If Ant and Dec were Mallorcan, they wouldn't be waking up the inmates of the camp but would instead be banging on the cell doors of the celebrity residents of Carretera de Sóller sin número, Palma de Mallorca, a rather different type of camp - the Penitentiary Centre of Palma de Mallorca, normal occupancy level, 1280, increasing by the day.
Which of the contestants will be voted out of the jail first? Tricky one. Much will depend on the viewing judges. But as they have been the ones to send them to the prison camp in the first place, they probably won't be in a hurry to let them out again. What we need to know, though, is if the Mallorcan Ant and Dec will be inside the camp, observing former Unió Mallorquina politicians (because most of them are former UM politicians) in their now natural habitat.
And this is because the Mallorcan Ant and Dec have been outside the camp. All over it like so many media ants in order to greet the contestants as they voluntarily but involuntarily arrived to start their incarceration. They had waited for the celebrity politicians to appear, such as Miguel Nadal, a haircut already suitably convict short and sporting a yellow holdall, and had then pounced: "Any words before you get banged up, Miguel?" Not as such.
Ant and Dec had to make a quick helicopter dash to another camp in Ibiza, where a one-time industry, energy and business minister was appearing in a spin-off of the main show in Palma. And his is quite a show, because he's got sixteen years. No one in Palma, not even Maria Antonia Munar, has managed to get that long. Yet.
The bush tucker trials to land the celeb politicos with their various stretches have been many, and the trials before the trials have been, as befits a reality show, bizarre or surreal. There was the one that involved digging up almost a quarter of a million euros that had been stashed inside a Cola Cao container (and one other) in the back garden of one Antonia Ordinas (she's going to be next resident of the camp, due to arrive on Monday). While Antonia held her mutt, members of plod took their spades to the lawn, and so the "caso Scala", just one of many "casos" that have led to trials and finally to the pen, was named. Why Scala? Antonia's partner is an opera singer, a female one. At least the press has generally avoided using the L-word.
The Mallorcan unreal reality show trials and unreal media events of politicians arriving at the jail under their own steam could have done with the Ant and Dec presenters having an expert summariser in the studio, an über-celebrity politician used to brushes with a judge to talk us all through the background to the current show. Who better than ex-president of the Balearics, Jaume Matas? "How is it, Jaume, that all these other politicians have ended up in the nick and you haven't?" "Ah well, that's because my sentence was reduced to nine months." "Ok, but why was it reduced to nine months, while others' sentences haven't been?"
The answer to that question is that the judges can't put all the politicians inside. There wouldn't be room for a kick off. Plus, once they've interviewed them outside the prison gates as they step out of their own cars, which are then driven away by weeping relatives or lawyers, what would there be left for the Ants and Decs to do? They can't really start filming them inside. Or can they? Because if they could, what a reality show that would be with the dominatrix, matriarch Munar and her snivelling underlings forming their own one-time political party section of Palma's penitentiary. But it would be the rule of the jungle rather than the rule of compliant corruption demanded of these wretched and weak subordinates. The worm would turn, and a worm-eating bush tucker trial would be particularly unpleasant.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Showing posts with label Unió Mallorquina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unió Mallorquina. Show all posts
Sunday, August 04, 2013
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
MALLORCA TODAY - Maria Antònia Munar goes to prison
The former president of the Council of Mallorca and leader of the Unió Mallorquina party, Maria Antònia Munar, will spend her first night tonight in Palma's prison. Munar, who has been found guilty of corrupt practices in two separate cases which have attracted a combined sentence of eleven and a half years, had hoped to stay out of prison for health reasons (she has had cancer), but the Palma court, who passed the second sentence yesterday, sided with prosecutors who wanted her to go to prison without waiting for appeal. The court noted that she may well have money secreted abroad, and so believed that she might be a flight risk. She also has cases pending which could result in prison sentences. Munar was not granted bail and indeed would have been unable to stand personal guarantees as most of her property and money is embargoed.
Munar's entrance into prison contrasts with yesterday's decision by the Balearics High Court to reduce a six-year sentence passed on the former president of the islands, Jaume Matas, to nine months, so meaning that he would not have to go to prison. Munar, who has three days to lodge an appeal for reconsideration of the decision for her to have enter prison, will almost certainly take an appeal to the High Court, which would then have to decide if the sentences should stand.
Munar is by far the most important politician in Mallorca to receive a jail term. There has actually been some surprise that she has been sent to prison, in light of how Matas has been treated and also in light of how in the most celebrated corruption case of the last century - that to do with the Sóller tunnel - it was "archived" and the first president of the Balearics, Gabriel Cañellas, avoided prison.
Munar's entrance into prison contrasts with yesterday's decision by the Balearics High Court to reduce a six-year sentence passed on the former president of the islands, Jaume Matas, to nine months, so meaning that he would not have to go to prison. Munar, who has three days to lodge an appeal for reconsideration of the decision for her to have enter prison, will almost certainly take an appeal to the High Court, which would then have to decide if the sentences should stand.
Munar is by far the most important politician in Mallorca to receive a jail term. There has actually been some surprise that she has been sent to prison, in light of how Matas has been treated and also in light of how in the most celebrated corruption case of the last century - that to do with the Sóller tunnel - it was "archived" and the first president of the Balearics, Gabriel Cañellas, avoided prison.
Friday, October 19, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Ex-tourism minister Nadal gets four year sentence
Miguel Nadal, former tourism minister and leading member of the discredited Unió Mallorquina party, has been sentenced to four years imprisonment for embezzling public funds. He has been found guilty of channelling 13,000 euros for non-existent work to the former tourism councillor in Sóller, Tómas Plomer, through the now defunct Inestur agency (that was within the tourism ministry). Plomer has received a one-year sentence and the former director of Inestur, Antoni Oliver, a sentence of eighteen months. Oliver, it might be recalled, was also a Pollensa politician about whom questions have been raised in the past in respect of funding for the Pollensa festival. Nadal has already been sentenced to a term of two years and seven months for his part in the so-called "caso Maquillaje".
See more: Ultima Hora
See more: Ultima Hora
Friday, September 21, 2012
A League Of Their Own: Mallorca's centre politics
History is littered with the dead of failed new political parties. The gang of four of the Social Democrats didn't succumb to "anthrax" but they might as well have followed the title of this track by the post-punk Gang Of Four so little did they really achieve, other than paving the way for Liberals to become Democrats and to ultimately eat from the same table as the Conservatives.
Two-party politics tends to be the norm. In Mallorca it is no different. Of the two, PSOE is by far the older, reflecting its good and once genuine socialist worker roots. The PP is a phenomenon of the post-Franco era but it had a stuttering start in its original "alliance" guise as the electorate on the terraces were screaming "are you Franco in disguise?".
In the Mallorcan centre, kind of, was the old Unió Mallorquina before it was finally consumed by its rotten-to-the-core culture of corruption and consigned to the bin of political history. Except it didn't disappear completely. It acquired a new name, the Convergència. The electorate weren't really fooled and so at the last elections it was given a sound kicking. At the same time as the UM had been undergoing its transmogrification, another political kid arrived on the block - La Lliga Regionalista. It sprang from a source known as Jaume Font (and if you don't get the gag, let me tell you that font means both spring and source). He had fallen out big time with the now president of the Balearics, José Ramón Bauzá, and so went off and formed his own party. It fared equally as poorly as the Convergència at the elections.
To the uninitiated, it was hard to tell the two parties apart. They both claimed the centre ground and they were both in favour of differing degrees of regional self-government. There wasn't ever room for both and now, almost eighteen months after having failed to set the political world alight at the elections, they've decided to merge. The Convergència will converge with La Lliga in forming a league of their own.
On the face of it, the merger makes perfectly good sense, in that Mallorcan politics can ever be described as conforming to notions of good sense. In terms of the current political landscape, it has a lot going for it. The PP, apart from taking everyone's jobs and money away, has been doing a thoroughly decent job in attempting to appear as though they have no interest in regional autonomy or self-government in the Balearics. PSOE, ripped to shreds at the last election, has managed to keep up appearances of being totally useless. There is a fair old amount of political ground, therefore, for a likely lad party to gobble up, assuming anyone takes any notice and also assuming they don't all have lovers' tiffs more or less as soon as they have jumped into bed.
In this regard, things aren't too promising. Pollensa is one of the few towns where both parties have some sort of presence, so much so that La Lliga is part of the ruling coalition and the Convergència has a couple of councillors. Unfortunately, they can't stand each other for reasons that would take an entire article to explain and at the end of which you would still be probably none the wiser. As a consequence, there threatens to be a mini-Moors and Christians re-enactment with political blood spilt all over the nice new floors of the town hall building.
Local spats aside, there should in theory be some optimism for this new party. But then there are the skeletons that will continue to rattle. Font was once cited in a corruption case. It was one reason why he left the PP because Bauzá wouldn't sanction candidacies from anyone who was on a charge. The fact that the charge was archived (i.e. was not proven and was filed) probably won't prevent the dirty-tricks brigade from reminding everyone of the charge. Then there is the Convergència, a UM rose by any other name, some would argue. And all the time that Munar, Nadal and others from the old UM hierarchy are keeping the local beaks in gainful employ the misdemeanours of the past will hound it.
But lurking in the background, as he will be for the foreseeable future, is Manacor's mayor Antoni Pastor. He says he is giving no consideration to joining the new party. Exiled by the PP and so stateless in party terms, he would give the new party a massive boost, but then he knows this. He would probably want to be number one, but that would be difficult. My guess is that he still anticipates being welcomed back into the PP fold as its saviour and were he to be, he would shift the PP towards the centre and back to a position that is more favourable towards regional autonomy. At a stroke, the new party would be doomed.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Two-party politics tends to be the norm. In Mallorca it is no different. Of the two, PSOE is by far the older, reflecting its good and once genuine socialist worker roots. The PP is a phenomenon of the post-Franco era but it had a stuttering start in its original "alliance" guise as the electorate on the terraces were screaming "are you Franco in disguise?".
In the Mallorcan centre, kind of, was the old Unió Mallorquina before it was finally consumed by its rotten-to-the-core culture of corruption and consigned to the bin of political history. Except it didn't disappear completely. It acquired a new name, the Convergència. The electorate weren't really fooled and so at the last elections it was given a sound kicking. At the same time as the UM had been undergoing its transmogrification, another political kid arrived on the block - La Lliga Regionalista. It sprang from a source known as Jaume Font (and if you don't get the gag, let me tell you that font means both spring and source). He had fallen out big time with the now president of the Balearics, José Ramón Bauzá, and so went off and formed his own party. It fared equally as poorly as the Convergència at the elections.
To the uninitiated, it was hard to tell the two parties apart. They both claimed the centre ground and they were both in favour of differing degrees of regional self-government. There wasn't ever room for both and now, almost eighteen months after having failed to set the political world alight at the elections, they've decided to merge. The Convergència will converge with La Lliga in forming a league of their own.
On the face of it, the merger makes perfectly good sense, in that Mallorcan politics can ever be described as conforming to notions of good sense. In terms of the current political landscape, it has a lot going for it. The PP, apart from taking everyone's jobs and money away, has been doing a thoroughly decent job in attempting to appear as though they have no interest in regional autonomy or self-government in the Balearics. PSOE, ripped to shreds at the last election, has managed to keep up appearances of being totally useless. There is a fair old amount of political ground, therefore, for a likely lad party to gobble up, assuming anyone takes any notice and also assuming they don't all have lovers' tiffs more or less as soon as they have jumped into bed.
In this regard, things aren't too promising. Pollensa is one of the few towns where both parties have some sort of presence, so much so that La Lliga is part of the ruling coalition and the Convergència has a couple of councillors. Unfortunately, they can't stand each other for reasons that would take an entire article to explain and at the end of which you would still be probably none the wiser. As a consequence, there threatens to be a mini-Moors and Christians re-enactment with political blood spilt all over the nice new floors of the town hall building.
Local spats aside, there should in theory be some optimism for this new party. But then there are the skeletons that will continue to rattle. Font was once cited in a corruption case. It was one reason why he left the PP because Bauzá wouldn't sanction candidacies from anyone who was on a charge. The fact that the charge was archived (i.e. was not proven and was filed) probably won't prevent the dirty-tricks brigade from reminding everyone of the charge. Then there is the Convergència, a UM rose by any other name, some would argue. And all the time that Munar, Nadal and others from the old UM hierarchy are keeping the local beaks in gainful employ the misdemeanours of the past will hound it.
But lurking in the background, as he will be for the foreseeable future, is Manacor's mayor Antoni Pastor. He says he is giving no consideration to joining the new party. Exiled by the PP and so stateless in party terms, he would give the new party a massive boost, but then he knows this. He would probably want to be number one, but that would be difficult. My guess is that he still anticipates being welcomed back into the PP fold as its saviour and were he to be, he would shift the PP towards the centre and back to a position that is more favourable towards regional autonomy. At a stroke, the new party would be doomed.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Mother's Ruin: The fall of Maria Munar
Since autonomous government was established in the Balearics in 1983, two politicians have been synonymous with the islands' democracy. And what democracy it has been. Gabriel Cañellas, president for twelve years from 1983, was forced to resign because of his implication in the Sóller tunnel scandal. He was eventually absolved.
If Cañellas is the patriarch of democracy in a Balearics style, then Maria Antònia Munar is the matriarch. There at the birth of a new party, the Unió Mallorquina, in 1982, Mother Munar went on to become its leader, the president of the Council of Mallorca and the speaker of the Balearics parliament. She has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
The detail of the case against Munar is of little importance. It is the charges that were brought that are. Perverting the course of justice, fraud, falsification of documents, embezzlement of public funds. The charges are almost always the same and they always amount to the same thing: corruption.
There will not be sympathy for Munar. She treated the UM as her fiefdom and dispensed patronage as it suited her. Miguel Nadal, a former tourism minister, and himself sentenced to two years and seven months, owed his succession to leadership of the party to Mother. During a fractious campaign to decide the successor, Nadal at one point threw a hissy fit, withdrew, but was then brought back and anointed by Munar.
This was an example of how Palma dominated UM affairs. Nadal was a Palma man and virtually everything that has since emerged that was corrupt about the UM had to do with Palma. Miguel Llompart, formerly the UM mayor of Alcúdia, once told me that the corruption was all a Palma affair. It wasn't completely, but Palma or not, it had the effect of bringing down an entire political party, now named the Convergència.
Another of those who owed his position to Munar was another ex-tourism minister, Francesc Buils, condemned to three years inside in connection with a different case. Buils, it would seem, just did as he was told. And since sentence was passed on him, a further investigation has been opened up - one to do with alleged irregular payments for coastal cleaning operations under the auspices of Buils' tourism ministry. One of the strangest aspects of this is why the tourism ministry ever got involved in such operations. They had been the responsibility of the environment ministry and yet, for no obviously good reason, they were transferred to tourism. The police are keen to know why. The tourism ministry was to become the focal point for the wave of corruption cases that engulfed the UM.
Munar was widely disliked. One Spanish journalist once headlined an article about her "the most hated woman in Mallorca's history". She is an example of the maxim of all power corrupts, and she was all-powerful, seemingly stripped of principles. I once described her thus: "a Cruella de Vil who has kidnapped a doe-eyed and naïve democracy and bundled it into the back of an official limo, secreted inside a massive wedge of cash". The reference to the cash is to 300,000 euros Munar is supposed to have handed over to Nadal when she was president of the Council.
In March 2010, in an interview with IB3, Munar said that "democracy is based on the confidence that people have in the institutions and politicians, and when this confidence is lost a dictator can emerge". She was absolutely right but a court has proven that she was not righteous. She was a product of the new democracy that, despite the veneer of free political association and the ballot box, still behaved with some of the mores of dictatorship, not least the elevation of the seemingly all-powerful.
President Bauzá is to be applauded in his attempts to rid local politics of corruption. At a time when the deeply worrying voice of the military is expressing its discontent with the political class (clear echoes of the 1930s), the president must be aghast that José Maria Rodríguez, the national delegate to the Balearics, has been forced to resign over corruption allegations that date back to the Matas presidency. Yet, though these allegations relate to a separate case, Rodríguez, when interior minister, was implicated in the Andratx case that resulted in the imprisonment of Eugenio Hidalgo, the former mayor of Andratx.
Despite Bauzá's best intentions, it never seems to end, and it was the Andratx case that opened the floodgates to everything that followed - to Matas, to Munar, to Urdangarin. Matas and now Munar have fallen and been ruined. One to go maybe. But how many more might there still be?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
If Cañellas is the patriarch of democracy in a Balearics style, then Maria Antònia Munar is the matriarch. There at the birth of a new party, the Unió Mallorquina, in 1982, Mother Munar went on to become its leader, the president of the Council of Mallorca and the speaker of the Balearics parliament. She has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
The detail of the case against Munar is of little importance. It is the charges that were brought that are. Perverting the course of justice, fraud, falsification of documents, embezzlement of public funds. The charges are almost always the same and they always amount to the same thing: corruption.
There will not be sympathy for Munar. She treated the UM as her fiefdom and dispensed patronage as it suited her. Miguel Nadal, a former tourism minister, and himself sentenced to two years and seven months, owed his succession to leadership of the party to Mother. During a fractious campaign to decide the successor, Nadal at one point threw a hissy fit, withdrew, but was then brought back and anointed by Munar.
This was an example of how Palma dominated UM affairs. Nadal was a Palma man and virtually everything that has since emerged that was corrupt about the UM had to do with Palma. Miguel Llompart, formerly the UM mayor of Alcúdia, once told me that the corruption was all a Palma affair. It wasn't completely, but Palma or not, it had the effect of bringing down an entire political party, now named the Convergència.
Another of those who owed his position to Munar was another ex-tourism minister, Francesc Buils, condemned to three years inside in connection with a different case. Buils, it would seem, just did as he was told. And since sentence was passed on him, a further investigation has been opened up - one to do with alleged irregular payments for coastal cleaning operations under the auspices of Buils' tourism ministry. One of the strangest aspects of this is why the tourism ministry ever got involved in such operations. They had been the responsibility of the environment ministry and yet, for no obviously good reason, they were transferred to tourism. The police are keen to know why. The tourism ministry was to become the focal point for the wave of corruption cases that engulfed the UM.
Munar was widely disliked. One Spanish journalist once headlined an article about her "the most hated woman in Mallorca's history". She is an example of the maxim of all power corrupts, and she was all-powerful, seemingly stripped of principles. I once described her thus: "a Cruella de Vil who has kidnapped a doe-eyed and naïve democracy and bundled it into the back of an official limo, secreted inside a massive wedge of cash". The reference to the cash is to 300,000 euros Munar is supposed to have handed over to Nadal when she was president of the Council.
In March 2010, in an interview with IB3, Munar said that "democracy is based on the confidence that people have in the institutions and politicians, and when this confidence is lost a dictator can emerge". She was absolutely right but a court has proven that she was not righteous. She was a product of the new democracy that, despite the veneer of free political association and the ballot box, still behaved with some of the mores of dictatorship, not least the elevation of the seemingly all-powerful.
President Bauzá is to be applauded in his attempts to rid local politics of corruption. At a time when the deeply worrying voice of the military is expressing its discontent with the political class (clear echoes of the 1930s), the president must be aghast that José Maria Rodríguez, the national delegate to the Balearics, has been forced to resign over corruption allegations that date back to the Matas presidency. Yet, though these allegations relate to a separate case, Rodríguez, when interior minister, was implicated in the Andratx case that resulted in the imprisonment of Eugenio Hidalgo, the former mayor of Andratx.
Despite Bauzá's best intentions, it never seems to end, and it was the Andratx case that opened the floodgates to everything that followed - to Matas, to Munar, to Urdangarin. Matas and now Munar have fallen and been ruined. One to go maybe. But how many more might there still be?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, July 16, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Munar is sentenced to five and a half years
Maria Antònia Munar, former president of the Council of Mallorca and leader of the disgraced Unió Mallorquina party, has been condemned to five and a half years in prison for abuse of public office, embezzlement of public funds, fraud and falsification of documents. The charges related to irregular grant payments made to a media production company, Video U. Miguel Nadal, the former vice-president of the Council and ex-tourism minister, has received a sentence of two years and seven months on the same charges; the lighter sentence is because he confessed. There will be appeals to the Balearics Supreme Court.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Sunday, July 15, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Coastal cleaning operations under corruption investigation
Police have opened a new line of investigation in the ongoing cases of corruption that emanated from the Balearics tourism ministry during the time that the former Unió Mallorquina party was in charge of the ministry. Following the three-year sentence handed down to ex-tourism minister Francesc Buils, police are examining the arrangements for coastal cleaning operations that were transferred from the environment ministry to the tourism ministry. Police suspect that a national company engaged in the work paid irregular commissions to the party.
(Comment: When the current tourism ministry said that it had no money to continue these cleaning operations, there was considerable surprise expressed as to why it was that the tourism ministry was even involved in such operations.)
See more: Diario de Mallorca
(Comment: When the current tourism ministry said that it had no money to continue these cleaning operations, there was considerable surprise expressed as to why it was that the tourism ministry was even involved in such operations.)
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Thursday, April 12, 2012
MALLORCA TODAY - Cerdà denies UM website funding
One of the corruption investigations that has taken something of a back seat over the past months is that of the caso Voltor, which is looking into the affairs of agencies at the tourism ministry. The former mayor of Pollensa, Joan Cerdà, indicted in this case, declared in court in yesterday that he did back the diversion of funds from the Inestur agency for the purpose of paying for a new website for his party, the Unió Mallorquina.
See more: Ultima Hora
See more: Ultima Hora
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Out Of Proportion: A week in Mallorcan politics
Even by Mallorca's bizarre standards, last week was a decidedly odd one for the island's political classes. One party changes its name, one politico slams judges and prosecutors for getting above their station, and another defends the previously indefensible.
The Unió Mallorquina is dead. Long live the Convergència per les Illes Balears. How are we now supposed to anglicise the party? No more is it "unionist". Is it convergenist, whatever this might mean? The new party has swiftly adopted an abbreviation - CxI - which is even more obscure, except for an "x" marking the spot of where the old UM body is buried.
Ex-UM mayors and councillors have been similarly swift in discarding their past, rushing to converge on the Convergència, every good man and not so good man coming to the aid of the new party. As if anyone will buy it. They're dead men walking towards the cliff's edge of falling into oblivion, and the new party as a whole might yet tumble with them if a judge's demand for a 1.6 million euros bail, levelled against the UM, is upheld. What a political party is supposed to post bail for is beyond me. You can't exactly bang up a party as such. Or maybe you can. The alacrity with which the UM transmogrified into CxI might have been expedient in the hope that the UM would no longer be liable. For whatever it is supposed to be liable.
The judges and the prosecutors are having a jolly old time of it. The UM, even in death, is the gift that keeps on giving and keeps on allowing the legal system to throw out wild statements about bail amounts and demands for time in clink. While politicians, accused of getting up to their usual shenanigans, are unseemly, so also is the publicity blaring of the m'learned-friends institution. A million euros bail here, a twenty-year stretch there. Do I hear a million and a half or thirty years? It's the prosecutors' public auctions for guilt not yet proven. And the press, of course, love it. Where would it be in Mallorca without its outlandish headlines of how much and how long?
Into all this has emerged the odd figure of Ramón Socias. Odd, because he pops up now and then, disappears for a while and then re-appears, offering some grand insight into the less-than-healthy state of Balearics' political or social life. The central government's delegate for the islands, he's a bit like the Governor-General of Australia. You don't really know what the point of him is, but he's there, nevertheless.
Or perhaps he's like an honorary head of state, were the Balearics to be a state, which they most certainly are not, as José María Aznar would fervently insist. Though Francesc Antich is "president", in the same way that Zapatero is "president", neither can, in strict constitutional terms, be thus. You don't get presidents in monarchical democracies, which would mean that Socias is a sort of über-non-president.
Whatever Socias is, he gave the judges a ticking off for acting in a "disproportionate" fashion in hounding the poor former UM-ists who have allegedly been siphoning off Palma town hall moolah for some political advantage. Cue all manner of indignation. Unseemly the process of arrest and publicity may be, but there is also meant to be such a thing as the independence of the judiciary from the executive. Socias had a point, but whether he was wise to express it is another matter, and the head of the judges' deanery was one who did think it unwise. On balance though, Socias's intervention might yet be seen to be wise, if it cuts out what is the real disproportionality, namely the media-manipulated fandango of the prosecutors' song and dance.
While Socias, by implication, some might suggest, appeared to side with the allegedly corrupt, the Partido Popular's leader, José Ramón Bauzá, entered the fray to seemingly support former president Jaume Matas. He praised the investments of the ex-PP president and reckoned that court cases involving him were "for show". So, do we now have to believe that Mallorca is engaged in Stalinist-style show trials? Maybe we do. Bauzá's intervention was doubly peculiar, given the brownie points he has won for not allowing candidature of any politico implicated in corruption and his avowal of legal reform to tighten the noose around future corruption.
One might have thought it wiser for Bauzá to keep quiet where Matas was concerned, especially as Jaume has to try and scrape together the odd million or so in order to stay out of nick. Again. Another headlining bail demand, this time for his nights at the opera building that didn't get built. Disproportionate? All for show? Maybe Bauzá should have a word with Socias, and together they both keep mum. Or perhaps he should suggest that Matas changes his name.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The Unió Mallorquina is dead. Long live the Convergència per les Illes Balears. How are we now supposed to anglicise the party? No more is it "unionist". Is it convergenist, whatever this might mean? The new party has swiftly adopted an abbreviation - CxI - which is even more obscure, except for an "x" marking the spot of where the old UM body is buried.
Ex-UM mayors and councillors have been similarly swift in discarding their past, rushing to converge on the Convergència, every good man and not so good man coming to the aid of the new party. As if anyone will buy it. They're dead men walking towards the cliff's edge of falling into oblivion, and the new party as a whole might yet tumble with them if a judge's demand for a 1.6 million euros bail, levelled against the UM, is upheld. What a political party is supposed to post bail for is beyond me. You can't exactly bang up a party as such. Or maybe you can. The alacrity with which the UM transmogrified into CxI might have been expedient in the hope that the UM would no longer be liable. For whatever it is supposed to be liable.
The judges and the prosecutors are having a jolly old time of it. The UM, even in death, is the gift that keeps on giving and keeps on allowing the legal system to throw out wild statements about bail amounts and demands for time in clink. While politicians, accused of getting up to their usual shenanigans, are unseemly, so also is the publicity blaring of the m'learned-friends institution. A million euros bail here, a twenty-year stretch there. Do I hear a million and a half or thirty years? It's the prosecutors' public auctions for guilt not yet proven. And the press, of course, love it. Where would it be in Mallorca without its outlandish headlines of how much and how long?
Into all this has emerged the odd figure of Ramón Socias. Odd, because he pops up now and then, disappears for a while and then re-appears, offering some grand insight into the less-than-healthy state of Balearics' political or social life. The central government's delegate for the islands, he's a bit like the Governor-General of Australia. You don't really know what the point of him is, but he's there, nevertheless.
Or perhaps he's like an honorary head of state, were the Balearics to be a state, which they most certainly are not, as José María Aznar would fervently insist. Though Francesc Antich is "president", in the same way that Zapatero is "president", neither can, in strict constitutional terms, be thus. You don't get presidents in monarchical democracies, which would mean that Socias is a sort of über-non-president.
Whatever Socias is, he gave the judges a ticking off for acting in a "disproportionate" fashion in hounding the poor former UM-ists who have allegedly been siphoning off Palma town hall moolah for some political advantage. Cue all manner of indignation. Unseemly the process of arrest and publicity may be, but there is also meant to be such a thing as the independence of the judiciary from the executive. Socias had a point, but whether he was wise to express it is another matter, and the head of the judges' deanery was one who did think it unwise. On balance though, Socias's intervention might yet be seen to be wise, if it cuts out what is the real disproportionality, namely the media-manipulated fandango of the prosecutors' song and dance.
While Socias, by implication, some might suggest, appeared to side with the allegedly corrupt, the Partido Popular's leader, José Ramón Bauzá, entered the fray to seemingly support former president Jaume Matas. He praised the investments of the ex-PP president and reckoned that court cases involving him were "for show". So, do we now have to believe that Mallorca is engaged in Stalinist-style show trials? Maybe we do. Bauzá's intervention was doubly peculiar, given the brownie points he has won for not allowing candidature of any politico implicated in corruption and his avowal of legal reform to tighten the noose around future corruption.
One might have thought it wiser for Bauzá to keep quiet where Matas was concerned, especially as Jaume has to try and scrape together the odd million or so in order to stay out of nick. Again. Another headlining bail demand, this time for his nights at the opera building that didn't get built. Disproportionate? All for show? Maybe Bauzá should have a word with Socias, and together they both keep mum. Or perhaps he should suggest that Matas changes his name.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Unió Mallorquina faces oblivion
Despite changing the name of the party (to the Convergència de les Illes Balears), the Unió Mallorquina could be on the edge of collapsing. There are some doubts being raised as to whether this new name will be acceptable, given a similar one in existence, while, more importantly, the party is being held accountable for the latest scandal, the "caso Picnic", and faces paying a bail of 1.6 million euros, money that it does not have. To the party's aid, however, has come the Balearics central government delegate, Ramón Socias, who has argued that the latest legal actions taken against the UM are "disproportionate", a charge refuted by the dean's office for judges in Palma. The UM, name change or not, may be unable to take part in the forthcoming local elections, while the possibility exists of a completely separate and new party being formed by current party members.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
MALLORCA TODAY - Operación Picnic and the Unió Mallorquina raids
Yesterday's raids on the headquarters of the Unió Mallorquina party and the IMFOF (the municipal institute in Palma for occupational development) have led to three people being arrested thus far. The police searches, under the supervision of a judge and anti-corruption prosecutors, were made primarily in relation to allegations of irregularities in obtaining votes with public money. This latest operation is called Picnic on account of free excursions that were given to those who signed up to an affiliation to the party. The excursions and picnics that were offered were allegedly paid for out of public funds, while they were organised through the environment department of Palma town hall.
The UM, which has been the subject of several recent corruption cases, had hoped to put the past behind it. The party had tried to change its image cosmetically by adopting a new logo. It had ruled out a new name, but this, in light of Operación Picnic, seems more likely, and an urgent meeting to discuss a name change has been called for Monday.
The UM, which has been the subject of several recent corruption cases, had hoped to put the past behind it. The party had tried to change its image cosmetically by adopting a new logo. It had ruled out a new name, but this, in light of Operación Picnic, seems more likely, and an urgent meeting to discuss a name change has been called for Monday.
MALLORCA TODAY - European residents centre proposed
The candidate for the post of mayor in Calvia for the Unió Mallorquina party is proposing that a house in Costa de la Calma become a centre for European residents. The centre would be multi-cultural and be there to help to resolve problems and also to promote aspects of Mallorcan life, such as the learning of Catalan.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Crossing Palms With Electoral Silver: Vote-purchasing allegations
It was Alan Sugar, who I suppose we do now have to address as his lordship, who made the accusation that Brian Clough liked a "bung". Cloughie denied it and El Tel denied having suggested to Lord Amstrad, as he didn't become, that "old big 'ead" preferred the bung delivered in a plastic bag at a motorway service station. An investigation into whether Clough did or didn't like a bung was dropped on account of his ill-health. Amidst all the innumerable corruption cases in Mallorca, a plea of ill-health has, as yet, been sparingly used as a reason for not appearing in front of the beak. Give them time, though.
There are bungs for this, bungs for that. Bungs for footballer transfers, bungs in exchange for votes. Allegedly. We have no way of knowing if the plastic bags that Cloughie preferred, if indeed he did, were from a supermarket, but when it comes to vote purchasing it would appear that a supermarket's bags were involved.
Those were the days. When it didn't cost a centimo to pay for a plastic bag in a local supermarket, as it now does. You didn't need to fritter away the odd centimo here or there on bags designed to hold some fish from the deli counter, while there were more important fish to both fry and fleece. Those were the days. Not so long ago. 2007 in fact. Local elections in Mallorca.
Back then, a case was brought before a judge in which there were allegations as to vote purchasing. It was archived because there was insufficient evidence. The whole affair has now re-surfaced as part of the anti-corruption case, popularly known as the "caso maquillaje" (make-up case), currently being heard in a Palma court. According to "Ultima Hora", a total of 25,000 euros found its way into the hands of leaders of gypsy communities. The purpose? Votes. Which party was allegedly behind it? Oh, come on, you should know which one by now. Yep, the Unió Mallorquina.
To be strictly accurate, the alleged bung was not in the supermarket bag. What were, were ballot papers pre-prepared for UM voting, ones to be handed out to friends, family and neighbours. Palms were crossed with silver, and into palms were pressed the voting slips, with crosses ready-made.
Twenty-five grand is a fair amount of wonga for securing the gypsy vote, or anyone's vote come to that, and the question as to where it came from - if indeed it came from anywhere, as it is still, as yet, an allegation - relates to the wider issues of the "caso maquillaje", namely charges of diverting public money for electoral purposes. And wonga slang is appropriate, by the way, as it is meant to have come from the Romany "wongar".
The accusation of, how can I put it, a touch of manipulation of the voting process is a further embarrassment for the UM. Recently, the former UM mayor of Muro, Jaume Perelló, was given a 12-month stretch for a spot of gerrymandering at the end of the 1990s. Try as it might, the party cannot shake off its past, and is unlikely to be able to while the various cases in which it is involved make their way through the courts.
A surprise in all this is that the party is still around. Still around and receiving overtures as possible coalition partners. If party loyalists turn up on the door step before the elections, I shall be paying particular attention to any supermarket bags they might have. If they don't have, there are any number of them lurking in the kitchen, all acquired at a centimo a pop, which is meant to deter their purchase and so save the planet, but of course doesn't. As they would otherwise eventually be chucked out and consigned to landfill, the UM will be welcome to them, so long as they return them, suitably wonga-ed up.
Between now and election day, the polls will give an indication as to how well or, you would think, how badly the UM will do. The party itself should employ its own form of electoral forecasting. Find a Gypsy Rose Lee and cross her palm not with silver but with the nickel, copper and brass mix of a euro coin or several. What will she see in her crystal ball? Not a tall, dark stranger, but someone altogether scarier. "UM, you're fired!"
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There are bungs for this, bungs for that. Bungs for footballer transfers, bungs in exchange for votes. Allegedly. We have no way of knowing if the plastic bags that Cloughie preferred, if indeed he did, were from a supermarket, but when it comes to vote purchasing it would appear that a supermarket's bags were involved.
Those were the days. When it didn't cost a centimo to pay for a plastic bag in a local supermarket, as it now does. You didn't need to fritter away the odd centimo here or there on bags designed to hold some fish from the deli counter, while there were more important fish to both fry and fleece. Those were the days. Not so long ago. 2007 in fact. Local elections in Mallorca.
Back then, a case was brought before a judge in which there were allegations as to vote purchasing. It was archived because there was insufficient evidence. The whole affair has now re-surfaced as part of the anti-corruption case, popularly known as the "caso maquillaje" (make-up case), currently being heard in a Palma court. According to "Ultima Hora", a total of 25,000 euros found its way into the hands of leaders of gypsy communities. The purpose? Votes. Which party was allegedly behind it? Oh, come on, you should know which one by now. Yep, the Unió Mallorquina.
To be strictly accurate, the alleged bung was not in the supermarket bag. What were, were ballot papers pre-prepared for UM voting, ones to be handed out to friends, family and neighbours. Palms were crossed with silver, and into palms were pressed the voting slips, with crosses ready-made.
Twenty-five grand is a fair amount of wonga for securing the gypsy vote, or anyone's vote come to that, and the question as to where it came from - if indeed it came from anywhere, as it is still, as yet, an allegation - relates to the wider issues of the "caso maquillaje", namely charges of diverting public money for electoral purposes. And wonga slang is appropriate, by the way, as it is meant to have come from the Romany "wongar".
The accusation of, how can I put it, a touch of manipulation of the voting process is a further embarrassment for the UM. Recently, the former UM mayor of Muro, Jaume Perelló, was given a 12-month stretch for a spot of gerrymandering at the end of the 1990s. Try as it might, the party cannot shake off its past, and is unlikely to be able to while the various cases in which it is involved make their way through the courts.
A surprise in all this is that the party is still around. Still around and receiving overtures as possible coalition partners. If party loyalists turn up on the door step before the elections, I shall be paying particular attention to any supermarket bags they might have. If they don't have, there are any number of them lurking in the kitchen, all acquired at a centimo a pop, which is meant to deter their purchase and so save the planet, but of course doesn't. As they would otherwise eventually be chucked out and consigned to landfill, the UM will be welcome to them, so long as they return them, suitably wonga-ed up.
Between now and election day, the polls will give an indication as to how well or, you would think, how badly the UM will do. The party itself should employ its own form of electoral forecasting. Find a Gypsy Rose Lee and cross her palm not with silver but with the nickel, copper and brass mix of a euro coin or several. What will she see in her crystal ball? Not a tall, dark stranger, but someone altogether scarier. "UM, you're fired!"
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Down In The Sewer: The rubbish corruption case
Here we go again. When I suggested that you shouldn't bet against the president of the Council of Mallorca offering a message about corruption at the end of 2011, I hadn't expected that a case would arise quite so quickly to support such a message. But it has.
Operación Cloaca. A cloaca is Latin for a sewer. Appropriate, you might think. "Cases of corruption keep coming to the surface with the regularity with which malodour filters out of a sewer cover." Hmm. This was what I said in "The Year Of Living Corruptly" (30 December).
The case involves allegations of false accounting in respect of waste-collection services across Mallorca. Implicated are businesspeople operating such services, the former director of waste management at the environment department of the Council of Mallorca and an economist and an engineer from the council.
The amount of money that is being said to have been "diverted" is staggering, anything up to 3.5 million euros, and the whole thing centres on what was going on at the waste-management division within the environment department at the council. The former councillor for environment was Catalina Julve, now the spokesperson for the Unió Mallorquina (UM) party.
There is an unfortunate familiarity about all this. The UM. One of those implicated, Simón Galmés, said to have charged a monthly 9,000 euros for work not undertaken, is a member of the Alianza Libre de Manacor-UM. It is also being said that, thanks to a friendship with Miguel Riera, the former mayor of Manacor and himself in the ALM-UM, Galmés's firm got the gig to be contracted to perform the inspection of waste. Riera, now no longer with us, was also the boss of the environment department before Julve. False invoices stopped being raised, it is further alleged, only once the UM was kicked out of governmental posts by the president of the regional government following the various corruption cases the party faced.
Of the various scandals that have erupted over the past couple of years, this one has the feeling of something different. It is less familiar in one respect. Though these scandals have involved the diversion of public funds, they have been at arm's length, away from ordinary householders and businesses.
This one is different because those ordinary householders and businesses pay taxes for waste collection and treatment. These taxes, that have risen significantly, are, not unnaturally, unpopular. And now we have a corruption case which suggests that a portion of the taxpayer's burden has gone directly into certain people's pockets. It brings it home - literally in this instance - the level of corruption and the extent to which it can affect any aspect of day-to-day living.
No one has been found guilty yet. But mud, or rubbish if you prefer, sticks. And as ever it is sticking to the UM. Here is a party that, following its expulsion, looked to try and re-invent itself and have done with the scandals that had attached themselves to it. However, it now has its spokesperson, in effect the number three in the party's current hierarchy, right in the firing-line.
It seemed inconceivable that the UM, discredited as it had been, could undergo a revival that might see it return to a position of power. Yet this has been happening. The doors had been opened once more to possible coalition government with Antich's socialists after this spring's elections. Had been. Perhaps it's time for them to be firmly shut.
And what of the electorate? Taxes, be they for rubbish or anything else, are an issue that plays with voters. They have a right to see that politicians don't play with their money, and if it is being played with, then those doing the playing need teaching a lesson. The elections are going to be difficult for the UM. And so they should be. They deserve nothing less. In fact, they deserve binning in the nearest container and waiting for the electoral rubbish collectors to come and dump them.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Operación Cloaca. A cloaca is Latin for a sewer. Appropriate, you might think. "Cases of corruption keep coming to the surface with the regularity with which malodour filters out of a sewer cover." Hmm. This was what I said in "The Year Of Living Corruptly" (30 December).
The case involves allegations of false accounting in respect of waste-collection services across Mallorca. Implicated are businesspeople operating such services, the former director of waste management at the environment department of the Council of Mallorca and an economist and an engineer from the council.
The amount of money that is being said to have been "diverted" is staggering, anything up to 3.5 million euros, and the whole thing centres on what was going on at the waste-management division within the environment department at the council. The former councillor for environment was Catalina Julve, now the spokesperson for the Unió Mallorquina (UM) party.
There is an unfortunate familiarity about all this. The UM. One of those implicated, Simón Galmés, said to have charged a monthly 9,000 euros for work not undertaken, is a member of the Alianza Libre de Manacor-UM. It is also being said that, thanks to a friendship with Miguel Riera, the former mayor of Manacor and himself in the ALM-UM, Galmés's firm got the gig to be contracted to perform the inspection of waste. Riera, now no longer with us, was also the boss of the environment department before Julve. False invoices stopped being raised, it is further alleged, only once the UM was kicked out of governmental posts by the president of the regional government following the various corruption cases the party faced.
Of the various scandals that have erupted over the past couple of years, this one has the feeling of something different. It is less familiar in one respect. Though these scandals have involved the diversion of public funds, they have been at arm's length, away from ordinary householders and businesses.
This one is different because those ordinary householders and businesses pay taxes for waste collection and treatment. These taxes, that have risen significantly, are, not unnaturally, unpopular. And now we have a corruption case which suggests that a portion of the taxpayer's burden has gone directly into certain people's pockets. It brings it home - literally in this instance - the level of corruption and the extent to which it can affect any aspect of day-to-day living.
No one has been found guilty yet. But mud, or rubbish if you prefer, sticks. And as ever it is sticking to the UM. Here is a party that, following its expulsion, looked to try and re-invent itself and have done with the scandals that had attached themselves to it. However, it now has its spokesperson, in effect the number three in the party's current hierarchy, right in the firing-line.
It seemed inconceivable that the UM, discredited as it had been, could undergo a revival that might see it return to a position of power. Yet this has been happening. The doors had been opened once more to possible coalition government with Antich's socialists after this spring's elections. Had been. Perhaps it's time for them to be firmly shut.
And what of the electorate? Taxes, be they for rubbish or anything else, are an issue that plays with voters. They have a right to see that politicians don't play with their money, and if it is being played with, then those doing the playing need teaching a lesson. The elections are going to be difficult for the UM. And so they should be. They deserve nothing less. In fact, they deserve binning in the nearest container and waiting for the electoral rubbish collectors to come and dump them.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Do Me A Favour: Spas, corruption and society
One of the features of quality and service improvements to Mallorca's hotels has been the introduction of spas - beauty salons, jacuzzis, wellness sessions, all that sort of carry-on. Demand for spas has come from tour operators who see them as important in upgrading the standard of hotels. Provision for their additional creation was covered by the virtually zero-rate interest finance offered by the regional government as a way of assisting hotel upgrades during the crisis and by the so-called "decreto Nadal" which cut out some bureaucratic procedures in order to facilitate renovation and development work at hotels. The reclassification of hotels that is to take place within the next few years will take account of spas.
All good stuff, but as usual there is a rather different story to be told. Note that "decreto". Who was the Nadal in question? Miguel. The former tourism minister and the "chosen one" by his predecessor as leader of the Unió Mallorquina, the matriarchal Mother Maria, Munar of that ilk. Nadal and Mother have since fallen out, their lovey-dovey photos regularly reproduced in order to stress the irony of the breakdown in their relationship, Nadal trying for all he's worth to avoid taking the rap for corruption allegations that have come his and Mother's way.
Building spas was fair enough, but who do you think was instrumental in a process for the spas - the number of which could be expected to increase - to be accredited and given quality ratings?
Maria Antònia Munar, never a hair out of place, always looking a million dollars, but don't let's ask where the dollars might have come from. As befits a one-time president of the Council of Mallorca and speaker of the regional parliament, she did of course need to look a million dollars.
Mother Munar had a personal beautician, and it was thanks to Munar that the beautician, Marisol Carrasco, along with two partners, managed to secure the contract, worth around a hundred thousand euros, to audit and certify hotel spas. The process of awarding the contract was rigged. There were three companies invited to tender for the award of the contract from the Inestur agency within the tourism ministry. However, all three belonged to the same group of people - those who won the contract.
Two former tourism ministers and key men in the UM, Francesc Buils and his successor, the aforementioned Nadal, were also keys to the process as it unravelled. Buils, himself implicated in scandal, had to have his arm twisted in order to set the process in motion. By whom? Yep, Mother. Nadal was the one who signed off on the invoices to Carrasco's company once the auditing work had commenced last year. A fourth UM politician, Antoni Oliver, is also tied up in this deal. Oliver is the former director of Inestur and was a mate of one of Carrasco's partners, one Josep Lluís Capllonch who owns a cosmetics firm in Pollensa. The role of Oliver in Pollensa's own politics has been subject to questions raised by opposition groups in the town.
The story of the spas - and all this information is, by the way, in the public domain - tells you much about how the "system" works in Mallorca. Personal favours allied to political ones. All that seems to be missing in this instance is familial nepotism. It is a system that stinks in such a rotten way that not even the aromas from a spa could get rid of the stench. And in Mother you have, or had, someone who treated her party as her own personal fiefdom, with the wretched Buils, Nadal and others her subservient Mark Antonys.
Nothing in the UM appeared to happen without Mother's bidding or approval. The election of her successor, Nadal, was a case in point. She let the chosen one have his scrapes with his rivals, Ferrer and Grimalt, let him throw his toys out of the pram and then stepped in to give them a telling-off and to approve him as leader, an outcome that had never been in question. The UM, in particular the party's mechanism in Palma, was as close as you could get to familial nepotism without there actually being blood ties. But it was a metaphor for a society in which deference - matriarchal or patriarchal - persists, and which goes a long way in explaining the "system".
Back in March, I wrote about the emergence of all the scandal that had engulfed Munar and the UM. Then I said that rather than there being concerns as to an electoral system that facilitates coalition (wrongly being singled out as a breeding ground for corruption), the "corruption scandals should be informing a debate as to what brings them about"; that it is society (Mallorcan) that "begets the politics of the island, not the other way round". In other words, it is societal collusion or at least societal mores and the way in which society operates which breed political corruption.
The other day there was a debate, one that featured leading figures from the university. A professor of law said that "so long as there is no ethical or moral transformation in society, the law will solve nothing". I suppose I feel vindicated in what I had said in March.
The spa story is a relatively minor matter when compared to some of the other charges that have been emerging, but is significant in that it highlights what many suspect, which is that little or nothing happens - be it spas or whatever - without someone benefiting in a way that they shouldn't. The spas should be places of health, but even they have been tainted by disease.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
All good stuff, but as usual there is a rather different story to be told. Note that "decreto". Who was the Nadal in question? Miguel. The former tourism minister and the "chosen one" by his predecessor as leader of the Unió Mallorquina, the matriarchal Mother Maria, Munar of that ilk. Nadal and Mother have since fallen out, their lovey-dovey photos regularly reproduced in order to stress the irony of the breakdown in their relationship, Nadal trying for all he's worth to avoid taking the rap for corruption allegations that have come his and Mother's way.
Building spas was fair enough, but who do you think was instrumental in a process for the spas - the number of which could be expected to increase - to be accredited and given quality ratings?
Maria Antònia Munar, never a hair out of place, always looking a million dollars, but don't let's ask where the dollars might have come from. As befits a one-time president of the Council of Mallorca and speaker of the regional parliament, she did of course need to look a million dollars.
Mother Munar had a personal beautician, and it was thanks to Munar that the beautician, Marisol Carrasco, along with two partners, managed to secure the contract, worth around a hundred thousand euros, to audit and certify hotel spas. The process of awarding the contract was rigged. There were three companies invited to tender for the award of the contract from the Inestur agency within the tourism ministry. However, all three belonged to the same group of people - those who won the contract.
Two former tourism ministers and key men in the UM, Francesc Buils and his successor, the aforementioned Nadal, were also keys to the process as it unravelled. Buils, himself implicated in scandal, had to have his arm twisted in order to set the process in motion. By whom? Yep, Mother. Nadal was the one who signed off on the invoices to Carrasco's company once the auditing work had commenced last year. A fourth UM politician, Antoni Oliver, is also tied up in this deal. Oliver is the former director of Inestur and was a mate of one of Carrasco's partners, one Josep Lluís Capllonch who owns a cosmetics firm in Pollensa. The role of Oliver in Pollensa's own politics has been subject to questions raised by opposition groups in the town.
The story of the spas - and all this information is, by the way, in the public domain - tells you much about how the "system" works in Mallorca. Personal favours allied to political ones. All that seems to be missing in this instance is familial nepotism. It is a system that stinks in such a rotten way that not even the aromas from a spa could get rid of the stench. And in Mother you have, or had, someone who treated her party as her own personal fiefdom, with the wretched Buils, Nadal and others her subservient Mark Antonys.
Nothing in the UM appeared to happen without Mother's bidding or approval. The election of her successor, Nadal, was a case in point. She let the chosen one have his scrapes with his rivals, Ferrer and Grimalt, let him throw his toys out of the pram and then stepped in to give them a telling-off and to approve him as leader, an outcome that had never been in question. The UM, in particular the party's mechanism in Palma, was as close as you could get to familial nepotism without there actually being blood ties. But it was a metaphor for a society in which deference - matriarchal or patriarchal - persists, and which goes a long way in explaining the "system".
Back in March, I wrote about the emergence of all the scandal that had engulfed Munar and the UM. Then I said that rather than there being concerns as to an electoral system that facilitates coalition (wrongly being singled out as a breeding ground for corruption), the "corruption scandals should be informing a debate as to what brings them about"; that it is society (Mallorcan) that "begets the politics of the island, not the other way round". In other words, it is societal collusion or at least societal mores and the way in which society operates which breed political corruption.
The other day there was a debate, one that featured leading figures from the university. A professor of law said that "so long as there is no ethical or moral transformation in society, the law will solve nothing". I suppose I feel vindicated in what I had said in March.
The spa story is a relatively minor matter when compared to some of the other charges that have been emerging, but is significant in that it highlights what many suspect, which is that little or nothing happens - be it spas or whatever - without someone benefiting in a way that they shouldn't. The spas should be places of health, but even they have been tainted by disease.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Dirty Duckers: Alcúdia corruption and Can Picafort mischief
If you had been inclined to think that all the corruption hoo-ha had gone quiet because of the summer hols, you would have been incorrect. Investigations are ongoing and they have just got very much closer to home. Home, in this instance, being Alcúdia town hall. There was I saying that, Can Ramis apart, Alcúdia was a less turbulent administration than others. I should know better.
As part of the IBATUR (Balearics tourism agency) case, there is a sub-investigation, one that involves a company called Trui. No, not TUI. Trui. You don't need to know the ins and outs, and you are probably not interested anyway, but there may be some painful truths coming out of the Trui troubles. Painful, that is, for the town hall, the Unió Mallorquina party (yep, them again) and ex-mayor Miguel Ferrer, himself a leading figure in the UM.
To cut to the chase, as reported in "The Diario", anti-corruption prosecutors suspect that money from the town hall was used to fund the UM's electoral campaign in 2007. Fingered in all this - potentially - are Ferrer, who was mayor at the time, and his right-hand man, Francesc Cladera, who - it is being alleged - could have arranged for payments, in black, from the town hall's coffers.
Coming on the back of the opposition Partido Popular's desire to re-open the case into alleged irregularities in respect of the Can Ramis building, things have suddenly become murky in what had been, so we had thought, the clearer waters of Alcúdia politics.
And while on the subject of water, and moving on from yesterday's swimming pool fiasco, the annual mischief in Can Picafort duly resulted in a few live ducks going for a dip in the sea during the duck toss on Sunday. Did we ever expect that they wouldn't?
The local press found both residents and the head of fiestas "surprised" by the level of police vigilance for the event. Not sure they should have been surprised. The naughty boys have been extracting the Miguel for a few years now, and the Guardia seemed determined to prevent any more Carry On Quacking. The police presence was at a level, so it was said, for the royal family putting in an appearance. Helicopters, a sub-aqua team plus the beachside patrols. And still they let some ducks go.
It is all utterly ridiculous. The event has always been ridiculous, but the ban was and is ridiculous, as is what has replaced it, i.e. rubber ducks. The thumbing of noses to authority is ridiculous, but so is the response. What can we expect next year? Submarines rather than a sub-aqua crew? Might be right given that subs used to launch dummy torpedoes at the towers on the beach, such as the one in Can Pic on which the naughties had graffiti-ed a "pope", announcing their intention to flout the duck law again. Maybe they should just ban the whole thing. Or stage it in a swimming pool instead. Assuming one can be found that's not been closed.
I asked a born-and-bred Can Picafort resident whether he would be attending the "suelta". No, he said. He used to, and used to be one of those who swam after the live ducks. But what was the point now? He's right. There is no point. It's plain daft, but it always was plain daft, which is why of course it should continue.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
As part of the IBATUR (Balearics tourism agency) case, there is a sub-investigation, one that involves a company called Trui. No, not TUI. Trui. You don't need to know the ins and outs, and you are probably not interested anyway, but there may be some painful truths coming out of the Trui troubles. Painful, that is, for the town hall, the Unió Mallorquina party (yep, them again) and ex-mayor Miguel Ferrer, himself a leading figure in the UM.
To cut to the chase, as reported in "The Diario", anti-corruption prosecutors suspect that money from the town hall was used to fund the UM's electoral campaign in 2007. Fingered in all this - potentially - are Ferrer, who was mayor at the time, and his right-hand man, Francesc Cladera, who - it is being alleged - could have arranged for payments, in black, from the town hall's coffers.
Coming on the back of the opposition Partido Popular's desire to re-open the case into alleged irregularities in respect of the Can Ramis building, things have suddenly become murky in what had been, so we had thought, the clearer waters of Alcúdia politics.
And while on the subject of water, and moving on from yesterday's swimming pool fiasco, the annual mischief in Can Picafort duly resulted in a few live ducks going for a dip in the sea during the duck toss on Sunday. Did we ever expect that they wouldn't?
The local press found both residents and the head of fiestas "surprised" by the level of police vigilance for the event. Not sure they should have been surprised. The naughty boys have been extracting the Miguel for a few years now, and the Guardia seemed determined to prevent any more Carry On Quacking. The police presence was at a level, so it was said, for the royal family putting in an appearance. Helicopters, a sub-aqua team plus the beachside patrols. And still they let some ducks go.
It is all utterly ridiculous. The event has always been ridiculous, but the ban was and is ridiculous, as is what has replaced it, i.e. rubber ducks. The thumbing of noses to authority is ridiculous, but so is the response. What can we expect next year? Submarines rather than a sub-aqua crew? Might be right given that subs used to launch dummy torpedoes at the towers on the beach, such as the one in Can Pic on which the naughties had graffiti-ed a "pope", announcing their intention to flout the duck law again. Maybe they should just ban the whole thing. Or stage it in a swimming pool instead. Assuming one can be found that's not been closed.
I asked a born-and-bred Can Picafort resident whether he would be attending the "suelta". No, he said. He used to, and used to be one of those who swam after the live ducks. But what was the point now? He's right. There is no point. It's plain daft, but it always was plain daft, which is why of course it should continue.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Kiss And Make-Up: No chance - corruption cases continue
The corruption cases involving leading members of the Unió Mallorquina party continue to astound. There are now two former tourism ministers in the frame - Francesc Buils has been indicted, to add to Miquel Nadal. The former speaker of the parliament and former leader of the Council of Mallorca, Maria Antònia Munar, is now accused of diverting some five million euros of public funds between 2000 and 2007. There are also accusations of payments to party members from public money. The details no longer seem to matter. The scale is all that really counts. And the impression. One not of a party rotten to the core but one riddled with the maggots of decay at its very top: Buils and Nadal were very much Munar's men. They were. The canaries are singing, looking to pass the buck and deflect the accusations elsewhere.
There remains in all this sleaze and in all these allegations a suggestion that the cases are all political. Are they really? For them to be political would require some sort of set-up involving other political parties, the police and the judges. It's a nonsense. Nevertheless, there is an unease with the highly public nature of the way in which evidence is given out and in which the accused are paraded. Jason Moore, in an editorial in "The Bulletin", made a valid point the other day, one with which I agree; in essence, that the process should go ahead with greater dignity. The calls for sentences that come from the prosecutors before the full judicial procedure has been gone through are as unpleasant as they are presumptive of guilt.
This said, the magnitude of the charges, and also those levelled against the former president of the regional government, Jaume Matas (Partido Popular), are such that highly public displays might be said to be necessary. The corruption cases are that serious that they do threaten an undermining of the democratic system. One cannot overstate the significance of what is taking place in Mallorca at present. I have wondered if I have overplayed all this myself in invoking the past - the Franco past. I don't know that I have, but I wouldn't necessarily have expected support for this from ... Maria Antònia Munar. In an interview with the IB3 television station yesterday, she declared her complete innocence and went on to say that "democracy is based on the confidence that people have in the institutions and politicians, and when this confidence is lost a dictator can emerge". She is not wrong, but some might detect a touch of dissembling - allegedly.
So seriously are the cases being taken that the central government's justice ministry has authorised a reinforcement of the anti-corruption investigation unit in the Balearics. Fifty-five prosecutors are on their way to augment its numbers. 55! The Balearics delegate to the central government has had to ask for police reinforcements because so many officers are involved in examining the evidence associated with the different cases. It is a staggering situation.
Among the various accusations being made is one by the judge presiding over the so-called "caso Maquillaje" (the make-up case). He has accused Munar of alleged bribery. There was something rather poignant, if this is the right word, about this accusation. On the day that the judge was saying this, someone left prison. The poignancy was the photo of this person with a beret and sunglasses, travelling on what looked like a bus. Who was this? Luis Roldán. He was once the director-general of the Guardia Civil. He had served half a 31-year sentence for, among other things, bribery.
Yesterday there was another anti-corruption demonstration in Palma organised by the "Plataforma contra la Corrupción". It also had a certain poignancy. They demonstrated in the hope that the current spate of corruption cases might be the last. They can hope. They should remember Roldán. Maybe I - they - do make too much of all this. There's nothing new under a Spanish or Mallorcan sun. Not now and not, in all likelihood, in the future. But maybe the highly public parades of the accused might, just might, stop that future.
QUIZ:
Yesterday: The Wonder Stuff, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmzS9mjz_I. Today: make-up or make up, noun or phrasal verb; either way, which group kissed and made up?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
There remains in all this sleaze and in all these allegations a suggestion that the cases are all political. Are they really? For them to be political would require some sort of set-up involving other political parties, the police and the judges. It's a nonsense. Nevertheless, there is an unease with the highly public nature of the way in which evidence is given out and in which the accused are paraded. Jason Moore, in an editorial in "The Bulletin", made a valid point the other day, one with which I agree; in essence, that the process should go ahead with greater dignity. The calls for sentences that come from the prosecutors before the full judicial procedure has been gone through are as unpleasant as they are presumptive of guilt.
This said, the magnitude of the charges, and also those levelled against the former president of the regional government, Jaume Matas (Partido Popular), are such that highly public displays might be said to be necessary. The corruption cases are that serious that they do threaten an undermining of the democratic system. One cannot overstate the significance of what is taking place in Mallorca at present. I have wondered if I have overplayed all this myself in invoking the past - the Franco past. I don't know that I have, but I wouldn't necessarily have expected support for this from ... Maria Antònia Munar. In an interview with the IB3 television station yesterday, she declared her complete innocence and went on to say that "democracy is based on the confidence that people have in the institutions and politicians, and when this confidence is lost a dictator can emerge". She is not wrong, but some might detect a touch of dissembling - allegedly.
So seriously are the cases being taken that the central government's justice ministry has authorised a reinforcement of the anti-corruption investigation unit in the Balearics. Fifty-five prosecutors are on their way to augment its numbers. 55! The Balearics delegate to the central government has had to ask for police reinforcements because so many officers are involved in examining the evidence associated with the different cases. It is a staggering situation.
Among the various accusations being made is one by the judge presiding over the so-called "caso Maquillaje" (the make-up case). He has accused Munar of alleged bribery. There was something rather poignant, if this is the right word, about this accusation. On the day that the judge was saying this, someone left prison. The poignancy was the photo of this person with a beret and sunglasses, travelling on what looked like a bus. Who was this? Luis Roldán. He was once the director-general of the Guardia Civil. He had served half a 31-year sentence for, among other things, bribery.
Yesterday there was another anti-corruption demonstration in Palma organised by the "Plataforma contra la Corrupción". It also had a certain poignancy. They demonstrated in the hope that the current spate of corruption cases might be the last. They can hope. They should remember Roldán. Maybe I - they - do make too much of all this. There's nothing new under a Spanish or Mallorcan sun. Not now and not, in all likelihood, in the future. But maybe the highly public parades of the accused might, just might, stop that future.
QUIZ:
Yesterday: The Wonder Stuff, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmzS9mjz_I. Today: make-up or make up, noun or phrasal verb; either way, which group kissed and made up?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
The Scream: The anniversary of corruption in Mallorca
It was another holiday yesterday. For once, not a religious occasion, but a political one. Balearics Day, the twenty-seventh anniversary of the introduction of autonomous, regional government in the islands. How apt that a political celebration should be marked by the worst cases of political corruption that Mallorca has ever known - which is saying something. During the twenty-seven years, scandal has reared its head from time to time, but it has spent the past few weeks screaming and bellowing. Rather than dressing up in party frocks, the celebrations for Balearics Day should have witnessed Munchian mourning-black dresses, the scream of the latest political nightmare and anxiety, and hair shirts donned by discredited individuals from the political class. Henry II once did a good line in public humiliation following the murder of Thomas à Becket. No-one may have been betrayed or assassinated, but the entire system of democracy that regional autonomy was meant to have bestowed on Mallorca has been betrayed. And not for the first time. The question is whether it will be the last. You wouldn't count on it.
President Antich, in a speech to coincide with Balearics Day, has not engaged in public self-flagellation but he has offered his apologies to the people of the islands. He is resisting calls for an early election, preferring to appeal to other parties to come together. Minority rule and motions of no confidence may make this resistance futile, but the mechanics of government - and the constant harping on about the allegedly dysfunctional nature of coalition - are secondary gloss over the more fundamental issue of corruption, both within politics and within Mallorcan society. More than fretting over the electoral system, the corruption scandals should be informing a debate as to what brings them about. Balearics Day should be the focal point for what the past twenty-seven years have represented, as they have culminated in the current chaos.
Autonomous government brought with it responsibility, that of acting in accordance with democratic principles. But the revelations of the past months have suggested that this lesson has not been learned or, over the course of the past generation, has come to be forgotten. Autonomous government also brought with it the Unió Mallorquina, the party at the centre of most of the rumpuses. It was formed around the same time and in readiness for the first local elections in 1983. That it, a party designed to serve "nationalist" interests on the island, should have been exposed as one serving only its own interests is a deeply alarming condemnation of not just the wider political system but also the social system of networks and nepotism. There is a horrible sense in which "nationalist" is aligned with the self-preservation of the insular webs of family and favours. Which is not to single out the UM, far from it, but it is now symbolic of a sick system created by regionalisation that has politicised a societal preference for rule-bending. All power may well indeed corrupt, and inappropriate behaviour by politicians may indeed be taken as a signal to others in local society to misbehave, but I would argue that it is this society that begets the politics of the island, not the other way round. It has spawned Maria Munar, a figure of the UM from its inception, a Cruella de Vil who has kidnapped a doe-eyed and naïve democracy and bundled it into the back of an official limo, secreted inside a massive wedge of cash. Antich has been criticised for booting the UM out of the coalition. Booting out? He should have launched them into the far reaches of the universe. He was absolutely right to disassociate himself and the PSOE from them.
Balearics Day is the celebration of one of the most important elements of the post-Franco era, that of autonomous government. A generation on from the worthy intentions of autonomy and what does one have? A political party that can allegedly turn a ministry into its own bank. The celebration should inspire not a debate as to the technicalities of local government but soul-searching as to the intertwined mores of sectors of Mallorcan society and the political class. A generation on and one wonders what has been learned. Autonomous government was a clear statement of the rejection of Francoism. But let's not forget that Franco despised and mistrusted political parties. He did away with them, and The Scream lasted for decades.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
President Antich, in a speech to coincide with Balearics Day, has not engaged in public self-flagellation but he has offered his apologies to the people of the islands. He is resisting calls for an early election, preferring to appeal to other parties to come together. Minority rule and motions of no confidence may make this resistance futile, but the mechanics of government - and the constant harping on about the allegedly dysfunctional nature of coalition - are secondary gloss over the more fundamental issue of corruption, both within politics and within Mallorcan society. More than fretting over the electoral system, the corruption scandals should be informing a debate as to what brings them about. Balearics Day should be the focal point for what the past twenty-seven years have represented, as they have culminated in the current chaos.
Autonomous government brought with it responsibility, that of acting in accordance with democratic principles. But the revelations of the past months have suggested that this lesson has not been learned or, over the course of the past generation, has come to be forgotten. Autonomous government also brought with it the Unió Mallorquina, the party at the centre of most of the rumpuses. It was formed around the same time and in readiness for the first local elections in 1983. That it, a party designed to serve "nationalist" interests on the island, should have been exposed as one serving only its own interests is a deeply alarming condemnation of not just the wider political system but also the social system of networks and nepotism. There is a horrible sense in which "nationalist" is aligned with the self-preservation of the insular webs of family and favours. Which is not to single out the UM, far from it, but it is now symbolic of a sick system created by regionalisation that has politicised a societal preference for rule-bending. All power may well indeed corrupt, and inappropriate behaviour by politicians may indeed be taken as a signal to others in local society to misbehave, but I would argue that it is this society that begets the politics of the island, not the other way round. It has spawned Maria Munar, a figure of the UM from its inception, a Cruella de Vil who has kidnapped a doe-eyed and naïve democracy and bundled it into the back of an official limo, secreted inside a massive wedge of cash. Antich has been criticised for booting the UM out of the coalition. Booting out? He should have launched them into the far reaches of the universe. He was absolutely right to disassociate himself and the PSOE from them.
Balearics Day is the celebration of one of the most important elements of the post-Franco era, that of autonomous government. A generation on from the worthy intentions of autonomy and what does one have? A political party that can allegedly turn a ministry into its own bank. The celebration should inspire not a debate as to the technicalities of local government but soul-searching as to the intertwined mores of sectors of Mallorcan society and the political class. A generation on and one wonders what has been learned. Autonomous government was a clear statement of the rejection of Francoism. But let's not forget that Franco despised and mistrusted political parties. He did away with them, and The Scream lasted for decades.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thus Spake Zarathustra - The downfall of Mother Munar
Maria Antònia Munar, matriarch of the Unió Mallorquina party and of Mallorcan politics, has finally quit her post as speaker of the Balearics parliament. Her role in the so-called "caso maquillaje" (make-up) and the corruption allegations levelled at her have - belatedly - claimed her. She is accused, along with former tourism minister Miquel Nadal, of using an audiovisual company, Video U, to divert a quarter of a million euros of public funds for the purpose of financing the UM's electoral campaigns. Her position had become untenable. The new code of politician ethics that had been introduced was meant to have led to resignations while investigations were ongoing. Munar had chosen to ignore this, until Friday.
While the case has still to be fully brought to court, the knives have already been sharpened. One does have to wonder as to what impact the press might have on any trial. So far there have only been declarations in front of the judge, though Munar has chosen her right to keep silent. Meanwhile, the outstanding "Diario" journalist, Matías Vallés, has - not for the first time - ripped a reputation to shreds. In yesterday's paper, he headlined a piece about Munar thus: "The most hated woman in Mallorca's history". Headlined it thus, and then thus spake Zarathustra. Vallés quotes Munar from a previous time, when she governed in Mallorca alongside the discredited and under-investigation ex-president Jaume Matas of the Partido Popular. At that time she told her party that there was going to be "no-one accused of corruption". With this, Vallés brands her Zarathustra. Nietzsche took the mythical character and made him "the first immoralist". Perhaps Munar considered herself an "Übermensch".
Vallés refers to Munar's lack of principles and to her relationship with Nadal. "Her beloved dolphin" is how he describes the ex-minister and Munar's anointed successor as party leader. He had previously called Nadal "ineffable". In a twist to the saga, Nadal and three directors of Video U have protested their innocence and sought to finger Munar, a delicious story of Munar handing Nadal 300 grand in readies while in the official car of the president of the Council of Mallorca (which Munar once was) all adding to the sleaze.
The characterisation of Munar as a hated woman raises an issue in respect of women in Mallorcan politics, one that has resonance in wider Mallorcan society. Vallés also refers to Munar as Lady Diada, and one has to go back a bit to understand quite what he means; there is form when it comes to Vallés and Munar. The Diada name can just as easily be Lady MacBeth - feminine compassion supplanted by ambition and ruthlessness. Generalisations are always to be treated with care, but Munar's style and demeanour are not unusual among Mallorcan women of a certain standing. It is in the Mallorcan character to exhibit a sense of superiority in any event, and for some women this can become aloofness that borders on the contemptuous. And to this can be added power lust and self-promotion. Vallés repeated yesterday some of what he said about Munar in December 2007. He mentions a magazine, paid for by the Council of Mallorca, which featured 87 photos of Munar on 83 pages. In another magazine, "Brisas", published by the Diario's competitor, the Serra group ("Ultima Hora" and "The Bulletin"), its VIP section was once full of photos of Munar in her finery. One couldn't turn a page without her staring out at you. But she is not unique.
The German neighbours the other day raised what at first seemed a strange point, followed by a question. On Sundays, they had noticed women who wear furs, wandering around with noses firmly raised in the air. What was their standing, they asked. Initially I didn't understand, until I remembered that in Germany status tends to be defined, not by class as it might be in Britain, but by profession, whether the husband's or the woman's. Talk to Germans, and their small talk is often littered with the adjective "beruflich" (professional). It matters to them. There wasn't necessarily any such equivalent in Mallorca, I ventured. Just wealth. Or power. But they had identified a trait, one seemingly compatible with Munar. Aloof and contemptuous, not just of others - the Übermensch mentality perhaps, the triumphing by making enemies (as she has admitted) - but also of the rules. Munar has been brought down by alleged rule-bending and breaking and by a hubris that is symptomatic of a social stratum in Mallorca. Vallés has not necessarily made this point, but he has nevertheless given it potential currency. If you read the native, then I recommend you take a look at his article:
http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2010/02/27/matias-valles-mujer-odiada-historia-mallorca/549053.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for February 2010
Architecture, housing - 26 February 2010
Association of British Companies Menorca - 1 February 2010
Banks - 20 February 2010, 22 February 2010
Bird-watching - 8 February 2010, 9 February 2010
Bleach - 14 February 2010
Car-hire prices - 11 February 2010
Carlos Delgado - 17 February 2010
Carnival - 11 February 2010
Caso maquillaje corruption - 28 February 2010
Catalan and politics of language - 17 February 2010
China Crisis in Pollensa - 19 February 2010
Cold weather and houses in Mallorca - 12 February 2010
Cycling tourists - 3 February 2010, 8 February 2010, 13 February 2010
Foreigners' office online residency system - 15 February 2010
Halifax Bank Puerto Pollensa to close - 20 February 2010
Hotels opening at Easter - 15 February 2010
Inestur corruption case (Operación Voltor) - 4 February 2010, 5 February 2010, 6 February 2010, 7 February 2010, 9 February 2010
Mallorca Tourist Board (Fomento del Turismo) - 1 February 2010, 22 February 2010
Maria Antònia Munar resignation - 28 February 2010
Mobiles in marketing - 14 February 2010
Muro golf course - 20 February 2010
Muro's former mayor disqualified - 5 February 2010
Palm beetle - 17 February 2010
Quality tourism, so-called - 27 February 2010
Real Mallorca - 5 February 2010, 24 February 2010
Religious education - 2 February 2010
Riskal closes - 10 February 2010
Ryanair - 23 February 2010
Satyricon restaurant, Alcúdia - 21 February 2010
Spain's worst companies - 25 February 2010
The Cranberries in Palma - 19 February 2010
Tourism season 2010 - 4 February 2010, 11 February 2010
Unió Mallorquina corruption charges - 6 February 2010, 7 February 2010, 9 February 2010, 28 February 2010
Water supplies - 18 February 2010
Weather in February - 16 February 2010
What's on information (Bulletin) - 22 February 2010
While the case has still to be fully brought to court, the knives have already been sharpened. One does have to wonder as to what impact the press might have on any trial. So far there have only been declarations in front of the judge, though Munar has chosen her right to keep silent. Meanwhile, the outstanding "Diario" journalist, Matías Vallés, has - not for the first time - ripped a reputation to shreds. In yesterday's paper, he headlined a piece about Munar thus: "The most hated woman in Mallorca's history". Headlined it thus, and then thus spake Zarathustra. Vallés quotes Munar from a previous time, when she governed in Mallorca alongside the discredited and under-investigation ex-president Jaume Matas of the Partido Popular. At that time she told her party that there was going to be "no-one accused of corruption". With this, Vallés brands her Zarathustra. Nietzsche took the mythical character and made him "the first immoralist". Perhaps Munar considered herself an "Übermensch".
Vallés refers to Munar's lack of principles and to her relationship with Nadal. "Her beloved dolphin" is how he describes the ex-minister and Munar's anointed successor as party leader. He had previously called Nadal "ineffable". In a twist to the saga, Nadal and three directors of Video U have protested their innocence and sought to finger Munar, a delicious story of Munar handing Nadal 300 grand in readies while in the official car of the president of the Council of Mallorca (which Munar once was) all adding to the sleaze.
The characterisation of Munar as a hated woman raises an issue in respect of women in Mallorcan politics, one that has resonance in wider Mallorcan society. Vallés also refers to Munar as Lady Diada, and one has to go back a bit to understand quite what he means; there is form when it comes to Vallés and Munar. The Diada name can just as easily be Lady MacBeth - feminine compassion supplanted by ambition and ruthlessness. Generalisations are always to be treated with care, but Munar's style and demeanour are not unusual among Mallorcan women of a certain standing. It is in the Mallorcan character to exhibit a sense of superiority in any event, and for some women this can become aloofness that borders on the contemptuous. And to this can be added power lust and self-promotion. Vallés repeated yesterday some of what he said about Munar in December 2007. He mentions a magazine, paid for by the Council of Mallorca, which featured 87 photos of Munar on 83 pages. In another magazine, "Brisas", published by the Diario's competitor, the Serra group ("Ultima Hora" and "The Bulletin"), its VIP section was once full of photos of Munar in her finery. One couldn't turn a page without her staring out at you. But she is not unique.
The German neighbours the other day raised what at first seemed a strange point, followed by a question. On Sundays, they had noticed women who wear furs, wandering around with noses firmly raised in the air. What was their standing, they asked. Initially I didn't understand, until I remembered that in Germany status tends to be defined, not by class as it might be in Britain, but by profession, whether the husband's or the woman's. Talk to Germans, and their small talk is often littered with the adjective "beruflich" (professional). It matters to them. There wasn't necessarily any such equivalent in Mallorca, I ventured. Just wealth. Or power. But they had identified a trait, one seemingly compatible with Munar. Aloof and contemptuous, not just of others - the Übermensch mentality perhaps, the triumphing by making enemies (as she has admitted) - but also of the rules. Munar has been brought down by alleged rule-bending and breaking and by a hubris that is symptomatic of a social stratum in Mallorca. Vallés has not necessarily made this point, but he has nevertheless given it potential currency. If you read the native, then I recommend you take a look at his article:
http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2010/02/27/matias-valles-mujer-odiada-historia-mallorca/549053.html
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Index for February 2010
Architecture, housing - 26 February 2010
Association of British Companies Menorca - 1 February 2010
Banks - 20 February 2010, 22 February 2010
Bird-watching - 8 February 2010, 9 February 2010
Bleach - 14 February 2010
Car-hire prices - 11 February 2010
Carlos Delgado - 17 February 2010
Carnival - 11 February 2010
Caso maquillaje corruption - 28 February 2010
Catalan and politics of language - 17 February 2010
China Crisis in Pollensa - 19 February 2010
Cold weather and houses in Mallorca - 12 February 2010
Cycling tourists - 3 February 2010, 8 February 2010, 13 February 2010
Foreigners' office online residency system - 15 February 2010
Halifax Bank Puerto Pollensa to close - 20 February 2010
Hotels opening at Easter - 15 February 2010
Inestur corruption case (Operación Voltor) - 4 February 2010, 5 February 2010, 6 February 2010, 7 February 2010, 9 February 2010
Mallorca Tourist Board (Fomento del Turismo) - 1 February 2010, 22 February 2010
Maria Antònia Munar resignation - 28 February 2010
Mobiles in marketing - 14 February 2010
Muro golf course - 20 February 2010
Muro's former mayor disqualified - 5 February 2010
Palm beetle - 17 February 2010
Quality tourism, so-called - 27 February 2010
Real Mallorca - 5 February 2010, 24 February 2010
Religious education - 2 February 2010
Riskal closes - 10 February 2010
Ryanair - 23 February 2010
Satyricon restaurant, Alcúdia - 21 February 2010
Spain's worst companies - 25 February 2010
The Cranberries in Palma - 19 February 2010
Tourism season 2010 - 4 February 2010, 11 February 2010
Unió Mallorquina corruption charges - 6 February 2010, 7 February 2010, 9 February 2010, 28 February 2010
Water supplies - 18 February 2010
Weather in February - 16 February 2010
What's on information (Bulletin) - 22 February 2010
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
We Got Nothing To Be Guilty Of - Mallorca's tourism corruption
Events surrounding Operación Voltor (Operation Vulture) and the corruption allegations related to Inestur and the tourism ministry have moved on apace. The prosecutors are talking in terms of six years imprisonment for Miquel Nadal, ex-tourism minister, and eleven for the Miquel Flaquer, recent leader of the Unió Mallorquina. One needs to be careful. Though charged, along with others, there have been no trials as such. These announcements are often made as to prison terms, but they are rather unseemly. Guilt does tend to be presumed, perhaps with very good reason, but the pre-match (so to speak) publicity given to stints inside does rather stick in the throat.
Nevertheless, what is emerging is evidence of what the prosecution alleges was a "network of assistance to businesspeople close to the UM" that operated via the tourism ministry with the additional aid of the former leader Flaquer. A key example concerns the awarding of a contract for a voice recognition system worth over a million euros to a technology firm. The police argue that the value was way above what was required, the suspicion being that the money trail ended up in the coffers of the party itself. What all this implies is that the ministry, and therefore also Inestur, were being exploited for gain and being run as some private fiefdom to finance, if not necessarily individuals, but then the UM party - a line of argument denied, as you might expect. Individuals or party, it doesn't really matter, as it all involves the diversion of public money. It seems extraordinary, assuming one accepts the police's version, that a ministry can be so run without apparently any checks, until the belated ones of the prosecutors. Moreover, it suggests a vein of collusion coursing through the ministry with drips attached to various individuals all tagged with the name UM.
At present, the investigation seems to centre on the period when Miquel Nadal was minister. His predecessor, Francesc Buils, has not been detained but he is expected to be called to answer questions. No charges have been made against him, but a question which arises is whether the UM, in return for its coalition place, was granted the tourism ministry and then targeted it as a means to a rather different end than that of merely promoting and managing the islands' tourism industry. Inevitably, the scandal has been used to question the viability of coalition governments in the Balearics (well, by "The Bulletin" anyway). This is plainly not the issue. Coalitions do not beget corruption. The logic of the "viability" argument is that they do, and it is wrong-headed. The issue is corruption - period - and the wider societal malaise that cultivates it. This, and the sheer inadequacy of control mechanisms. I would reiterate a point made more than once on this blog, that to reassure a rightly alarmed electorate, a system of pre-emptive vetting of contract awards is needed, rather than the retrospective actions of the police and prosecutors.
Anyway, back to day-to-day running of government, and there is now a new tourism minister. President Antich has chosen not to assume command, though he has put sport under his direct control, and has moved to tourism the employment minister Joana Barceló, president of the Council of Menorca from 1999 to 2008 and a member of the PSIB-PSOE, i.e. the Balearics wing of the socialist party. Antich is also rebuffing attempts by the Partido Popular to bring a vote of no confidence.
Bird-watching tourism - part two
Further to yesterday, Geoff, the blog's twitcher in residence, has put into perspective the argument that bird-watching tourists necessarily contribute much to the wider economy. Staying at an eco-tourist farm as part of a bird-watching trip to Alcúdia, he had the impression that it was the tour company that was benefiting the most and that he spent only small amounts whilst on trips around the island. Moreover, he wonders about Mallorca as a bird-watching destination, given that it has become cheaper to travel to Asia where the birds and the landscapes are more exotic and also given that rarer birds which come to Mallorca do so in the winter when the weather is less inviting and the hotels are shut. On this last point, hotels, the piece from "The Bulletin" on Sunday referred to "a number of hotels ...near to Albufera ... which cater for bird-watchers during the low season". Really? Which ones are they? Unless I'm very much mistaken, there is only one hotel in Playa de Muro open right now, the Iberostar which brings in mainly the cyclists.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Weather Report, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqashW66D7o. Today's title - oh yes you have - allegedly. Which twosome?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Nevertheless, what is emerging is evidence of what the prosecution alleges was a "network of assistance to businesspeople close to the UM" that operated via the tourism ministry with the additional aid of the former leader Flaquer. A key example concerns the awarding of a contract for a voice recognition system worth over a million euros to a technology firm. The police argue that the value was way above what was required, the suspicion being that the money trail ended up in the coffers of the party itself. What all this implies is that the ministry, and therefore also Inestur, were being exploited for gain and being run as some private fiefdom to finance, if not necessarily individuals, but then the UM party - a line of argument denied, as you might expect. Individuals or party, it doesn't really matter, as it all involves the diversion of public money. It seems extraordinary, assuming one accepts the police's version, that a ministry can be so run without apparently any checks, until the belated ones of the prosecutors. Moreover, it suggests a vein of collusion coursing through the ministry with drips attached to various individuals all tagged with the name UM.
At present, the investigation seems to centre on the period when Miquel Nadal was minister. His predecessor, Francesc Buils, has not been detained but he is expected to be called to answer questions. No charges have been made against him, but a question which arises is whether the UM, in return for its coalition place, was granted the tourism ministry and then targeted it as a means to a rather different end than that of merely promoting and managing the islands' tourism industry. Inevitably, the scandal has been used to question the viability of coalition governments in the Balearics (well, by "The Bulletin" anyway). This is plainly not the issue. Coalitions do not beget corruption. The logic of the "viability" argument is that they do, and it is wrong-headed. The issue is corruption - period - and the wider societal malaise that cultivates it. This, and the sheer inadequacy of control mechanisms. I would reiterate a point made more than once on this blog, that to reassure a rightly alarmed electorate, a system of pre-emptive vetting of contract awards is needed, rather than the retrospective actions of the police and prosecutors.
Anyway, back to day-to-day running of government, and there is now a new tourism minister. President Antich has chosen not to assume command, though he has put sport under his direct control, and has moved to tourism the employment minister Joana Barceló, president of the Council of Menorca from 1999 to 2008 and a member of the PSIB-PSOE, i.e. the Balearics wing of the socialist party. Antich is also rebuffing attempts by the Partido Popular to bring a vote of no confidence.
Bird-watching tourism - part two
Further to yesterday, Geoff, the blog's twitcher in residence, has put into perspective the argument that bird-watching tourists necessarily contribute much to the wider economy. Staying at an eco-tourist farm as part of a bird-watching trip to Alcúdia, he had the impression that it was the tour company that was benefiting the most and that he spent only small amounts whilst on trips around the island. Moreover, he wonders about Mallorca as a bird-watching destination, given that it has become cheaper to travel to Asia where the birds and the landscapes are more exotic and also given that rarer birds which come to Mallorca do so in the winter when the weather is less inviting and the hotels are shut. On this last point, hotels, the piece from "The Bulletin" on Sunday referred to "a number of hotels ...near to Albufera ... which cater for bird-watchers during the low season". Really? Which ones are they? Unless I'm very much mistaken, there is only one hotel in Playa de Muro open right now, the Iberostar which brings in mainly the cyclists.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Weather Report, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqashW66D7o. Today's title - oh yes you have - allegedly. Which twosome?
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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