From Cuba With Love: Havaneres

In 1860, a composer by the name of Sebastián de Iradier Salaverri went to Cuba. He himself was from the Basque Country and was born in the small town of Lanciego. Sebastián was to die five years after his voyage to Cuba. He didn't live to appreciate quite what he had done, because musically Sebastián had in effect created a musical genre.

One hundred years after he wrote his defining song, a version of it was to be sung by someone who was very much responsible for a musical genre. In the 1961 film "Blue Hawaii", Elvis Presley adopted a somewhat less raunchy style than the one he had been previously famed for. He sang a song that was like a lullaby, but it was an upbeat lullaby with a lusciousness that may have been appropriate for Hawaii but which had been created in Cuba. The song was "No More". Don Robertson and Hal Blair were credited as the writers, but a third name was credited as well - Sebastián Iradier. The song was his. Its original title was "La Paloma".

This is a song that has been recorded hundreds of times. It has been renamed, reinterpreted and reproduced in different languages. Notable among those who have sung it in Spanish is Julio Iglesias. An English version of the original was to be recorded by Nana Mouskouri. What all these versions shared, including the one transported to Hawaii for Elvis, was the genre that Sebastián Iradier was responsible for - the habanera.

Strictly speaking, Sebastián didn't invent the genre. He popularised what already existed. Some twenty years prior to his composing "La Paloma", an article had appeared in an Havana newspaper "La Prensa". It spoke of "the love in the dance". The habanera was both song and dance, something rooted in Cuban culture.

In 1875, the opera "Carmen" by the French composer Georges Bizet was premiered in Paris. It featured a habanera - "Love Is A Rebellious Bird" - and so the style, it might be said, had entered the musical mainstream, where it has stayed ever since.

The habanera, through its clear association with Spain because of the one-time colonial relationship and Sebastián Iradier's song, was to follow different pathways. One of these led to Catalonia where other musical traditions from the Americas, such as rumba, were to undergo a Catalanisation. A popular culture of the Catalan "havanera", a song typically sung in a tavern, took hold, but as with other aspects of Catalan culture it was to suffer from Franco's repression.

Despite this, in 1948 a book was published of the scores of various songs, and these were to help what was a havanera branch line of the so-called "Nova Canció", the new song of the Catalans that was a movement from the 1950s.

In 1966 in a tavern in the tiny fishing village of Calella de Palafrugell in Girona (Catalonia), they held a small song festival. That 1966 "cantada" has become one of the most celebrated occasions in marking out the rediscovery of Catalan folk music tradition. There is still an annual festival, a gathering of havaneres. The tiny village, and it remains tiny, attracts some 30,000 people each July. This year, as will be obvious, marks the fiftieth anniversary of one of the more extraordinary moments in contemporary cultural development.

The havanera and groups of havaneres crossed over the sea to Mallorca. Local groups began to be formed and were part of the peculiar mix of traditional and modern that characterised Mallorcan popular music by the late 1960s. That was an era of cheesy pop, of angst-filled folk and of the truly bizarre - I really must tell the story some time of Los 4 de Asís, the quartet of singing Franciscan monks.

Havaneres are now highly popular. Groups such as Sotavent, who come from Alcudia, are regular performers at fiesta time. These aren't exclusively fiestas in coastal areas, but these are where you might most typically run across havaneres. And in one coastal area - Puerto Soller - they've been holding a gathering ("trobada") of havaneres: the seventh such festival. This is a gathering just like it was fifty years ago in a tiny fishing village in Catalonia.

* The video comes from an IB3 "Alcudia special" from 2010. Some of you may be able to recognise town hall councillors past and present.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 8 October 2016

Morning high (7.00am): 18.6C
Forecast high: 24C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 9 October - Cloud, sun, 23C; 10 October - Cloud, sun, 21C; 11 October - Cloud, 23C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): South 3 to 4 veering North-Northeast from midday.

A fair chance of some rain and storm; yellow alerts in place.

Evening update (19.00): Well, that didn't go to plan at all. Yes, there was a fair amount of cloud but rather more sun. Not a murmur or drop from the skies. High of 29.3C.

Bringing All-Inclusives To Account

Biel Barceló told parliament's tourism committee earlier this week that sixteen fines had been handed out to all-inclusive hotels. Quite what they were fined for was not made clear. Was it simply for having been offering all-inclusive when the hotels were not on the ministry's all-inclusive register? That wasn't the implication. Eighty all-inclusives had been "reviewed", he said, and they had been reviewed for that very reason - not having been on the register. Why not just fine them all? What is the purpose of a register? It's not meant to be voluntary. If a hotel hasn't registered, what has it got to hide?

Barceló was self-congratulatory in having been able to announce the sixteen fines. Sixteen. Hardly a princely sum. Where he was more deserving of congratulation was in being able to say that there hadn't been inspections in either 2014 or 2015. His government can be partly forgiven for 2015 as it didn't come to power until high summer was more or less upon it, but why no inspections the previous year? And what about inspections in years before that?

Another tourism minister called Barceló, Joana, was the final of the four incumbents of the post during the Antich government of 2007 to 2011. I can well recall her answering a question about all-inclusives by saying that inspections were made and that her government was being strong in this regard. Strange, therefore, how we never heard any more or from the subsequent government. All-inclusives, we were being led to believe, had a clean bill-of-health.

Let's be clear, there are different types of AI. It is a package that can be either total (it's the only option) or just one of the forms of board on offer. It is not by any means solely something from the economy end of the market. There are good - very good - hotels with AI, and the standard of the offer is also good. Service is good, the food is varied, there's no watered-down beer and there are no dodgy local brands of spirits. Should we assume that the sixteen fines were not directed at any of this class of hotel?

At the economy end, anyone with the slightest knowledge knows what the deal is. And part of that deal is the on-arrival upgrade (which may also exist with better hotels). Then there is the daily deal. Bringing in people who aren't guests. When this offer was explained to Pilar Carbonell, the director-general of tourism, at a meeting in Alcudia this time last year, it was clear that she was unaware of such a practice. And she's the director-general.

When there was some rumpus about self-service alcohol in Magalluf AIs last year, Barceló seemed surprised. He was then scandalised by the level of apparent drunkenness. And he's the tourism minister.

What tourism worlds do politicians inhabit, because it clearly isn't the one that is right at the coalface of Mallorca's economy-class tourism. Good luck to Barceló with his "regulations" of AI, but what are these going to be? Improving quality standards, we understand. Yes, and the 2012 tourism law already makes provision for this. It's never been enforced and nor has it been made clear what these standards are or should be. Are we going to find out next year? Perhaps so. In which case, will they include staff-guest ratios to ensure no queuing or only short queues? Will they stipulate what's on the menu, what drinks can be served, what type of treatment guests receive?

It's high time that some AIs were brought to account. They cannot be banned because the market will not allow this, but requirements can be made tough enough that the AI model ceases to be viable. If Barceló, as seems evident, wishes to impose tough standards on private accommodation to be rented for holiday purposes, then he should do likewise with the standards of AI. Yes, there are some poor-grade tourists who go to certain economy-class AI hotels, but when they are then treated as poor grade, you get what is too often the case: a vicious circle of unedifying tourism.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 7 October 2016

Morning high (6.50am): 15.6C
Forecast high: 26C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 8 October - Cloud, 25C; 9 October - Cloud, 23C; 10 October - Cloud, sun, 22C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East 2 to 3 veering South late on.

Noticeably cooler this morning. Stars are out. Should be reasonable today, but cloudy at times. The weekend doesn't look that good.

Evening update (19.15): Ok-ish. Warm enough. High of 28.5C.

Justice On Trial: Caso Gürtel

There's a major trial taking place. One into corruption. Remarkably enough, it isn't taking place in Mallorca. Even more remarkably, there aren't any Mallorcan politicians in the dock. This isn't to say, however, that there are not Mallorcan implications. One of them may involve former president Jaume Matas (when doesn't it?)

This is the first major trial to do with caso Gürtel, a corruption investigation that has taken so long and is so complicated that it defies any simple explanation. Even the name of the case isn't straightforward. Gürtel is German. It means belt. The choice of name disguised the individual at the heart of the network that spawned the case: Francisco Correa - Frank Belt, if you like.

To say that Gürtel is just about kickbacks would be way too simplistic. This was a web that was woven around the business affairs of Francisco Correa, who had long cultivated links with - who else - the Partido Popular. Gürtel covers illegal funding of the PP and the favourable awarding of contracts (different public authorities are implicated, including both the regional community of Madrid and the Madrid town hall). Money laundering, tax havens and tax evasion, bribery - they're all there.

If this sounds familiar - one can think of the Nóos trial, for instance - it is, but while Nóos and the alleged activities of the husband of Princess Cristina and his associate embraced some six million euros, that was chicken feed compared with Gürtel. The exact amounts have never accurately been established. The total has been put at as much as 120,000,000 euros.

Gürtel isn't simply (what am I saying - simply?) about massive corruption. It is a trial that has also placed the Spanish judicial system in the dock because of that system's potential for manipulation by political forces. In order to understand this, one has to go back to the origins of the investigations and who launched them. The investigating judge in 2009 - yes, that's when the legal ball started to roll - was Baltasar Garzón. He was to be suspended the following year. Not because of Gürtel but because it was argued that he had exceeded his powers in investigating war crimes committed by the Franco regime.

Garzón had his enemies in the legal profession, but he also had them in the Partido Popular. The Franco angle did somewhat obscure the motives for having him suspended. He was readmitted, only to be suspended again because he had ordered recordings of suspects and lawyers involved in Gürtel. All the while, there was the unmistakable influence of the PP.

But getting Garzón removed didn't end the investigation. Even more life was to be breathed into it when the revelations came about the so-called B accounts that had been operated by former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas (one of those now on trial). These too pointed to illegal party funding. Gürtel and Bárcenas are intimately linked.

If the PP had hoped that Gürtel would go away along with Gárzon, it was very much mistaken, and Gürtel, given its sheer scale, gave political momentum to others - Podemos most obviously. Pablo Iglesias's party and indeed the C's of Albert Rivera had corruption firmly in their sights. Yet despite this momentum and therefore the political situation that currently exists, what do we get? The trial has opened with legal challenges. They have come from defence lawyers, but giving these lawyers support is the PP. It almost beggars belief but the PP, via its lawyer, agrees that there is a list of reasons for having the whole trial process stopped in its tracks. And what might these reasons include? Baltasar Garzón. The investigating judge and those recordings.

The irregularities that surrounded Garzón were also said to have related to his having been designated as investigating judge. In other words, it is claimed that his was a political appointment (he has never disguised being sympathetic to PSOE).

So, it can be said that there were politics on both sides; that the judicial system was open to differing political influences. Where Garzón was concerned, there was probably also his own self-view. He was a celebrated judge by then, but this fame is another facet in suggesting that the judicial system is on trial. Investigating judges become famous. Mallorca has a couple of very well-known ones: José Castro, as much a people's hero as Garzón was to many, for his pursuit of Jaume Matas and Iñaki Urdangarin; Manuel Penalva, heading the investigation into Palma police corruption.

The system therefore creates celebrities out of judges, and much though they would always seek to remain impartial and within the rules, there can also be human fallibility. And political leanings are occasionally exposed. Take Juan Pedro Yllanes, now a Podemos deputy in Congress, who had originally been due to preside over Nóos.

Justice must be seen to be done. With Gürtel, whether it will or will be allowed to is another matter.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 6 October 2016

Morning high (7.03am): 17.8C
Forecast high: 23C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 7 October - Cloud, sun, 26C; 8 October - Cloud, sun, 26C; 9 October - Cloud, 22C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): South 2 to 3 backing East towards the evening. 

Alerts for storm and rain today, with temperatures down. Tomorrow mostly cloudy but with less risk of rain.

Evening update (19.15): Quite a bit of thunder, especially around midday, accompanied by a heavy downpour. Further rain later on, but rainfall again unevenly distributed. Not a lot of sun. High of 22.7C.

The Forgotten Museum Of Water

Who among you remembers the museum of water? None of you? Then let me remind you. The museum, also provisionally and variously known as the touristic-environmental or environmental and education interpretation centre, was a project hatched by the last PSOE-led administration in the Balearics. The director of the then office of analysis and forecasting of the cabinet of the president was forced to announce in December 2010 that the project to create the museum was to be "parked", meaning on hold, also meaning there wasn't the slightest intention of going ahead with it.

Not that this was how it was put. It would be a project for the following legislature, the one due to begin in June of 2011. It never of course had the remotest chance of being a project for that legislature. For starters, PSOE and what remained of its coalition (the anonymously monikered Bloc, i.e. Biel Barceló and chums) were removed from office. In came the PP, and José Ramón Bauzá set about his austerity measures. It's unlikely he ever gave the museum a moment's thought. Unlikely that anyone else did either, including PSOE.

Museums of water do exist. There's one in Rotterdam, one in Saint Petersburg. There's a museum of water and steam in Brentford, which is sort of West London. But those other museums were not the ones that had attracted the attention of the then government. They had their eyes on what had been put in Zaragoza in 2008: The Expo for Water and Sustainable Development.

The expo had cost a great deal of money. Earlier this year, an in-depth report considered the consequences of that expo. All 266 million of them. That's the debt that is outstanding. It will take the city of Zaragoza decades to ever repay it.

At the back end of 2010, the true financial disaster of the expo was only starting to become apparent. Those were times of crisis and of increasing scrutiny of grand projects that had been dreamt up by Spanish municipalities, provinces and regions when the money had never looked likely to dry up and few questions had ever been asked as to suitability or wisdom.

The Balearic government had the idea to reuse the pavilion it had at the expo. Basically, all the material from the pavilion, or most of it, was to have been used in recreating the pavilion or some other structure. Where? Well, they never really got as far as truly identifying a suitable location, though three sites in Palma were mentioned in dispatches: the Intermodal Station; the desalination plant; and the Son Pacs water distribution centre. Another place was the Parc de la Mar, which in fact had been the original intention.

The project, though, was "parked". To the best of my knowledge, it has never been raised again as a potential project. There are, however, some questions, such as what ever became of all the stuff that had gone into the making of the Balearic pavilion. Some was reused, and this was explained when the parking of the project occurred. But what of the rest, for this had been something with a total value of around two million euros which had consisted of, among other things, various audiovisual projections in what were essentially tanks. They showed, for instance, the ways in which various cultures had managed water in the Balearics - from prehistoric times to the current day.

Perhaps all the kit and various fixtures and fittings were put to good use. But as there hasn't been a peep about this project for nigh on six years, who can really say. Like the project itself, the bits and pieces for the pavilion were forgotten about.

The overall value of the pavilion plus all other costs that would have been incurred for staffing at the expo and other reasons were only a small fraction of what the expo cost Zaragoza. But in the same way as the expo had been a grandiose scheme, so participation was also grandiose. What did it achieve? Anything?

It is perhaps ironic that an expo which proclaimed sustainable development should have ended up lumbering Zaragoza with an unsustainable debt. But it, as also with what went into the expo, such as the Balearic pavilion, were from an era when accountability was all but non-existent. Now, we hope, there is accountability, and oddly enough now might be the time to reconsider the museum of water.

There is a great need to raise awareness of water use and of water as a sustainable resource. Information campaigns can do so much, but what if there were a museum, suitably all singing and dancing but with a fundamental mission to stress the importance of water to resident and tourist alike? Might the awareness be that much greater? And how would it be funded? How do you think? The tourist tax, now being spent on water.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 5 October 2016

Morning high (6.35am): 19.7C
Forecast high: 25C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 6 October - Cloud, 23C; 7 October - Sun, cloud, 26C; 8 October - Cloud, sun, 27C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East-Northeast 2 to 3.

Looking fine for today but a bit ominous for tomorrow: possible storms. Was reminded that nine years ago yesterday was when the tornado struck. October can serve up some weather "events".

Evening update (20.30): High of 27C. Good enough day. Storms tomorrow.

The Price Of Quality?: Holidays 2017

The price of Mallorcan holidays is going up. Or so it seems. You can judge only so much from social network comments, but when you learn of increases for packages that involve unremarkable accommodation which are anything from 300 to 2,000 euros more expensive in 2017, then the body of evidence begins to fill.

A reaction to this is that it's all to do with the UK's peculiar circumstances. Such a reaction is, however, conditioned by having a one-eyed view that it is the UK market which matters and no other. There are other markets. In June, the German media were pointing to higher prices for "Mallorca-Urlaub" in 2017.

So what's going on? It's pretty simple. There's a perfect storm driving prices up. Hoteliers upping prices. Tour operators falling over backwards to pay these prices in order to gobble up all available hotel space. (These tour operators do not, incidentally, include Spanish ones who are being totally outgunned and are struggling to find space.) These are the same tour operators which have taken hits this year not because of Mallorca or Spain but because of the well-publicised troubles elsewhere.

We've known about the hoteliers' price rises for several months. Depending on the chain or indeed the hotel, there are average increases of 15%. These rises, the hoteliers will and do argue, are the result of all their investment and hard work in renovation and upping the quality. Consequently, they can talk confidently of improved "price-quality" ratios for the punters. They can talk, but the punters don't automatically see it the same way. The tourist satisfaction survey by Gadeso in the summer indicated that this ratio has not improved. Punters are themselves being conditioned by quality expectations. Some have experienced them first hand in rival destinations. Quality of a similar or higher level and at a lower price. There's your price-quality ratio.

Until the bonanza of the past couple of years, served on a plate by the "troubles" of others, the hoteliers had been moaning about a decade or more of profits having barely increased. They had been running to stand still, such were the economics of the Mallorcan tourism market. Finally, a window opened, and up went the prices. And they are continuing to rise. In some instances by substantial amounts.

There are then hoteliers who insist that the elevated prices are the work of the tour operators. Maybe, but when the hoteliers have negotiated higher prices, what are the tour operators expected to do? Put the price down? It is troubling, though, to learn that major tour operators have been holding back on paying hoteliers' invoices this summer. The only reason that can be offered is the knock-on negative effect on tour operator business from cancellations to the troubled regions. Has Mallorca, therefore, been eyed up as one of the destinations where losses this year can be recouped next year?

One of the great ironies of all this, and again one can find evidence of this on social networks, is that punters, rather than abandoning Mallorca for other shores, are opting for a change. Which means private rentals. So, the hotels put their prices up and drive the client base into the hands of the enemy and into the devil's work that is Airbnb. A crunch may come, where the punter is concerned, when the enemy seeks to profiteer and ups its prices by a few hundred euros.

A further irony may just be that the hoteliers end up doing the regional government's work for them. The government sees price engineering (the tourist tax) as a means of keeping a lid on tourist numbers. The hoteliers are thus, if they're not careful, engaging in the same tactic. There will always be a further argument, one with some justification, that other destinations don't have the capacity that Mallorca has. Another argument is that the holiday is a "necessity". Price matters only so much. Capacity or price, eventually something has to give.

While the UK market does indeed have its peculiarities, so also do other markets. If one ever delves into those tourist spending stats, what one finds is the way in which spending varies significantly across markets. It's not because the Swedes, Norwegians (or even more so, the Russians) are handing out more folding notes in the island's bars and restaurants, it's because the average cost of the actual holidays is way higher than a British holiday: it can range from 25% to 50% more. And none of these other markets will be immune from the scramble for hotel places and the consequent increases.

Celesti Alomar, the tourism minister responsible for the first ecotax, said of that tax that it was a means of Mallorca not engaging in a price war with cheap destinations. Quality was all, and that meant higher prices. He seems to finally be getting his wish.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 4 October 2016

Morning high (6.50am): 17.7C
Forecast high: 26C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 5 October - Sun, cloud, 246C; 6 October - Cloud, 25C; 7 October - Sun, cloud, 25C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East 2 to 3.

Good enough day expected. Better forecast for tomorrow now, though rain still looks as if it may be on the cards for Thursday.

Evening update (20.00): High of 28.7C. Clouded over later on. Otherwise decent.

Whither PSOE? Whither Armengol?

So, what now? President Armengol was one of a group of five PSOE delegates from the Balearics who were humbled along with Pedro Sánchez on Saturday. Armengol, the only regional leader to have backed Sánchez, is even more out on a limb than before. She will have been thankful for the reassuring presence among the five of former president Francesc Antich. He is to join the "management" committee that will now attempt to sort out the mess of the vote against Sánchez and his resignation. Antich is saying the same things as Armengol. The "militants", i.e. the party's grassroots, need to vote on the future. He couldn't say anything else. Nor could Armengol.

He is also saying, as indeed are others, that it isn't a foregone conclusion that there will be a PSOE abstention which allows the investiture of Mariano Rajoy. The Partido Popular has not, according to some in PSOE, done anything to make PSOE confident in abstaining or creating a most unlikely coalition. The federal committee will decide whether there is to be an abstention, and it has so far said "no" to Rajoy.

If this continues to be the case, then one wonders quite what getting rid of Sánchez will have achieved. The party may have been suffering poor results under him, but the impression was that this wasn't the sole reason for his having been given a vote of no confidence. The talk had been of the committee moving in favour of an abstention. Because of all that happened, no such debate took place, and the committee seems unlikely to reconvene until after the middle of the month.

The situation is now even more confused than it was. If there were to be a decision in favour of abstention, things would then need to move extremely quickly so that there could be an as yet hypothetical second attempt at a Rajoy investiture. The deadline is 31 October. No government by then, and the King will dissolve parliament and there will be another election. For PSOE, given its turmoil, this would be the last thing it wants. Or you would think so. There might be a hope that with a different person at the top, there will be a bounce in the polls. Equally, there could be even greater carnage. Would that mean Podemos benefiting? Possibly, but Podemos has its own division. The electorate may decide in any event to put an end to all the nonsense and turn to the PP in far greater number.

Given all this confusion, it's hard to really say how the Balearic government will be affected in the short term. On the face of things, Armengol finds herself in a weaker position than the already weak one that she was in prior to Sanchez's resignation. Everything, as far as the "pact" for her government is concerned, would seem to hinge on the abstention decision. If Rajoy is allowed in by PSOE, all bets might well be off. By having aligned herself firmly with Sánchez and against the abstention decision, Armengol will be hoping that the pact doesn't rupture.

Meanwhile, she is faced by the thorny issue of the 2017 budget. Questions have been raised, not least by the Balearic PP, about the willingness of Podemos to support it. The government is obliged to keep within deficit limits and so therefore not overspend or over borrow, but with the ongoing chaos at national level - now made even more chaotic - Podemos (and Més) might press for a deficit-busting budget, something that Armengol and her finance minister Catalina Cladera would surely not sanction: there are consequences to consider.

If Podemos were to decide to break the pact, life would obviously become even more difficult for Armengol. And then there's Més, with only one seat fewer (nine) than Podemos. PSOE with fourteen of the 59 seats would be unable to do anything, unless there was a pact with the PP. Armengol would never countenance that. Would she? The situation in Castile-La Mancha, where the PP offered support to PSOE after Podemos broke a pact of government there, hardly offers a precedent. The PP's leader in Castile-La Mancha has lamented the fact that the offer was greeted with insult and discrediting. Forget the PP coming to the aid of Armengol in the Balearics; it simply won't happen.

The possibility exists, therefore, for an almost total state of stasis taking hold with the Balearic government. But there is another scenario. Podemos might just decide that the time will have come for it to formally join the government. God knows what that might mean for ministerial positions, but if it were the best chance that Armengol has for carrying on, then who knows - maybe a Podemos finance minister.

If you thought that things were complicated before, they are about to become even more complicated.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 3 October 2016

Morning high (7.45am): 17.7C
Forecast high: 26C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 4 October - Sun, cloud, 26C; 5 October - Cloud, 25C; 6 October - Cloud, 24C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East-Southeast 2 to 3, occasionally 4 in the afternoon.

All set for today it seems and for tomorrow, but cloudy conditions due on Wednesday with rain likely on Thursday.

Evening update (19.30): Pretty warm. High of 28.3C.

The Revival Of The "Excursion"

There's a short film that those good people from Fotos Antiguas de Mallorca have loaded onto YouTube and which shows an excursion from Palma to Soller on the train. The date says 1930, though there is a short bit which shows a steam train. The electrification of the line was from 1929. There is a further short bit which says Ferrocarril Alaro, so maybe that was a separate excursion.

Be the trains as they may be, the film - black and white - is typically evocative of times past. By the looks of the trees the excursion would have been in winter or early spring, though had it been in summer one doubts if the dress would have differed greatly. Going on an outing in those days required attire, as one can see from other images of the era, to include a cap, a bow tie and a suit, which of course was just the men.

The excursion probably wouldn't have occurred in summer, however. Too hot. While the film shows people sitting or ambling around, it also features a spot of rambling and hiking. A somewhat bizarre aspect of this is that people - parents and children - are doing some clambering clad in their Sunday best (and it may well have been a Sunday).

It is just possible that there were "foreigners" among those on the Soller train. By the time of the film, "excursions" were an important aspect of early Mallorcan tourism. The word "excursionista" when translated - excursionist - sounds somewhat odd. It isn't a word that is greatly used, the preference perhaps being for a day-tripper or tourist. But neither of these words capture the essence of "excursionista". While it can be used more broadly, that real essence is one of an excursion into nature - rambling, hiking, enjoying the open air.

We were informed recently that there are some 300,000 hikers who come to Mallorca in the low season. It's a figure that I personally find hard to believe, but then other tourist statistics can seem somewhat fanciful as well. Whatever the real number is, there are - shall we say - a lot of people who come to hike and ramble. And for the tourism authorities - regional government and especially the Council of Mallorca - this open-air excursionism is virtuous tourism: respectful of nature and environment, or at least one hopes that it is.

A curious aspect of this seemingly recent promotion of hiking is that it is absolutely nothing new. This is why those trippers in 1930 - citizens of Palma, added to by one or two from Bunyola - may have been sharing the carriages with the odd foreigner.

The Fomento del Turismo, the Mallorca Tourist Board, was founded in 1905. Under the first article of its constitution, there are five particular objectives: things to be developed and promoted. "Fomento" means both development and promotion. The fourth of these states that it will facilitate in a practical way all types of excursions by ways (roads, tracks) and "hiking trails". There will be signs to indicate ways. There will be guides and there will be accommodation (hostels).

At the time of its founding, the Fomento recognised the essential need to improve Mallorca's transport infrastructure. A reason why was in order to indeed facilitate the fourth item on its agenda. What was to follow in terms of roads, railways, tunnels was driven in no small part by a need to develop tourism.

By 1908, two commissions - one for "improvements and excursions", the other for "information and publicity" - had produced a short guide to "excursions from Palma to the island's interior". These were excursions yet to benefit from the Soller train. In that same year, a specific group was established - Grup Excursionista Lo Fèmur. The translation isn't too difficult: the femur, the longest of bones, was necessary for this excursionist activity, i.e. walking.

So here is evidence that Mallorca's tourism was from the very beginning intimately tied to hiking and walking. The mountains were obviously a key aspect, though not exclusively, and over time - up to the start of the Civil War - the excursion broadened its appeal. It ceased to solely be for walking. It was a cultural trip usually involving a bus to key "attractions" on the island, such as Formentor and the Caves of Drach.

Although hiking has remained a constant since those early days, it is only recently that one senses a real determination to recapture the essence of the excursion that had been identified in 1905. The Fomento's wish for signage, such as now for the dry-stone route, has been a long time in really becoming complete.

The Council of Mallorca is very committed to this type of tourism, but it is one that always been there. It's as though we have gone full circle.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 2 October 2016

Morning high (7.40am): 17.2C
Forecast high: 27C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 3 October - Sun, cloud, 26C; 4 October - Sun, cloud, 26C; 5 October - Sun, cloud, 24C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East 2 to 3.

Looks ok for today. Nothing untoward forecast. The week ahead seems mostly reasonable; Thursday might see some rain, but that could well change.

Evening update (20.30): Decent. High of 29.6C.

The Party That Was Taken Over

Spain knows a thing or two about the coup d'État. The country knows it as a "golpe de Estado". It knows about failed ones, too. 1981 was the famous one. That of 1982 was less famous. They swept it under the carpet. The failure had occurred on the eve of the general election. It was designed to prevent a socialist government coming to power. Everyone knew that Felipe González would win. Some were determined that he wouldn't.

González duly won the election. He was president (prime minister) for fourteen years. For the most part, these were the glory years for PSOE. They were the glory years for all of Spain's post-1975 democracy. A charismatic leader gave the country hope and pride. It clambered aboard the European gravy train; largesse flowed south in shoring up this nascent, socialist-led democracy - a country undergoing a renaissance.

It ended, as it tends to, in scandal and acrimony. The Partido Popular came to power. When it failed to win in 2004 - a result widely attributed to its mishandling of the Madrid bombs - in came Mister Bean: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Everyone, including himself, was surprised. ZP, a decent, honourable man in a John Major-ineffectual sort of way, was no González, and he was to have his Jim Callaghan moment. Crisis, what crisis. The PSOE government poured money it didn't have into building its way out of the crash. This just made the eventual wreckage worse. ZP departed, to be replaced by Mr. Greybeard, Uncle Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. He never stood a chance. The Rajoy era was to begin.

This background is important in understanding what has been happening over the past few days. Susana Díaz, the Andalusian president, is said to have launched a coup d'État, one designed to bring down Pedro Sánchez. There are different reasons for her having done so, of which her own ambition is just one. The crisis that has engulfed PSOE is attributed to two key factors - its disastrous election results while under Sánchez's watch and its stance over a future government. There are others.

PSOE has never recaptured the glory years. It remains a hostage to the González era. He was the party's figurehead, the national figurehead. It was PSOE who really effected the "transition" in Spain. A coup attempt could not derail that movement. It was a party of its time, but scandal, complacency and uninspiring leadership were to make it a party identified with a corrupt two-party system. The "casta" of PSOE and the PP was all that Podemos really needed. Enter, therefore, the charismatic Pablo Iglesias.

PSOE's polling has been massively affected by the emergence of Podemos and Ciudadanos. The same can be said of the PP, but the PP has remained comparatively strong where PSOE has been enfeebled. But there has been a more fundamental dynamic. PSOE has become a party directed by another - Podemos. Not directly, but its whole thinking is now determined by the factions who are for or against Podemos. It has been taken over by an outside influence. It has become a shell of a party in which even the pro-Podemos faction is uncertain. Sánchez is one of them.

He has vacillated greatly. But at the heart of his latest apparent shift - one in a Podemos direction - is the accusation that enabling the PP to govern would be evidence of the perpetuation of the "casta". He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, because this is where PSOE has ended up: a party no longer in control of its destiny and suffering the collateral damage of ebbing electoral support.

Sánchez threw down the gauntlet last week. There would be "primaries", ostensibly to determine who will lead the party into a third election but manifestly a vote of confidence (or not). Moreover, were Sánchez to carry the day, the quirks of the system might enable him to magic up a pact that would not require an election. The cut-off point, when the King dissolves parliament, is the end of this month. Prime Minister Sánchez might step forward, Pablo Iglesias with his hands on the strings and God alone knows whatever other parties coming along for the ride.

The gauntlet thrown, and executive committee members resigned en masse, their support for him gone. Díaz declared her coup. "Barons" in the party lined up against Sánchez, and the party's past - that hostage - caught up with Sánchez. Felipe González, still exercising great influence, declared that he had been "fooled" by Sánchez. The knife was being twisted and it was being turned in the direction of the "casta".

In the end, it wasn't a vote to abstain to allow Rajoy's investiture that did it. There was to be a show of hands on the holding of a congress, in effect a vote of confidence in Sánchez. He lost. He walked. Whichever way it had gone, Podemos would have succeeded. The party founded by one Pablo Iglesias had been infiltrated by another Pablo Iglesias. Its future has been determined not by it but by an outside force: it was Iglesias who launched the coup. Whether it has a future will be seen. The past week was monumental in deciding its fate.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 1 October 2016

Morning high (6.32am): 18.7C
Forecast high: 26C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 2 October - Sun, cloud, 27C; 3 October - Sun, cloud, 26C; 4 October - Sun, cloud, 25C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): South 2 to 3 backing Northeast around midday.

First day of October. Where did the summer go? Still lingering of course, though there is a hint of rain this afternoon.

Evening update (20.00): High of 27.6C. Cloud-sun mix, a rumble of thunder. No rain.

Hotelier And Airbnb Wars

The Balearic High Court has not dismissed the Majorca Hoteliers Federation's appeal for judicial review of the tourist tax legislation. A reason for having believed it would was that the same court had dismissed a similar appeal against the old ecotax. There was precedence, therefore. It would be interesting to know what the court has discovered this time to rule the appeal admissible. We may in due course find out.

How much of a spanner this puts in the works will not be immediately apparent. There may be none. The hoteliers, as the appellant, will be asked by the court to formally instruct an appeal once all the documentation related to the processing of the legislation has been delivered. One imagines that the federation will do this. Meanwhile, legal services, one guesses, will be chewing over what there might be in the text of the law (and its processing) to have persuaded the court to rule admissibility. Podemos, typically strident in voicing contempt of the hoteliers' appeal, have suggested they would assist the government in any "emergency" decree to shore up any weaknesses.

This is where one enters the complexities of the legislative system. Unrelated to tourism, a similar system arose with the previous government's trilingual teaching scheme. The courts ruled that procedure for its implementation had not been complied with correctly. The then government of the Partido Popular, arguing this was an administrative technicality, rushed in a decree to ensure that the scheme could proceed. It was this as much as anything which led to the lengthy teachers' strike: the government was perceived to have been acting in a high-handed manner in going against the courts.

Were something similar to arise now, there is no one to go on strike, but - and for the moment it is speculation - a federation riposte may be to call for "precautionary measures". Inma Benito, the president, has implied that the federation would not seek these. Not at the moment anyway. If the judge were to rule in favour of any such demand, the tax could be suspended, pending the full judicial review. The consequences would be chaotic.

An emergency decree might be sufficient to stop the appeal in its tracks, but even if it were to be, one wouldn't then rule out the federation making a further challenge. The whole affair seems destined for all-out war.

There's ever more on the related issue of saturation and holiday rentals. Quite by coincidence, the day after writing the article "Is Airbnb The Real Scourge" came a report of actions by anti-Airbnb protesters in Barcelona. They occupied a building where they say the apartments are all illegal tourist lets and pointed out that an owner of one has twelve in all in the city.

The political atmosphere in Barcelona regarding lets is more heated than in Mallorca, and so it is more likely to give rise to such protests (there was also one against "Harmony Of The Seas"). But Barcelona is acting as a lead for others - here and in other European cities - and one can begin to understand that the protesters may have a legitimate point. They argue that far from Airbnb (taken as shorthand to refer to other such sites as well) promoting the so-called collaborative economy, it is fostering a speculative economy that is based on tourist accommodation, a great deal of it illegal. They have some curious allies in this thinking, such as Exceltur, the alliance for touristic excellence, of which leading Mallorcan hoteliers are members.

The Barcelona protesters insist that Airbnb knows full well what is licensed and what isn't, but chooses to ignore the distinction to its own benefit and to the benefits of multiple property owners. The company says that 73% of those who advertise their properties only have the one (which does leave 27% who have more) and that the city's economy benefits to the tune of 740 million euros per annum because of its activities.

The reverse of this percentage, at least where Mallorca is concerned and according to Exceltur, is that 70% of owners have more than one property that is being promoted via Airbnb or other sites.

Who's right and who's wrong in all this? It's another war.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 30 September 2016

Morning high (7.27am): 18.7C
Forecast high: 26C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 1 October - Sun, cloud, 28C; 2 October - Sun, cloud, 27C; 3 October - Sun, cloud, 25C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East 2 to 3.

Chance of a spot of rain today, though clear enough first up. Forecast has improved for the weekend, so mostly sunny for Alcudia's big autumn fair.

Evening update (20.00): There was a spot of rain. Just a spot. The met office went and announced that there would be big storms. There may have been somewhere. Cloud came in during the afternoon. There was thunder, and that was that. Cleared up and was nice and sunny again. High of 27.4C.

Confidence Lost

Confidence. A virtue that one has and a virtue that others bestow upon one. Or remove. There has been much confidence removed and lost over the past days. Sam Allardyce, confidence lost in a man over-confident of his position. Pedro Sánchez, PSOE's general secretary, fighting for his political future, as confidence in him drains away along with many of the national executive who have resigned. The Balearic government, the confidence in which is a constant state of flux largely dependent on external influences, such as the manoeuvres by and against Sánchez. Lluís Segura, the chief attorney representing the Balearic government; Caterina Amengual, the same government's director for biodiversity and natural spaces.

Confidence in Big Sam had to be seen to be lost. In times such as these, of transparency and accountability (we are led to believe), it was necessary for him to be sacrificed by a pious English FA, the champions of institutional fair play and nothing else. Sánchez may learn his fate this weekend. He has appealed to the "militancy" in taking on the "barons", who would prefer that he didn't break bread with Podemos but instead fail to say either yes or no - to abstain and allow Mariano Rajoy's continuance. Confidence is arguably ebbing from both camps: a party, PSOE, in disarray, its one-time confidence, hewn from a total of more than twenty years of democratic government, a fading memory.

The Balearic government has a crisis of confidence. Its leading figures make confident statements yet are prone to vacillation. The public is not confident in knowing who genuinely governs or what is being governed. A victim of an unconfident, enfeebled PSOE that cast around for lifelines, it is being strangled by these very ropes.

Segura and Amengual are minor characters in this drama. They are ones of whom the public would have known little and in whom the public would have had little interest. Thrown into the limelight these past days, they are now known and they are now no more. Both represent sides of the opaque coin of transparency and accountability. The virtuous state of this T and A should supposedly rise above all else in this era of so-called government of change. But it does not.

Lluís Segura, a legal man rather than politician, fell foul of politics. He made the wrong political decision. To drop a case for money laundering against the arch enemy of governmental T and A, the endlessly corrupt Jaume Matas, was a sin. Confidence lost, stripped away, sacked. Podemos want to call him to account, to appear before their baying ranks in parliament and explain this sin. His protectors in PSOE, for whom it was expedient that confidence in him should be seen to have been lost, say that if one civil servant is forced to appear before parliament, then where will it end.

Maybe so or maybe Segura might say something that PSOE find uncomfortable. His Attorney's Office is in direct line of charge by the ministry for the presidency and therefore the relevant minister, Pilar Costa (also government spokesperson), and the president herself. They insist they knew nothing of Segura's decision. If they did not, then he had acted with over-confidence. He was, like Big Sam, either naive or just stupid. Let Matas off the hook in the current atmosphere, and the wolf pack would gather. It did, and he has been eaten.

It is, though, reasonable to require an explanation. There may well have been very good reasons for the decision. These, however, are abandoned in the skirmishing that undermines this government. Podemos and Més insist, PSOE must accede. Confidence lost. Or confidence, hopefully, semi-retained.

Then there is Amengual. Her political master was the environment minister, Vicenç Vidal, a man from Més. She was sacked because there was the need for a new direction, for someone more technical and communicative. She had done well, said Vidal, but the message was loss of confidence. She can't have been doing well, if confidence had been lost. The message was thus mixed. Why had she really been sacked?

Despite the claims of T and A - transparency and accountability - there is mystery that obscures the function and purpose of senior officials like Segura and Amengual. How they come to be appointed in the first place. Who is doing the appointing. What they are doing. Some of these officials come and go. The tourism ministry lost a director of the tourism agency - "personal reasons" that were supposedly a better job - who was replaced by a friend but also one-time sparring partner of Biel Barceló. There was and is the director of the health service, famously the husband of the health minister. Podemos have never forgotten that.

Greater transparency, as Podemos have urged, is needed for appointments, but it is also needed in explaining why confidence is lost and why someone else is then appointed.


Index for September 2016

Anarchists and tourism - 19 September 2016
Architectural harmony - 9 September 2016
Balearic community - 22 September 2016
Balearic government condition - 23 September 2016, 25 September 2016
Balearic government logo - 14 September 2016
Cabrera organisation and management - 13 September 2016
Cala Millor - 26 September 2016
Confidence in government - 30 September 2016
Cultural tourism - 17 September 2016
Formentor Conversations - 15 September 2016
Francina Armengol and attic - 6 September 2016
Holiday rentals legislation - 3 September 2016
Inca tourism - 2 September 2016
Ironman, Alcudia - 24 September 2016
Jaume Matas and Son Espases Hospital - 16 September 2016
La Beata and pot-smashing - 4 September 2016
Mallorca Day - 11 September 2016
Mallorca's Roman occupation - 18 September 2016
Podemos and tourism - 1 September 2016
Posidonia and recreational yachts - 7 September 2016
PSOE and national government - 27 September 2016
Rajoy investiture debates - 5 September 2016
Real Mallorca / tourist saturation - 12 September 2016
Sustainable tourism - 28 September 2016
Tourist places limits - 10 September 2016, 20 September 2016, 21 September 2016
Tourist prizes - 28 September 2016
Virtual tourism - 8 September 2016

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 29 September 2016

Morning high (7.05am): 17.2C
Forecast high: 25C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 30 September - Cloud, sun, 25C; 1 October - Sun, cloud, 27C; 2 October - Cloud, sun, 28C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East-Northeast 2 to 3.

Sun all the way for today, suggests the forecast, so hopefully no rogue storm like yesterday. May be damp tomorrow.

Evening update (20.30): High of 28.4C. Good enough. Some ominous cloud later and smoke - Albufera was on fire again.

Is Airbnb The Real Scourge?

Increasingly, one wonders who or what is the principal target of those who express their ire over so-called saturation. For some, the most extreme wing, it is all tourism. For others, it is the hoteliers. Or holiday rentals. Or cruise ships.

The latter is an irrelevant category. Irrelevant anywhere in Mallorca that isn't Palma. Forget the cruise passengers. They make for useful propaganda, but they are not central to the debate.

What about hoteliers, then? Well, if one believes that a barely increased number of hotel places this century represents saturation, then hoteliers are at fault. They aren't of course. They haven't been adding to the "crisis" except by knocking out higher occupancy levels. Even these are marginal in adding to human pressure. When one can talk of high summer 90 or 91 per cent one year, then 94 or 95 another, there is clearly an increase, but it doesn't amount to overcrowding. Forget the hoteliers as well.

Which leaves us with holiday rentals. President Armengol suggested recently that it is too simplistic to charge them with being the cause. Simplistic perhaps. But probably accurate.

Some of those who have been railing recently about limits or reduction border on being cranks with no coherent programme for economic alternatives, save for one inspired by impractical anti-capitalist quasi-anarchy. Others are anything but cranks. They are extremely sensible. And amidst their sense, they identify a real issue - that of housing.

This has been a theme that the saturation argument has raised before this summer, but it is one that needs to be far more seriously and urgently addressed. Holiday rentals are depriving people of long-term accommodation, and where they can find it, it is becoming less affordable. One can only see this situation becoming more critical.

The left are in a quandary over holiday lets. An argument is that making a return on a property is a right that should not be denied, if this return is a means of providing an adequate income. A further ingredient is that there are elements of the left who take great issue with the hoteliers, especially the larger ones. They are all for hoteliers' noses being put out of joint; private accommodation is one way of achieving this.

In terms of the market in general, the left, instinctively prone to market intervention and interference, are finding this interference to be not as easy as it might once have been. Institutional and legal bases, be they in Mallorca, Spain or many other places, make interference complicated. But what interference might there be? Denying someone the right to rent out a property runs counter to leftist thinking. At the same time, however, it can deny a worker the right to long-term accommodation, while by its very existence it contributes to additional tourism mass. It's not simplistic.

There are of course degrees of rental. The single property owner is quite different to the one with multiple properties, but where is the line drawn? Can it be drawn? The distinction seems to be coming less and less relevant as the left take on the seemingly unstoppable momentum behind tourist accommodation rental. In Barcelona, the mayor Ada Colau, who shot to prominence as an activist who founded the movement against evictions, has proposed caps on prices for long-term rentals (citing Paris and Berlin as examples of where this is done). She has also been closing down apartments used for tourists and issuing warnings to Airbnb and others: they can expect fines of upwards of 600,000 euros if they don't stop promoting illegal accommodation.

But owners, and not just those with several properties, have fired back by insisting on their rights to rent out. In so doing, they are expressing the rights of a totally free market, something with which Colau and others towards the far left have great difficulty. These owners point to a form of liberation offered by Airbnb and others - the democratisation of property, the very essence of the so-called collaborative economy of which Airbnb is at the forefront, and the very essence also of what some on the left advocate. The contradictions are profound.

It would be stretching things to say that Airbnb and the philosophy of the collaborative, shared economy is the root cause of saturation, overcrowding and distortions in the housing market. There has, after all, always been this rental market, but it is valid to say that Airbnb has expanded the market vastly, so much so that it is now becoming disproportionate. Its advance is such that the number of Airbnb travellers to Spain between June and August rose by more than 70% - Mallorca and Barcelona were among the favoured destinations.

This collaborative economy advocates property democratisation. It favours the individual's rights. But at what cost to other sectors of society? Is Airbnb the real scourge? If you're a free marketer, you'd prefer not to think so. However ... .

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 28 September 2016

Morning high (7.10am): 19.5C
Forecast high: 26C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 29 September - Sun, cloud, 26C; 30 September - Cloud, sun, 25C; 1 October - Cloud, sun, 25C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East-Northeast 3 to 5. Swells to one metre.

Lightning in the distance to the east before sunrise. A good chance of some rain this morning, improving later.

Evening update (20.00): Some rain did come - if only to parts and not until the afternoon. Accompanied by a few loud bangs of thunder, it came down but not in any great amount. All cleared up quickly. Sunny otherwise and a high of 26.9C.

When Tourism Generations Collide

It's a photo from 4 July, 1978. A certificate and gold medal are being handed over. The recipient is King Juan Carlos I. The award-giver is the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourist Board). Two years later the king received another medal, a commemorative one to mark 75 years of the Fomento. Last year, a similar award was made to the king's son. Felipe VI, for his love of Mallorca, was to receive a medal in honour of the 110 years of the Fomento.

Two generations of royalty divided by more than a generation in time and in tourism culture, for which also read political culture. Curiously, though, when the Fomento's board gathered to consider its awards last year, a participant was the tourism minister, Biel Barceló, not someone automatically bracketed in the royalist camp. But the awards were not the government's, they were those of the Mallorca Tourist Board, an institution long marginalised yet sustained almost symbolically - a vital part of the island's heritage.

Sustainability and heritage. Both were to the fore as the tourism ministry delivered its own tourism awards on Monday. Symbolism was inadvertent in the choice of Es Baluard as the location. It was from this edifice of culture that the so-called anti-tourist guided tour (an oddity in itself) had started two days before. This was a "route" which Barceló, also perhaps inadvertently, had helped to foster. Tourism politicians need to take greater care when mentioning the word "saturation".

The generational shift in tourism and political cultures has been immense. Juan Carlos received his medals at a time when Mallorca and Spain were grappling with the meaning of democracy. It was a time also when Mallorca was starting to truly debate its model of tourism. The years of uncontrolled construction demanded such a debate. The medals, one can suggest, were representative of "old" tourism, symbolised by the Fomento. Organisationally and politically, it was to become sidelined by the political institutionalism of tourism - regional government and the first tourism ministry from 1983.

The "new" tourism has undergone its twists and turns, and the most recent was on the way to Es Baluard for the Night of Tourism, a gala event crafted from the rocks of heritage and from the philosophy of sustainability. Here is a word, sustainability, so often uttered that it is ceasing to have meaning. Or rather, it can mean whatever is required. New tourism deals in concepts of open meaning. "Quality" is another. Whenever did anyone - business, government or whatever - make a case for lack of quality or indeed promote it? Come to Mallorca, where quality is absent. The concept is redundant.

As I remarked over a month ago when considering these tourism awards ("And The Sustainable Tourism Winner Will Be?"), the night of tourism could easily be called the Biel night of tourism. The minister referred to the many challenges, to the government's determination for there to be responsibility, to the pride in Balearic land and people. "This is what makes us say with pride that we are Mallorcans, Menorcans, Ibizans and Formenterans. We have been and are a land of welcome, inclusive and able to attract people from across the globe to admire natural and patrimonial aspects that we are making unique and infrastructures that are turning us into pioneers."

The awards were the tourist tax in physical form. There is and has been misunderstanding about the purposes to which its revenue will be allocated. Enshrined in law - that for the sustainable tourism tax - are these purposes. Hence why, for example, there was an award for the Council of Formentera for an initiative designed to recover the countryside, the island's agricultural heritage. Why also there were awards for technological innovation - to Robinson Club Cala Serena for its alchemy in converting seawater, to solutions related to climate change, to the business application of social Big Data.

These awards underpin the tourist tax thinking, the latest "new" tourism. The purposes for the tax revenue can be derided, but they are evidence, if one likes, of whole-island touristic thinking and of the desire of a left-wing government to spread the wealth generated by tourism more widely.

Had there been a night of tourism under the previous government, the recipients, one imagines, would have been different. The "new" tourism of the PP was the founder of beach clubs, of resort transformation. The usual suspects would have been paraded by the PP. It is most unlikely that the hotel chamber maids collective would have been honoured.

It was a night to celebrate sustainability, to represent the "new" tourism. A world away from awards to royalty. Yet, who else received a Fomento award last year? Among them was Liberto Rigo, a veteran tour guide from the "Excursionist Group", a creation by the Fomento a hundred years ago, and one dedicated to patrimony, heritage, culture and nature. Old meets new.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 27 September 2016

Morning high (7.10am): 19C
Forecast high: 25C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 28 September - Cloud, sun, 25C; 29 September - Sun, cloud, 26C; 30 September - Cloud, sun, 25C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): North-Northeast 3 increasing 4.

Looking fairly cloudy as sun up approaches, but forecast to be sunny later on, with just an outside chance of a spot of rain this morning.

Evening update (20.15): All good really after some morning cloud. High of 27.4C.

Galicia Lessons: The End For Sánchez?

Regional elections in Spain, because they are not all held at the same time, can be viewed as a test of a public opinion about the national government. In Spain at present, however, there is only a national government by default, one that is nine months on from when it should either have been confirmed as re-elected or ousted. Are, in these circumstances, the elections in the Basque Country and Galicia relevant? Do they say anything about the national government?

They most certainly do. More importantly, they say a great deal about the pretenders, one of whom is PSOE; the PSOE that Pedro Sánchez leads. This is not the PSOE of the whole country, however, and the results loosen his grip - already tenuous - ever more. The knives of Andalusia, in the hands of Susana Díaz, are being sharpened on the stone. How long can Sánchez carry on?

Consider the numbers. In Galicia the regional version of PSOE suffered its worst ever result. It ended up with fourteen seats in the regional parliament with slightly less than 18% of the vote in a four-way fight. En Marea, effectively Podemos by another name, also gained fourteen seats but with a higher share of the vote - just over 19%. Both were eclipsed by the Partido Popular. Alberto Núñez Feijóo will continue to govern with an absolute majority.

In the Basque Country, the socialists suffered major losses - seven seats gone, leaving them with nine. The PNV, habitual leaders in the region, have insufficient seats for an overall majority, but could hook up with the PP (or PSOE) and establish a parliamentary majority.

While Feijóo's win in Galicia will be taken as enhancing Mariano Rajoy's moral right to remain as national prime minister, it needs reminding that Galicia is very firm PP territory - and Feijóo territory. The loss of one PP seat in the Basque Country places a rather different spin on things. Perhaps the strongest message to come from the elections, where the PP is concerned, is that Feijóo has strengthened his case for replacing Rajoy.

Rather than a test of public opinion for Rajoy, the elections were a poll on the ambitions of Sánchez and PSOE to attempt to form an "alternative" government of the left. These are surely dashed, if indeed they have ever truly been realistic. Díaz had made it clear that they weren't, given the fact that PSOE have only 85 seats in the national Congress.

A surprise with Sánchez is the fact that he's still in charge. Reflect on the charge sheet. A failed attempt, an awfully failed attempt at investiture, followed by a second election at which PSOE lost more seats in Congress. Yet he still believes he can form a government, seemingly egged on by the likes of Balearic president Francina Armengol into adopting a model of government akin to that in the Balearics - one that quite plainly isn't functioning. Armengol is deluded and so is Sánchez. With the batterings in the Basque Country and Galicia, his time must surely be up.

If this proves to be the case, the PSOE "barons", marshalled by Díaz, will manoeuvre a situation whereby there is a pact with Rajoy and the PP (or possibly with Feijóo and the PP; this may be the price Rajoy has to pay). For Francina Armengol, who must have been observing the results coming in with increasing horror and alarm, such a national manouevre would be terminal. Podemos wouldn't stand for it, while Més seem ever increasingly alienated from Armengol.

If PSOE were the big losers in these two elections, what about Cuidadanos? This party is more and more like an annoying terrier, snapping at the heels of others. It is shooed away but keeps coming back, yapping and yapping but never getting its way. Its leader, Albert Rivera, had been looking at the prospect of a post-election alliance with the PP in Galicia. They failed to gain a single seat. A share of the vote that was little more than three per cent ensured that they would fail, just as they also did in the Basque Country.

What may now dawn on the C's, whose support has been eroding, is that their aspirations to be a national party run up against nationalist interests in specific regions. Even the conservative nationalist instincts in Galicia and the Basque Country appear disinclined to embrace a party which started as a regional Catalonian organisation (with avowed anti-nationalist sentiments) and has attempted to become a national force. Regional parties aren't supposed to behave like this. The C's have got above their station. They are liked less and less. Their time may well have come and gone, leaving Podemos, with its internal divisions, as the genuine "alternative".

Díaz, Feijóo and others will make damn sure it never is.

* This article was written before Sánchez announced that there are to be "primaries" for electing the secretary general, i.e. that he is putting his position to the test.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 26 September 2016

Morning high (7.15am): 17.8C
Forecast high: 24C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 27 September - Cloud, sun, 25C; 28 September - Cloud, sun, 25C; 29 September - Sun, cloud, 25C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): North-Northeast 3.

Some cloud observable as sun starts to rise. A mix of cloud and sun expected for the day. The week to come - pretty much the same with maybe the occasional shower. Staying warm as October approaches.

Evening update (20.00): Not too bad. Plenty of sun but some grim-looking cloud late on. High of 26.8C.

Humanising Tourism: Cala Millor

If you go hunting on the steam internet, you can unearth old copies of local publications: local, as in a municipality's or even parts of municipalities. One of the pearls (pun intended) to be found is a copy of Manacor's "Perlas y Cuevas" (pearls and caves) dated 17 September, 1983. The cover of this edition is interesting for different reasons. One, almost incidentally, is that there is a photo of the first president of the Balearics, Gabriel Cañellas: he'd become president on 10 June that year.

Cañellas was thus a symbol of the new democracy, albeit that it had taken over seven years from the time of Franco's death for autonomous government to arrive in the Balearics. Of further interest is the name which appears under the title: the magazine's director, i.e. editor, Rafael Ferrer Massanet. And why is he of interest? Well, for one thing he had set the magazine up in the early 1960s. Another was that he was a considerable writer, journalist and historian. Among his interests was the study of the Civil War, in which - where Mallorca was concerned - Manacor had played a significant role. It was Manacor's coast - Porto Cristo - where Captain Alberto Bayo's Republicans made one of their landings in August eighty years ago; the mission was of course to prove to be a total disaster. The other landing was at Punta Amer in neighbouring Sant Llorenç.

He was also a lyricist and penned the words to "hits" by one of the leading Mallorcan pop groups of the 1960s - Los 5 del Este, whose fame was initially acquired in Cala Millor. With such titles as "Sí, sí, sí", their collected works were typical of the time: light, undemanding pop that would never give the censors cause for concern.

The picture one has of Ferrer Massanet is of a highly cultured man - he also established the first private art gallery in Manacor - yet one who was not turned off by the arrival of tourism. Writers of his vintage weren't necessarily kind to the onset of mass tourism, though most of this criticism was delayed until after Franco had died. "Perlas y Cuevas" was never solely about tourism of course (it is, incidentally, still going), but tourism played a significant role in its coverage. Ferrer Massanet appeared to embrace it, warts and all. In 1969, for instance, the magazine carried a glowing interview with Jaume de Juan Pons, who was responsible for the Playa Moreia hotel in S'Illot. The story of that hotel, apocryphal possibly, was that in 1963 he turned up in a Seat 600, took a shovel out of the car and started digging. The hotel opened the following year.

And so one comes to that September 1983 edition. Ferrer Massanet was still the editor, his name, as it had always been, under the title. But what else do we see on that cover? There is a photo - black and white. A coastline. Buildings, some several stories high. It's Cala Millor. Yet, why is Cala Millor featuring in a Manacor publication? The headline tells the story - "Bahia Cala Millor" (Cala Millor bay). The resort has its own odd story, but it doesn't extend to being in three municipalities: only the two - Sant Llorenç and Son Servera. What we in fact see is more than Cala Millor, because here is the conurbation that emerged on the east coast, one that crosses the border of Sant Llorenç into the Manacor part (the larger part) of S'Illot.

That particular issue was marking the fact that the tourist fiestas were taking place; the fourth time that they had been staged. One assumes that it was Ferrer Massanet who wrote on the cover about travellers whose lives might be full of traumas being able to forget their problems. Why? Because Cala Millor would allow them to. In addition, under the heading "Bahia Cala Millor" it reads ... "and the humanisation of international tourism".

That one word, humanisation, can now perhaps seem strange. In the context of current debates regarding "massification" and "saturation", here was a tribute to the humanising qualities of mass tourism. The photo was evidence of that tourism, the conurbation of the bay of Cala Millor.

One might say, well it was 33 years ago. It was indeed, but by 1983 there was a full-scale debate going on about the future of tourism and of the legacy created by coastal developments. The photo of Cañellas was, with hindsight, not so incidental. The first regional government set about attempting to legislate for what were being perceived as errors of the past. Where Ferrer Massanet was concerned, or so it appeared, those errors were not as great as were being argued. "Sí, sí, sí", Cala Millor, the human face of Mallorcan tourism.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 25 September 2016

Morning high (7.30am): 17.1C
Forecast high: 25C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 26 September - Rain, sun, 24C; 27 September - Cloud, sun, 25C; 28 September - Sun, cloud, 25C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Northeast 2 to 3.

Clear sky early on but unlikely to be clear later. Warnings still in place for rain and storm.

Evening update (19.15): Well, so much for the yellow alerts. Spot of rain in some parts, but a spot was all that it was. Nice and sunny otherwise. High of 27.4C.

The Balearic Not-Government Is Revolting

The government and not-government (aka Podemos and increasingly also Més) indulged in their parliamentary navel-gazing and picked out some unpleasant fluff that has accumulated since June last year. The governmental state of the Balearics, we discovered, was far from the consensual love-in that sweet and friendly Francina has been insisting that it is ever since the fateful day that agreements were signed for the "government of change". So absent is consensus that the Earth Mother, PSOE's health minister Patricia Gómez, can dream up 119 million euros (why 119 and not 120?) for dealing with the decaying pile that is Son Dureta with nary a word in the shell-likes of Més (or Podemos). The Mésites were furious. Not because they're against handing over such a vast sum but because no one had spoken to them. Stamp their feet? Oh yes.

And it got worse. What was the government, in this instance PSOE, doing dropping money-laundering charges against that good old boy, Jaume Matas? Strictly speaking, it wasn't the government of PSOE but the Balearic Attorney's Office. Sweet FA Armengol insisted she hadn't been aware of the attorney's decision, which took some believing, given that the office falls within the ministry of the presidency. The Mésites stamped their feet even harder. The decision was of great political significance, they huffed, and had not been reached through consensus. The navel fluff started to look ever more revolting.

Revolt was indeed in the air. And who better to express it than the Podemos Boot Girl, Laura Camargo (Twitter account @Laurarevolta; description "feminist anti-capitalist"). The Matas decision was "very serious", she declared, and insisted that the attorney put in an appearance in parliament in order to explain himself. Also very serious were the thousands, nay millions of tourists roaming across the fragile landscapes of Majorca and the Balearics. Put the tourist tax up, demanded Her Bootness. And the ranks of not-government were joined by the Mésites in the form of the government's vice-president and tourism minister Biel Barceló. BB responded to Laura's tourist tax demand by announcing that "the price of the ecotax is the tool with which to regulate tourist flows".

So, after all his equivocation and having once said that the tax wouldn't make any difference to tourist numbers, BB finally admitted that it might. If it's high enough. It shouldn't be forgotten that Wild Man Més, David Abril, had some months ago suggested that the tax should have been higher from the outset. What can be expected therefore? Ten euros a night from next year? Twenty? That should sort out the saturation and the collapse of the Palma road network every time there's a spot of rain.

Amidst all the revolt, Francina was able to take herself off and sweetly cut the ribbon at the FAN shopping centre, an event which we were led to believe was to be graced with the presence of Podemos president (speaker) of parliament Xe-Lo Huertas. If she was indeed there, she avoided the cameras. Or perhaps she'd sneaked in to snaffle up some early bargains in Primark. The Podemos take on FAN appeared to be revealed by one of its parliamentary deputies, Salvador Aguilera. He tweeted a question (which was re-tweeted by the anti-capitalist Boot Girl). How much will the campaign for promoting FAN have cost, he asked, adding that the Mallorcan press had "succumbed" to the FAN "phenomenon". 

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 24 September 2016

Morning high (6.34am): 19C
Forecast high: 27C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 25 September - Sun rain, 25C; 26 September - Rain, sun, 24C; 27 September - Sun, rain, 24C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Variable 1 to 3, mainly East.

Let's see how we get on today. There are amber alerts in place for rain and storm, but the rain of this week - yesterday and Tuesday - has all but missed the northern area. Might be wet going for the Ironman contestants, and not just the swimming leg.

Evening update (19.00): Well, wasn't too bad in the morning, but later ... Wide variance as to how heavy it came down. Sa Pobla, 6.4 litres per square metre. Puerto Pollensa, 39.6 litres. High of 25.3C. Down to 16.8C mid-afternoon. More on its way by the looks of it.

Second Time Of The Year Again: Ironman

It's that time of the year again. Oh, hang on, it's that second time of the year again. The difference is that this time the time is longer. The race is longer. The time for closures is longer.

Ironman. There is no escape from it. For the days leading up to it, the event encircles you. You're trapped (partially) if you want to get into the port. It means a detour. The participants are on the roads and streets and sometimes in the water. They're riding, they're running, they're risking the jellyfish. All because of training. Getting in shape for the mammoth day.

In newsagents, shops, bars, there is the sound of the local tongue mangling the word Ironman. It is not just you, dear English-speaker, who utters the word darkly. Or at times sarcastically. In Eroski, a couple of likely ironmen receive some advice in the local tongue that they don't understand. They laugh, not knowing why. They shouldn't be.

In a newsagents, this is the one that Boulevard runs down in Playa de Muro, there is talk. What is to become of us come Saturday? How will we manage? Ironman, a plague on both thy two races.

Then come the day, and you are trapped. Imprisoned. Incarcerated. For hours upon hours. Ironman tightens its iron grip and refuses to let go. And an eery silence hangs over Alcudia. It is one of non-traffic. The European Car Free Day has just shifted two days. There are no vehicles, save for the occasional siren of a police car punctuating blissful silence.

Given the above, you might conclude that I'm in the anti-camp. In fact, I am not. I appreciate the benefits. The kudos for Alcudia in promoting sports tourism. The financial returns. There's no need for the "studies" that crop up each year to itemise how many millions of euros are generated. Figure it out for yourselves. Take 3,000 participants. More indeed. Double them to take account of partners. Allocate, for example, five days of stay. Multiply by a nightly rate. Then add on the organisers. More family. More friends. It's a back of a fag packet simple calculation, and astonishingly - as witnessed after the May Ironman - the ironmen can strip the shelves of the tobacconists as gladly as any British tourist who otherwise spends no money. But in the case of ironmen, they spend more. The elite may not, but the fun ironmen (if there can truly be such an individual) can throw the beers back with the best of them, demolish a full English or other such delicacy as happily as other tourists. They spend money.

But many are those who curse the day a few years ago when Thomas Cook and the Ironman organisers first descended on Alcudia. They are still cursing, and they want some answers.

Until recently, Ironman, in one of its Facebook guises, has meant the outpouring of f-words and the like. Now, Alcudia town hall has poked its head above the parapet of abuse and engaged. Slightly. A lengthy demand was posted to Ajuntament d'Alcudia - Bon govern. Firstly, it hoped that there would be a response, as there hadn't previously been one. Then it asked, among other things, what the town hall charges to stage Ironman. How does the closure of roads for a private event, came a further question, correspond to the right of freedom of movement under the Spanish Constitution. What about those who are unable to access medical attention?

This was couched in somewhat ironic terms through reference to "bon govern" (good government) and to transparency. Back came a simple reply. Any citizen is, as ever, invited to go to the town hall to discuss the matter. Which was neutral enough not to engage in a Facebook spat. Others supported the lengthy demand and points made, and the overall point was that perhaps the town hall could benefit from being more open. Its response, akin to the automated responses on Trip Advisor by hotels who clearly don't give a damn, was not adequate.

Each year, each twice a year, we go through the same procedure. There is no easy solution other than not staging the event (which would be a mistake, in my opinion). But the town hall could do with attempting to bring those who are discontented more on side. It should explain better. It should apologise for inconvenience rather more sincerely. It should take account of those businesses who lose money rather than just hail those who make money. It should acknowledge the bother caused to other tourists. It should do all these things.

Ultimately, of course, there is the argument that it is only one day - or rather two days a year. Which would be my point entirely. But then I am not everyone. There are too many grumpy people. The town hall needs to respond to them.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 23 September 2016

Morning high (7.13am): 19.4C
Forecast high: 27C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 24 September - Rain, sun, 25C; 25 September - Rain, sun, 25C; 26 September - Rain, sun, 24C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East-Southeast 3 to 4 easing Variable 2 to 3.

Cloudy forecast with the risk of heavy rain at some point. Possibility of a storm lasting into tomorrow.

Evening update (19.15): Cloudy more or less all day - sun came out for a time late afternoon - and some light rain in parts accompanied by thunder and lightning. Elsewhere, down in Binissalem, for instance, it threw it down. High of 28.7C.

Francina At The Crossroads

Francina Armengol has called for an "urgent" agreement between her party, PSOE, and Podemos in order that there is a change of national government. She said this - and it wasn't the first time by any means - during the course of this week's parliamentary debate, something which the Partido Popular's Marga Prohens described as a confidence debate for Armengol's presidency and government.

Armengol was bound to have made this call. It could well be that she is thoroughly committed to the principle of a PSOE-Podemos alliance at national level. Equally, it could be that she could say nothing else. Her government depends on the relationship that PSOE has with Podemos. It's as simple as that.

For Armengol to have her wish granted, Pedro Sánchez would need to fend off the assaults from significant voices within PSOE. Andalusia's Susana Díaz, seen by many as the real power in PSOE and a likely future leader of the party, has warned Sánchez that PSOE doesn't have the parliamentary clout to be able to form a government. With only 85 seats in Congress, she has noted, the party cannot govern.

In any moral terms it is questionable for a party with slightly less than 25% parliamentary representation to be allowed to govern, but Sánchez still seems as though he might try. Again. Armengol, for her sake, has to hope that he succeeds. She heads a government with an even lower percentage representation, one enabled solely by the partner that is not in government (Podemos with 17% representation).

The pretence that exists with this government was further exposed during the debate. If applause is a mark of support, then it was in short supply, either from Podemos or Més as Armengol defended the "government of change". Ultimately, whatever Armengol says or does, this government is bound inextricably to the fortunes of PSOE nationally. It might be recalled, for example, that Més had at one point appeared to have been prepared to pull out from an agreement following the 2015 regional election. A stumbling-block was the financing of the Balearics. With Sánchez as prime minister, this would all be sorted. It may have seemed in June last year as if a PSOE national government (with whichever other parties in tow) was a goer. In truth, it never was, and PSOE just finds its support (at the ballot box) more on the wane.

Armengol is caught between the rock of national fortunes and the hard place of local difficulties. She couldn't have envisaged tourism becoming the battleground it has. The tourist tax, and the skirmishes over its distribution and purposes, was never destined to leave casualties. Saturation and its fellow tourist traveller, limits, may well do.

Podemos and Més have both affiliated themselves with the "without limits there is no future" manifesto. Podemos's Laura Camargo pointed this out to Armengol. The president instead insists that limits are not a solution. The three parties are poles apart on the issue. They know it, and any observer of the government can recognise it. Rather than the tourist tax being a defining policy of this government, the headless arguments over tourism numbers are defining it. If any senior figures from either Podemos or Més put in an appearance on the anti-tourist route planned for tomorrow in Palma, the game could be as good as up.

The divisions in the government are such that Camargo attacked Armengol for devoting herself to mere amendments of "disastrous policies" pursued by the PP when it was in power. Direction, Camargo asserted, has not been defined. The fact is that the only direction which counts is one determined by Podemos. The relationship with PSOE and PSOE's dependence on Podemos in the Balearics should make Sánchez stop dead in his tracks. It would be no different if there were ever a PSOE-Podemos national alliance. Like Armengol, Sánchez would be a Podemos play thing, ever exposed to its exigencies.

It isn't as if, however, Podemos and Més don't have their own concerns. For Podemos they are also a factor of national developments. The battle royal between Pablo Iglesias and Iñigo Errejón is one which boils down to Errejón's view - and a correct one - that the electorate needs to be able to trust Podemos more. It could otherwise be that Podemos have peaked and that there is only way for the party to go. At local level, there is the business with one of its main figures, Daniel Bachiller,  and the funding that his laboratory has been receiving; funding which has seemingly produced no results. Camargo believes there is a "campaign". Others will believe it only appropriate that Bachiller is brought to account.

Més, meanwhile, are contending with the consequences of the June general election alliance with Podemos which spectacularly failed to deliver. Armengol has her problems, but her "partners" have them as well. Each is fighting its own battles, and government is thus diminished.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 22 September 2016

Morning high (6.35am): 19.8C
Forecast high: 27C; UV: 5
Three-day forecast: 23 September - Rain, sun, 27C; 24 September - Rain, sun, 25C; 25 September - Rain, sun, 25C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): East 2 to 4.

Things are looking rather unsettled. Could be some rain today as well as sun, and greater likelihood of rain tomorrow and over the weekend.

Evening update (20.00): High of 28.5C. No rain, mainly sunny, cloudy now. Alert for rain tomorrow.

What's In A Community?

"Comunidad" or "comunitat", if this is your co-official language preference, has the same meaning as the English "community". The words have each followed the same linguistic path from Latin "communitas" with divergences such as the Old French "comuneté". In terms of human society, it is one of the most powerful words and concepts to have come from Latin. It is the sharing of something in common - a place, a belief, a value, an identity, a government.

When Spain moved into its democratic, post-Franco era, it placed community at the centre of this democratic renewal. Regions, such as the Balearics, officially became communities. In English, because it aids better understanding, it is convenient to refer to the Balearics as a region. A community, in wider social terms, is more understandable in being applied, say, to the British or German communities in Mallorca or to all sorts of other communities. They are on the internet, there is a farming or banking community, a gay community.

All of them are defined by having something in common, as is a political community. But English can stumble somewhat in acknowledging community as an actual political entity. Hence, why region is a convenience. Not, however, that it is inaccurate. The Balearics is still a region, just as Catalonia or Andalusia are. But they are more than this. They are communities. Their official political denomination is "comunidad autónoma" - autonomous community - and their constitutions are enshrined in their statutes of autonomy.

The Balearic parliament has been engaged in a debate into the "state of the community". Linguistically, a trick might be said to be being played here. State has its dual meanings of condition and "nation". A debate into the state of the nation that is the community, that of the Balearics.

To what extent is there a Balearic community? Is the term a form of artifice, a kind of deception to portray the sharing of things in common? A political expedient, therefore, to engineer a sense of common identity? There is undoubtedly greater power in conveying cohesion through community, a greater sense of purpose than merely being an anonymous, if autonomous, "region". But how real is it?

Historically, if one goes back far enough, there was no community. Primitive societies would not necessarily have allowed it anyway, but in the Balearic archipelago there was separate development and evolution. Ibiza entered the Classical World far earlier than either Mallorca or Menorca. Its Carthage association saw to that. Much later, Ibiza was to express its separateness through the identity of architecture, transported to Mallorca only by degree, such as to Cala d'Or.

At the time of the Catalan conquest, Ibiza and Formentera submitted to the Catalan aristocracy in the form of the Bishop of Tarragona six years after the assault on Mallorca by Jaume I. Menorca and its Muslim community accepted the sovereignty of Aragonese nobles two years after the Mallorca takeover. The island wasn't to definitively be "Catalanised" for a further fifty or more years. The events that created a Catalan society in the Balearics are revered mostly in Mallorca. 1229 and all that do not carry the same weight elsewhere.

In far more contemporary times, Menorca held out as a Republican stronghold during the Civil War. In the years immediately before the war, Ibiza and Menorca had great reservations about tentative moves to establish autonomous government for the Balearics during the time of the Second Republic. Both feared that it was a move to give Mallorca dominance.

When mass tourism arrived, the mass mostly descended on Mallorca. Balearisation, the development of the coasts, was predominantly a Mallorcan phenomenon. The magnet for tourism society was Mallorca. It became a global byword in ways that neither Ibiza nor Menorca did. Ibiza experienced its own curious evolution, that of hippy colonies.

While there are common linguistic connections, there are also differences. These are most evident in Menorca, the legacy of British and French influences. Likewise, these occupiers bequeathed architectural styles, at variance with those, say, of Ibiza.

The president of the Council of Mallorca, Miquel Ensenyat, speaking on the occasion of Mallorca Day, referred to the original institutions of autonomy - the islands' councils (with the exception of Formentera, which wasn't to get one until much later). These councils came before the formation of the autonomous community and so the founding of regional government. Ensenyat stressed the importance of the councils in responding to the idiosyncratic needs of the islands.

With that one word, idiosyncratic, Ensenyat spoke volumes. Something peculiar to the individual islands. Specific differences, be they cultural, economic or political.

When surveys are undertaken of identity, they reveal overwhelming identity with the specific islands rather than with the Balearics: this sense of belonging is greater away from Mallorca. So is there genuinely a "community"? Maybe Nel Marti (Més per Menorca) summed it up during parliament's debate: the complete absence of mention of "his" island.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 21 September 2016

Morning high (7.12am): 19.3C
Forecast high: 26C; UV: 6
Three-day forecast: 22 September - Cloud, sun, 27C; 23 September - Cloud, sun, 26C; 24 September - Sun, cloud, 26C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Variable 2 to 3 tending to East 3.

Clear enough early on. Should be ok, although the met agency has suggested there could be a storm in the east of the islands. Not any evidence of this on the local forecast though.

Evening update (20.00): High of 27.7C. Not any sign of any rain.

So Much Saturation, So Little Sense

There's been another survey about saturation. Can you stomach it? Are we not all sick of saturation stories saturating the media? Well, hold it back. Don't rush to the toilet just yet. There's plenty more saturation still to be wrung from the saturated rag of tourism tossed around by agenda-setting politicians and agitators.

It's Gadeso's turn this time. Its survey into saturation discovers, inter alia, that 80% of Balearic citizens have perceived increased saturation this summer, that 61% are in favour of limits on the number of tourists and that 78% are fully supportive of the ecotax. (I am, incidentally, ceasing to refer to it as the "tourist tax"; it is quite obviously a new ecotax, regardless of what certain members of the government have said in the past.)

Let's just take the 80%. It is possible that they do indeed all "perceive" increased saturation because they have genuinely experienced it. Possible, but also subject to influence. When there is so much talk of saturation and/or massification, then that talk is going to rub off. Repeat the message often enough and enough people will believe it and treat it as gospel.

But if we accept that there is increased saturation - and tourist arrival numbers would suggest that there is - why nevertheless is there such agitation, when majority opinion recognises its root cause? This is the insecurity elsewhere in the Med. Gadeso finds that 65% of those surveyed accept this.

It could of course be that this insecurity persists, thus maintaining elevated levels of demand for Balearic tourism. A political response - and an agitator response - is therefore to seek some form of limit. But what happens if and when the insecurity evaporates? Are limits (whatever these might turn out to be, if any) to then be discarded? In all probability, no. The political agenda since the turn of the century has been dominated by a philosophy of control, even of reduction. This started, as noted yesterday, with the old ecotax and with the aims of the former tourism minister Celestí Alomar.

So, it's all a left-wing conspiracy to cut tourism numbers? Correct? No, not entirely. The "quality tourism" agenda has been one of the right as well. By its very nature it implies reduction. A current quantity of some 13 million tourists per annum to the Balearics couldn't be maintained if strict "quality" requirements were to be insisted upon. This agenda was one advocated by the defunct Unió Mallorquina and has even been voiced by the Partido Popular. Carlos Delgado, when he became tourism minister, alluded to potential reduction in the pursuit of quality and so greater returns per head of tourist population.

Regardless of left or right, why does the notion of limits inspire opposition among some? While it is hard to know definitively what "a limit" should be, intuitively one suspects that there should be one. There is only so much strain that small islands can be subjected to. This doesn't have to be a political discussion; merely a common sense one.

The problem is that the debate, such as it is, has already wandered off into radical territory. The Luddite tendency wants more than limits. It is so anti-tourist that it seems to want an end to tourism full stop. It couches its arguments in terms of the "mass" without ever adequately elucidating what "non-mass " might equate to (if anything) or indeed what, economically, would take up the slack.

The government's folly is in having allowed the more extreme views against tourism to have taken hold. With Podemos in the camp, this has not been surprising, but Més have not helped. In so doing, sensible, clear, objective debate is impossible.

A means of seeking limits is through a form of price engineering. For this, read the ecotax. Celestí Alomar seemed to believe that the old tax would achieve this and bring with it the much-desired "quality tourism". Yet, we now have a government, and a tourism minister, which doesn't necessarily equate the new ecotax with limits. Biel Barceló has maintained that the tax will not affect tourism. By implication, that means it will not lead to a reduction and nor would it necessarily prevent an increase in tourist numbers.

But the tax is bound up in this whole debate, leading one to query the coherence of government thinking. It only needs to look at the experience of Catalonia to know that a tourist tax doesn't stop growth in numbers. They have been going up there since the tax came in four years ago, and they were going up before parts of the Med became virtual tourist no-go areas. So, price engineering via a tax, unless it were really onerous, doesn't necessarily work.

A serious, level-headed debate needs to be had. Will an increasingly febrile atmosphere permit it? Doubtful.

MALLORCA TODAY - Weather Alcúdia and Pollensa 20 September 2016

Morning high (7.35am): 17.8C
Forecast high: 26C; UV: 6
Three-day forecast: 21 September - Cloud, sun, 26C; 22 September - Sun, cloud, 27C; 23 September - Cloud, sun, 26C.

Sea conditions (northern Mallorca; Alcúdia and Pollensa bays to 20.00): Variable 2 to 3. Swell of one metre. Rain later on.

Some cloud around first up. Rain, if there is some, more likely in the afternoon.

Evening update (20.15): High of 25.6C. Somewhat iffy. Some rain but not like it was in the south of the island.