on the premises as well as a hotline to a team of paramedics. I now always ask for a coffee "flojo" (weak) on the basis that it won't be weak but may not be so strong that someone will have to rifle through my wallet and look for my health card. I also often append the adjective "caliente" (hot) to the milk noun if it is café con leche I'm ordering. I have always believed that hot drinks should be just that - hot. If I wanted a cold drink, I'd order a water or a beer or the half-hour-to-vaguely-brew tea. But cold and coffee go together here; there is the rather odd phenomenon of having an expresso and a glass of ice, and pouring the former into the latter. I tried it once, and it is truly pointless. It is beyond the bounds of taste (good taste, that is) if then sugar is chucked in. Iced water with sugar. How can anyone justify that?
Of course there isn't any discussion when it comes to sugar. It just arrives, some of it in elaborate packaging that can fool you into believing they've been kind enough to give you a freebie of a triangle of Toblerone. Except it wouldn't be free and nor is the sugar, even if, as is most likely, they've not actually paid for it. No, the cost of the coffee is priced according to the designer wedge-shaped sugar packet. I never have sugar, and yet there it always is. Do they offer a discount for returning the sugar? Do they heck. That's why they don't get a tip.
GALES AND BENEFIT SEEKING
More gales hit during Sunday; the second lot in a few days. The worst of the weather affected the south, but the winds were still powerful in the north, though with only intermittent rain. Someone here had a wall go over. The strength of the gusts was at times quite frightening; God knows how bad it was in the south. Then yesterday it started fine, which, for the massive dole queue at the unemployment office in Puerto Alcúdia, must have been good news, until that is, it started to rain. All those people having to stand and wait in the elements; there is something not quite right with this. I thought it was just foreigners who were treated with disrespect by having to queue under a boiling sun or in the rain at the foreign affairs building in Palma. Not so; everyone is treated similarly. There has got to be a better way.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Great stuff - Underworld, "Born Slippy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlLWFa1b1Bc). Today's title - various songs with this title, but what about the one by a "lucky" Brummie pop group of the '60s and '70s?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tea, you see, is not the first thing that comes to the Spanish mind when about to embark on a strenuous couple of hours of lolling around in a café nursing but one drink. Of course it isn't. The café is the same word as café (coffee). Why would you drink tea in an establishment that is named after coffee? This probably explains the tea that does get served. Because the Spanish don't get it where tea is concerned, they are extremely reluctant to provide it. They may well say that it is tea, but don't be fooled. Whatever that sachet with a piece of string contains, you can be confident that it isn't actually tea. The same applies to those places that bring along a cafetiere of tea. Why, one asks, would you put tea into something that is intended for coffee? But be that as it may. As with the sachet, you need to wait a good half an hour for whatever it is to "brew" and then press the plunger, by which time it is stone cold and when it is poured into milk becomes the colour of sand. Maybe that's it. Tea is sand.
Oddly enough though, if one gets local tea from a supermarket, it does actually taste and look like tea without also tasting or looking as though it has been mixed with engine oil as can be the case with hardcore British tea. Indeed something like the Eroski own-brand "té" is vastly preferable to a Tetley's tea-bag. Put that anywhere near water and the instant result is as if the whole plantation, earth included, is being forced down your throat. There are some who like their tea strong, northerners usually, but this can only be so that they want their jaws glued together with the industrial quantities of tannin that "flood out" of a Tetley's. But actually finding tea in its unadulterated state is becoming increasingly difficult in the supermarkets. Go to the admittedly not vast tea sections and there are pretend teas that require a dictionary to be ready to hand in order to translate whatever obscure herb they are made from. Try finding a pack of "té". So long as it isn't actually tea, the Spanish are quite happy to drink it.
The Spanish love-in with coffee is hard to explain insofar as one would not expect many to still be alive once they've had one. I'm sure it's the case that there is a rule that all bars and cafés must have a defibrillator on the premises as well as a hotline to a team of paramedics. I now always ask for a coffee "flojo" (weak) on the basis that it won't be weak but may not be so strong that someone will have to rifle through my wallet and look for my health card. I also often append the adjective "caliente" (hot) to the milk noun if it is café con leche I'm ordering. I have always believed that hot drinks should be just that - hot. If I wanted a cold drink, I'd order a water or a beer or the half-hour-to-vaguely-brew tea. But cold and coffee go together here; there is the rather odd phenomenon of having an expresso and a glass of ice, and pouring the former into the latter. I tried it once, and it is truly pointless. It is beyond the bounds of taste (good taste, that is) if then sugar is chucked in. Iced water with sugar. How can anyone justify that?
Of course there isn't any discussion when it comes to sugar. It just arrives, some of it in elaborate packaging that can fool you into believing they've been kind enough to give you a freebie of a triangle of Toblerone. Except it wouldn't be free and nor is the sugar, even if, as is most likely, they've not actually paid for it. No, the cost of the coffee is priced according to the designer wedge-shaped sugar packet. I never have sugar, and yet there it always is. Do they offer a discount for returning the sugar? Do they heck. That's why they don't get a tip.
GALES AND BENEFIT SEEKING
More gales hit during Sunday; the second lot in a few days. The worst of the weather affected the south, but the winds were still powerful in the north, though with only intermittent rain. Someone here had a wall go over. The strength of the gusts was at times quite frightening; God knows how bad it was in the south. Then yesterday it started fine, which, for the massive dole queue at the unemployment office in Puerto Alcúdia, must have been good news, until that is, it started to rain. All those people having to stand and wait in the elements; there is something not quite right with this. I thought it was just foreigners who were treated with disrespect by having to queue under a boiling sun or in the rain at the foreign affairs building in Palma. Not so; everyone is treated similarly. There has got to be a better way.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Great stuff - Underworld, "Born Slippy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlLWFa1b1Bc). Today's title - various songs with this title, but what about the one by a "lucky" Brummie pop group of the '60s and '70s?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The Percentage You're Paying Is Too High Priced
120 per cent. Read that carefully. It really does say one hundred and twenty per cent. What does it denote? The increase in unemployment in the Balearics in the last twelve months. And there isn't even - yet - a technical recession. The whole of Spain may be suffering, but not on the scale of the Balearics. The increase dwarfs the second highest, that of 79% in Murcia. The anticipated number out of work during the coming winter has had to be revised upwards; it is likely to exceed 100,000. What is the actual working population in the Balearics? It's around the 550,000 mark. Almost a fifth will not be working this winter. The most depressing aspect of the 120%, however, is that it has been registered in the third quarter of the year, when, theoretically, employment should be at its highest. There were over 55,000 unemployed during the third quarter. Last year, there were 25,000 - that's the 120%.
The absurd suggestion, made some weeks ago, that tourism (in winter!) would help to offset the job losses in construction makes one wonder about the sanity of some local politicians. At least others are saying that now would not be a good time to be causing political instability by calling elections in response to the latest round of scandals. There is some sanity then. At such economic times as these, the last thing that is needed is an election. The question is though, how do the politicians dig the Balearics out of its unemployment hole? Or perhaps the question should be - can they?
One answer lies in heavy doses of public spending, for which, almost certainly, one should read construction. The Balearic Government has already committed funds to firms that have faced indebtedness as a result of the construction collapse. They may have helped them survive, short term, but where is the pipeline of projects that is going to provide them with business? Take just one example - the museum redevelopment of Alcúdia's old power station. The project first came to the table in May last year. They have yet to work out how exactly it is to be financed.
Throwing money at infrastructure projects is one thing, but not everyone is capable of construction work, even were there the jobs to go around. White-collar public service jobs might also be a solution, but these would probably simply only add to a top-heavy bureaucracy; the reverse - fewer jobs - is the requirement in some instances. The town halls are all strapped for cash; they would need to go begging to the government and ultimately to Madrid for the capital to engage in more local works. There again, public spending, and therefore public borrowing, is not necessarily the ideal approach, especially if it leads to projects that might otherwise be financed under more benign, later economic circumstances, and what would be the time-scales of such projects. There is something to be said, instead, for tax cuts and for reductions in onerous social-security levies. The latter is highly unlikely, especially at present, but the size of contributions is a distinct obstacle to employment creation.
Maybe there is something in Keynes' notion of employing the unemployed to dig holes which they then fill in. To have witnessed some of the road and street works in Puerto Pollensa these past few winters, one would think this has already been the policy. But how does a local authority like Pollensa, with its budget shortfall of approaching a million euros, get to fund meaningful projects? And indeed what would they be? Given the hash the town hall makes of certain things, one couldn't be confident of them getting them right in any event. Maybe it wouldn't matter though: dig holes, and then fill them in.
The unemployment situation is being faced up to by Mallorca's bodies for combatting racism. There is a recognition that foreigners could be the target for social discontent. More than half the number of foreigners in the Balearics come from outside the European Union, but even some from within face discrimination of different forms. There is to be a campaign against racist attitudes, one that, in the words of the councillor for immigration, emphasises that "an intolerant society is a society with fear". It is a campaign that might well be needed.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Four Seasons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QuZQylrdfA). Today's title - from the title track of an album by a British band of the late '60s and early '70s: one that was more appreciated in the US. Think lots of vehicles.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
The absurd suggestion, made some weeks ago, that tourism (in winter!) would help to offset the job losses in construction makes one wonder about the sanity of some local politicians. At least others are saying that now would not be a good time to be causing political instability by calling elections in response to the latest round of scandals. There is some sanity then. At such economic times as these, the last thing that is needed is an election. The question is though, how do the politicians dig the Balearics out of its unemployment hole? Or perhaps the question should be - can they?
One answer lies in heavy doses of public spending, for which, almost certainly, one should read construction. The Balearic Government has already committed funds to firms that have faced indebtedness as a result of the construction collapse. They may have helped them survive, short term, but where is the pipeline of projects that is going to provide them with business? Take just one example - the museum redevelopment of Alcúdia's old power station. The project first came to the table in May last year. They have yet to work out how exactly it is to be financed.
Throwing money at infrastructure projects is one thing, but not everyone is capable of construction work, even were there the jobs to go around. White-collar public service jobs might also be a solution, but these would probably simply only add to a top-heavy bureaucracy; the reverse - fewer jobs - is the requirement in some instances. The town halls are all strapped for cash; they would need to go begging to the government and ultimately to Madrid for the capital to engage in more local works. There again, public spending, and therefore public borrowing, is not necessarily the ideal approach, especially if it leads to projects that might otherwise be financed under more benign, later economic circumstances, and what would be the time-scales of such projects. There is something to be said, instead, for tax cuts and for reductions in onerous social-security levies. The latter is highly unlikely, especially at present, but the size of contributions is a distinct obstacle to employment creation.
Maybe there is something in Keynes' notion of employing the unemployed to dig holes which they then fill in. To have witnessed some of the road and street works in Puerto Pollensa these past few winters, one would think this has already been the policy. But how does a local authority like Pollensa, with its budget shortfall of approaching a million euros, get to fund meaningful projects? And indeed what would they be? Given the hash the town hall makes of certain things, one couldn't be confident of them getting them right in any event. Maybe it wouldn't matter though: dig holes, and then fill them in.
The unemployment situation is being faced up to by Mallorca's bodies for combatting racism. There is a recognition that foreigners could be the target for social discontent. More than half the number of foreigners in the Balearics come from outside the European Union, but even some from within face discrimination of different forms. There is to be a campaign against racist attitudes, one that, in the words of the councillor for immigration, emphasises that "an intolerant society is a society with fear". It is a campaign that might well be needed.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Four Seasons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QuZQylrdfA). Today's title - from the title track of an album by a British band of the late '60s and early '70s: one that was more appreciated in the US. Think lots of vehicles.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Think I'll Buy Me A Football Team
August. High season. A time for work and for jobs. You would think that, but it has not been so. The Balearics have witnessed an increase in unemployment in the hotel sector of 28% during August. It is not the only sector affected.
Twenty-eight per cent. Whatever other statistics may get thrown around about occupancy and spend, this figure is revealing and alarming. There is nothing to take up the slack. The construction industry in the doldrums cannot do it, so where do people turn to? The dole queues are the only answer, and yet many do not qualify for benefit, only for special help. Winter approaches, and the scene is one of unremitting bleakness until the 2009 season. God knows what that will bring. A while back, someone allegedly in the know reckoned that the tourism sector, for which read mainly the hotels, would help to alleviate the employment crisis in construction during the coming winter. It was rubbish then, and it still is.
The only brightness comes in the form of what is anticipated to be a good September. Partly, this may be the consequence of dreadful August weather in the UK and a load of last-minuting. But it will be hotel occupancy on the back of heavy discounts. Cut the prices and there is less money sloshing around for employment. There is some hope for the winter in the form of an initiative between the Tourism Ministry and the European Commission, which will see - supposedly - a hundred thousand tourists coming to the Balearics in the low season from January. Quite what this initiative is I am unclear. Perhaps this was that person in the know had in mind. Whatever it is, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Meantime, in the property sector there has been a fall in house prices in the Balearics of some 7% over the summer. Notwithstanding the difficulties of getting accurate actual house-price values, as I mentioned a few days ago, this decline, while indicative of the general "crisis", is not unwelcome in a market that had overheated through excessively high prices. A question is how much further the price fall will go. A reasonable guess would be that there is still a fair bit more to come. So even with prices in general coming down, now is still not necessarily a good time to be buying, even, that is, if a mortgage could be secured.
AND SO TO FOOTBALL ...
Newcastle United, in the guise of Freddy Shepherd, had a temporary Mallorcan dimension when the club's former chairman was in line to take over Real Mallorca. The club is in the news yet again for different reasons. And what, you may ask, does the Keegan fiasco have to do with Real? In two words - Mike Ashley.
Ashley, on becoming Newcastle's boss, adopted the persona of the fan, going into the stands, wearing the shirt, drinking the beer. He is reviled. Paul Davidson, who is on the point of completing the due-diligence process prior to his acquisition of Real, has said, more or less, that he will be on the terraces and will be a fan.
Ashley is a successful businessman, so is Davidson. The latter has said that he would have nothing to do with the football side of affairs. Ashley has ended up having a great deal to do with the football side of affairs. Businessmen do not invest in anything, let alone football clubs, without exercising control. In Ashley's case, the whole Newcastle experience is turning into a nightmare.
Davidson says that the Mallorca deal will assist in the promotion of the business that has made him wealthy - piping. I don't think I'm alone in wondering quite how. The "Diario" interviewed him the other day and put that very question. It's still not really clear.
I wish Mr Davidson only success, but there is much about the acquisition that raises worries. Professing to be a fan is one thing; being a fan is another. Being a fan is in the blood. Ask a Newcastle supporter. The notion also that somehow Brit expats will suddenly be magicked into being Mallorca supporters and help to fill the ground is spurious. Those expats have their clubs, the ones they watch on Sky or in bars. It's in the blood. And what of the local Real fans? Foreign ownership of a football club in an island where the attitude is every bit as parochial as the Geordie's? Real had a bad first result in La Liga; the club has lost some key players. Last season's seventh may have been the occasional flash in the pan that Real is capable of. I wish Mr Davidson well, but I hope he's observing what's been happening with Mike Ashley.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Average White Band (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBWQZ6tvT-E). Today's title - a line from a song from one of the most successful albums of all time.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Twenty-eight per cent. Whatever other statistics may get thrown around about occupancy and spend, this figure is revealing and alarming. There is nothing to take up the slack. The construction industry in the doldrums cannot do it, so where do people turn to? The dole queues are the only answer, and yet many do not qualify for benefit, only for special help. Winter approaches, and the scene is one of unremitting bleakness until the 2009 season. God knows what that will bring. A while back, someone allegedly in the know reckoned that the tourism sector, for which read mainly the hotels, would help to alleviate the employment crisis in construction during the coming winter. It was rubbish then, and it still is.
The only brightness comes in the form of what is anticipated to be a good September. Partly, this may be the consequence of dreadful August weather in the UK and a load of last-minuting. But it will be hotel occupancy on the back of heavy discounts. Cut the prices and there is less money sloshing around for employment. There is some hope for the winter in the form of an initiative between the Tourism Ministry and the European Commission, which will see - supposedly - a hundred thousand tourists coming to the Balearics in the low season from January. Quite what this initiative is I am unclear. Perhaps this was that person in the know had in mind. Whatever it is, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Meantime, in the property sector there has been a fall in house prices in the Balearics of some 7% over the summer. Notwithstanding the difficulties of getting accurate actual house-price values, as I mentioned a few days ago, this decline, while indicative of the general "crisis", is not unwelcome in a market that had overheated through excessively high prices. A question is how much further the price fall will go. A reasonable guess would be that there is still a fair bit more to come. So even with prices in general coming down, now is still not necessarily a good time to be buying, even, that is, if a mortgage could be secured.
AND SO TO FOOTBALL ...
Newcastle United, in the guise of Freddy Shepherd, had a temporary Mallorcan dimension when the club's former chairman was in line to take over Real Mallorca. The club is in the news yet again for different reasons. And what, you may ask, does the Keegan fiasco have to do with Real? In two words - Mike Ashley.
Ashley, on becoming Newcastle's boss, adopted the persona of the fan, going into the stands, wearing the shirt, drinking the beer. He is reviled. Paul Davidson, who is on the point of completing the due-diligence process prior to his acquisition of Real, has said, more or less, that he will be on the terraces and will be a fan.
Ashley is a successful businessman, so is Davidson. The latter has said that he would have nothing to do with the football side of affairs. Ashley has ended up having a great deal to do with the football side of affairs. Businessmen do not invest in anything, let alone football clubs, without exercising control. In Ashley's case, the whole Newcastle experience is turning into a nightmare.
Davidson says that the Mallorca deal will assist in the promotion of the business that has made him wealthy - piping. I don't think I'm alone in wondering quite how. The "Diario" interviewed him the other day and put that very question. It's still not really clear.
I wish Mr Davidson only success, but there is much about the acquisition that raises worries. Professing to be a fan is one thing; being a fan is another. Being a fan is in the blood. Ask a Newcastle supporter. The notion also that somehow Brit expats will suddenly be magicked into being Mallorca supporters and help to fill the ground is spurious. Those expats have their clubs, the ones they watch on Sky or in bars. It's in the blood. And what of the local Real fans? Foreign ownership of a football club in an island where the attitude is every bit as parochial as the Geordie's? Real had a bad first result in La Liga; the club has lost some key players. Last season's seventh may have been the occasional flash in the pan that Real is capable of. I wish Mr Davidson well, but I hope he's observing what's been happening with Mike Ashley.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Average White Band (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBWQZ6tvT-E). Today's title - a line from a song from one of the most successful albums of all time.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Sometimes In Winter
Right now you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is not winter here. Of course, it isn’t; it’s autumn. But as I’ve said before, come the end of October, it’s winter where the tourist seasons are concerned. There again - clear blue skies, warm sun. This can’t be winter. The virtual absence of tourists confirms that it is, as does the activity around the unemployment offices. Queues of people. At least they make for a certain life about the place.
These queues. All these people going to claim their “paro”. It looks kind of humbling, but it’s not. And it is all sorts of people. There is no stigma. Indeed quite the contrary. The paro is almost like work. Do your months in summer and then cut along for the winter months of government benefit. It’s routine, it’s normal, it’s part of the work pattern. There is almost a professionalism to getting the paro. You see folk with nicely prepared files and document holders as though they were going to make some sort of marketing presentation.
What is there to do though? Once the season ends, it takes a few days to adjust to the sheer nothingness. But this isn’t actually the case. Over the next few days and weeks in November are the Pollensa, Muro and Sa Pobla fairs. There is the series of “Hivern a Mallorca” (winter in Mallorca) events - guided tours of the likes of the Roman town, to the beaches of Barcares and to mountains; concerts and theatre. In December there are the fiestas in the first week and then Christmas and new year. January has Three Kings and Sant Antoni, and come February things are starting to get in gear a bit. Winter - not so long. (Note: I have started to enter Hivern a Mallorca events on the WHAT’S ON BLOG again.)
Just further to yesterday. Why are they wanting to relocate the power station? What does this have to do with the coastline? The answer is I don’t know. What I do know is if you put it anywhere else and if it relies on coal as it currently does, you will continue to get the environmental damage from the filthy trucks that move the coal around. And what’s with this more than five-square-metres business? How do they figure that out? What are they going to do - mark out lots on the beach of a sufficient area, and when they get filled up turn people away? So much for access to all that public area.
QUIZ
Yesterday - Dido. Today’s title? The one I’m after is from which American horns-based jazz-rock act of yonks ago.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
These queues. All these people going to claim their “paro”. It looks kind of humbling, but it’s not. And it is all sorts of people. There is no stigma. Indeed quite the contrary. The paro is almost like work. Do your months in summer and then cut along for the winter months of government benefit. It’s routine, it’s normal, it’s part of the work pattern. There is almost a professionalism to getting the paro. You see folk with nicely prepared files and document holders as though they were going to make some sort of marketing presentation.
What is there to do though? Once the season ends, it takes a few days to adjust to the sheer nothingness. But this isn’t actually the case. Over the next few days and weeks in November are the Pollensa, Muro and Sa Pobla fairs. There is the series of “Hivern a Mallorca” (winter in Mallorca) events - guided tours of the likes of the Roman town, to the beaches of Barcares and to mountains; concerts and theatre. In December there are the fiestas in the first week and then Christmas and new year. January has Three Kings and Sant Antoni, and come February things are starting to get in gear a bit. Winter - not so long. (Note: I have started to enter Hivern a Mallorca events on the WHAT’S ON BLOG again.)
Just further to yesterday. Why are they wanting to relocate the power station? What does this have to do with the coastline? The answer is I don’t know. What I do know is if you put it anywhere else and if it relies on coal as it currently does, you will continue to get the environmental damage from the filthy trucks that move the coal around. And what’s with this more than five-square-metres business? How do they figure that out? What are they going to do - mark out lots on the beach of a sufficient area, and when they get filled up turn people away? So much for access to all that public area.
QUIZ
Yesterday - Dido. Today’s title? The one I’m after is from which American horns-based jazz-rock act of yonks ago.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Thursday, September 06, 2007
I Been Laid Off From Work
August unemployment levels in Mallorca were the highest for more than ten years. You might think with all that seasonal work that summer would be a time of high employment. Yes and no. The current set of unemployment figures are related not to seasonal work but to the ending of various construction projects. It isn’t necessarily doom and gloom as there are plenty of potential projects in the pipeline; indeed planned investment in public works, as set out in official bulletins, is up by nearly 60%, while the private sector, including hotel modernisation, is knocking out good figures as well
But the rise in unemployment highlights an underlying weakness of the Mallorcan economy. The non-residential construction sector has buoyed both the local and the national economy for the past decade or so. European money and advantageous interest rates have assisted the modernisation of infrastructure - roads, hospitals, schools etc. - that has transformed the island and much of the mainland from what was little more than Third World status at the start of the 1990s. So construction has been both necessary and vital in creating the economic boom of the past few years.
There are though clouds on this economic horizon, notably the interest-rate situation, turmoil in the credit markets and the potential for bust in the economy as a whole. Though planned investment in public work is high, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it will be implemented. Both government and the lenders (the banks) are facing a squeeze. “ ‘Spain's economic growth will slow down next year as turmoil in credit markets undermines investor confidence and stokes uncertainty’, Pedro Solbes, finance minister, said yesterday.”
Though the Zapatero government has sought to tighten public spending, politicians of all hues, at national and local levels, have generally adopted a spend ideology which, though it has created many benefits, has neglected structural deficiencies within the national and local economies and the business sector as a whole. In the Balearics, the level of investment in research and development is the lowest of any part of Spain; productivity has fallen every year since 2000 (with the exception of 2003); and training and development is lacking. These are not problems confined to the Balearics. " ‘Spain has not tackled a fundamental problem, its declining productivity,’ says Jordi Canals, dean of the IESE business school in Barcelona. ‘We are stuck in the middle, a high-wage economy with no ability to innovate.’ “
Taken as a set of competitiveness indicators, these leave much to be desired. Were there to be a drive to attract inward investment (apart from the sideshow of the residential real-estate sector), such lack of competitiveness would be a serious obstacle. While the average salary in the Balearics is a little above 18,200 euros net, the additional social costs (social security is typically around one-third of salary) are also a deterrent to such an investment. The question arises though, investment in what?
Take away construction and tourism and there is not a lot left. Sure, there are plenty of support industries and others, but they are highly dependent upon activity in these prime sectors. Even the agriculture industry faces its own problems with respect to cheap imports. While poor harvests are hard to prevent, technological investment and increased productivity can help to create the circumstances for greater competitiveness. It is not as though all these imports come from cheap sources. The almond market faces competition from, of all places, California.
A downturn in any one of these sectors is harmful. Were there to be simultaneous downturns in each sector, Mallorca would face difficulties. Add, if you will, climate change to this potentially volatile mix, and there is scope to question the island’s sustainable economic model unless there is diversification. But into what?
(Acknowledgements for some of this: FT.com, Ultima Hora.)
SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
I do, from time to time, look at what is being said on the myriad holiday froums lurking on the internet. I wouldn’t normally lift like this, but I can’t help it. Here is what someone said the other day:
“Why do the British like to go all the way to Mallorca to spend the day drinking in a bar watching reruns of Only Fools and Horses? With their big bellies jutting out and no tops on, it so does not look nice.”
I don’t know the answer to that. All I would say is that I am quite heartened that someone else raises the Fools and Horses thing (10 August: It’s Coming Home, It’s Coming Home ...).
QUIZ
Yesterday was Jimmy Nail. Today’s title - it’s the first line from a song by?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
But the rise in unemployment highlights an underlying weakness of the Mallorcan economy. The non-residential construction sector has buoyed both the local and the national economy for the past decade or so. European money and advantageous interest rates have assisted the modernisation of infrastructure - roads, hospitals, schools etc. - that has transformed the island and much of the mainland from what was little more than Third World status at the start of the 1990s. So construction has been both necessary and vital in creating the economic boom of the past few years.
There are though clouds on this economic horizon, notably the interest-rate situation, turmoil in the credit markets and the potential for bust in the economy as a whole. Though planned investment in public work is high, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it will be implemented. Both government and the lenders (the banks) are facing a squeeze. “ ‘Spain's economic growth will slow down next year as turmoil in credit markets undermines investor confidence and stokes uncertainty’, Pedro Solbes, finance minister, said yesterday.”
Though the Zapatero government has sought to tighten public spending, politicians of all hues, at national and local levels, have generally adopted a spend ideology which, though it has created many benefits, has neglected structural deficiencies within the national and local economies and the business sector as a whole. In the Balearics, the level of investment in research and development is the lowest of any part of Spain; productivity has fallen every year since 2000 (with the exception of 2003); and training and development is lacking. These are not problems confined to the Balearics. " ‘Spain has not tackled a fundamental problem, its declining productivity,’ says Jordi Canals, dean of the IESE business school in Barcelona. ‘We are stuck in the middle, a high-wage economy with no ability to innovate.’ “
Taken as a set of competitiveness indicators, these leave much to be desired. Were there to be a drive to attract inward investment (apart from the sideshow of the residential real-estate sector), such lack of competitiveness would be a serious obstacle. While the average salary in the Balearics is a little above 18,200 euros net, the additional social costs (social security is typically around one-third of salary) are also a deterrent to such an investment. The question arises though, investment in what?
Take away construction and tourism and there is not a lot left. Sure, there are plenty of support industries and others, but they are highly dependent upon activity in these prime sectors. Even the agriculture industry faces its own problems with respect to cheap imports. While poor harvests are hard to prevent, technological investment and increased productivity can help to create the circumstances for greater competitiveness. It is not as though all these imports come from cheap sources. The almond market faces competition from, of all places, California.
A downturn in any one of these sectors is harmful. Were there to be simultaneous downturns in each sector, Mallorca would face difficulties. Add, if you will, climate change to this potentially volatile mix, and there is scope to question the island’s sustainable economic model unless there is diversification. But into what?
(Acknowledgements for some of this: FT.com, Ultima Hora.)
SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT
I do, from time to time, look at what is being said on the myriad holiday froums lurking on the internet. I wouldn’t normally lift like this, but I can’t help it. Here is what someone said the other day:
“Why do the British like to go all the way to Mallorca to spend the day drinking in a bar watching reruns of Only Fools and Horses? With their big bellies jutting out and no tops on, it so does not look nice.”
I don’t know the answer to that. All I would say is that I am quite heartened that someone else raises the Fools and Horses thing (10 August: It’s Coming Home, It’s Coming Home ...).
QUIZ
Yesterday was Jimmy Nail. Today’s title - it’s the first line from a song by?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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