The responsible tourism decree that wasn't responsible

Why might he be interested? This is because he said after becoming tourism minister last year that a new tourism law for the Balearics would involve analysis of previous legislation. To be fair, he did only place a 25-year limit on this historical study. The content of the Cladera decree and the contents of numerous other tourism decrees that Cladera issued had in any event found their way into the 1999 tourism law, the first all-embracing law of its kind and thus the starting-point for the analysis.

But a point that Sr. Bauzá may find relevant was that Sr. Cladera was operating, more or less, from a blank sheet of legislative paper. There hadn't been tourism decrees as such because there hadn't been a Balearic government until 1983. The same cannot be said today, and especially when it comes to the Bauzá revised tourism of excesses decree.

Ever since the Partido Popular returned to government last year and thus reassumed responsibility for tourism legislation, an impression has been formed of a government desperately searching for something to reform while not being prepared - for obvious political reasons - to admit that there isn't a great deal that actually needs reforming. Again to be fair, the minister did once say that there wouldn't be a "scorched earth" approach and dismissal of all that had gone before, but what has come forth so far has amounted to little more than a boy scout rubbing two sticks together to start a camp fire.

His immediate predecessor, Iago Negueruela, has accused Bauzá of not having a project. Negueruela most certainly did, more than one in fact, and hence he came up with the tourism of excesses decree, which had adopted an almost Cladera-esque blank sheet approach. But for Bauzá, as he has said on repeated occasions, the decree was a failure, its wording needed improving and its title needed changing.

Branding it a failure has always sounded like mere political talk, this failure not having been truly acknowledged by Bauzá's PP colleague at the Council of Mallorca - José Marcial Rodríguez, the tourism councillor - who has reckoned that the decree's provisions were implemented pretty effectively in Magalluf by Calvia town hall. Improving wording and changing the title smack of cosmetic tinkering, tourism of excesses being surgically removed and replaced with a responsible tourism prosthetic because it sounds nicer.

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But, as Bauzá is discovering when editing a decree's wording rather than starting from scratch, the devil of the detail can in fact end up making things worse. Responsible tourism? Business associations have suggested that it is irresponsible. How is it possible to reduce fines for behaviour that Negueruela had classified as excessive? How can a ban on shops selling alcohol between 9.30pm and 8am be effective when these shops can remain open and act as "clandestine" liquor stores?

The government had been due to approve the revised wording of the decree with the rebranded title on Friday, April 26. But once they got wind of the content, businesses kicked up so much fuss that it had to be pulled. Not only were they annoyed by some of the supposedly improved wording, they said that they hadn't been consulted. Not consulted? Yet hadn't the minister made a big thing about consultation and accused Negueruela of having not consulted and of having foisted all manner of legislation on a poor tourism sector?

Yes, he had, but that was when he was talking about a revised tourism law to take account of all the legislation from previous decades. This was something separate to the decree, even it it hadn't originally been because the minister had implied that the revised decree would be part of this law, whenever the plan was to introduce it. Separate it had to be, because the Balearics could not endure another summer of apparently being stigmatised by excesses. And besides, responsible tourism was now such a big thing, the Council of Mallorca having come up with a pledge to prove that it was.

Having so spectacularly managed to put the noses out of joint of its allies, the business associations, and therefore postponed a decree, the revision of which had become essential prior to the official start of the tourism season, it was left to government spokesperson and vice-president, Antoni Costa, to explain. Sort of. "I haven't seen the draft of the decree," he told a press conference. Hadn't seen it!? They were supposed to have been approving it. He knew enough to say that reducing fines "doesn't have to be like this". Of course it doesn't. Not even his own party could accept this, let alone the opposition.

Bauzá has since insisted that fines will not be reduced, but this certainly wasn't how his critics viewed his draft and an explanation for a reduction, which was based on the fact that the range of fines in the Negueruela decree conflicted with the range in other tourism legislation.

There will need to be some "polishing", Costa added. Polishing, as in improving the text. Which was what they were meant to have been doing. If only decrees were as simple as they had been forty years ago.