The week that was

Piling on the agony

What  on earth has it come to when the prime minister of Spain can be found wandering around with a selfie stick? Mariano has suddenly got the camera bug. There he was, not so long ago, beaming close up and personal with the boy Nadal and last week he was waving the wand about in the company of some Young Conservatives. This is not the sort of behaviour we expect of him. Anyone would think he was a man of the people, more at home cowering behind a sofa rather than being snapped alongside the kids. And then, blow me, he was in Palma for a sort of dress-down Thursday on the streets of the city with his new found (renewed found) best friend José Ramón. Sans tie may be a de rigueur fashion statement by Majorcan politicians, but really ... Rajoy? Mind you, as it was about 100 in the shade, he could have been forgiven for having donned flip flops and a Real Madrid t-shirt (so long as he kept the shirt on, because otherwise he would have contravened the city’s civic ordinance). As it was, he stuck to the Armani-style suit trousers, while JR was in his best jeans. (Which are the favoured jeans brands of Majorca’s politicos, do you suppose?)
Then it was off to the Son Moix for a blue-flag-waving rally. “One Mariano, there’s only one Mariano,” they didn’t chant as Mariano reeled off the good news of the previous 72 hours, the rabbits that had been plucked from the magician’s hat, such as growth outstripping even that of Germany. JR announced there would be 40,000 new jobs. A tenth of that number - somewhat fewer than for a typical home match against a Second Division side no one has ever heard of - cheered and cheered. “Who are yer? Who are yer? Who are yer?” they didn’t taunt PSOE or Podemos.
A Bauzá bounce had suddenly bound on to the pre-election scene, if only in JR’s estimation. According to PP internal polls, there would be 26 seats in parliament and not the 20 that other polls had been predicting (who can trust polls these days?). “Boing, boing, boing,” the blue-flag-wavers should have been belting out in a Baggies fans way. Or will it be a Zebedee boing come next Sunday? Time for bed.
While all this rallying of the troops was going on, someone with nothing better to do had been taking a look at the Balearics PP’s election website. And what did they find? An advert for hemorrhoids. Or rather, the image of a model (female) who had appeared on a British website in 2013 which had been promoting its “detox for hemorrhoids”. What was happening? Was this a case of JR bringing his family business to the party again? As the owner of a pharmacy, were the PP promising to rid the whole of the Balearic population of piles? What an electoral gambit that would be. But alas, no. The agency had cocked up. As it had also done by posting an image that Santander bank had previously used. The people in the photo didn’t look Majorcan, said the political scientist who had made the discovery but who really ought to get out more. Sadly, therefore, the PP’s message of “per un futur bon” was not one of a bon future of relief from piles.
But back at the Son Moix, Mariano was going on about tourism. It is “indestructible in the islands,“ he announced (and for once didn’t refer to Majorca as the island of Palma). This was by way of an attack on ideas the left might have of reintroducing an eco-tax, but then there are other ways in which tourism can be destructible. Poor image, for instance, and so, naturally enough, Magalluf and its peculiarities were being laid bare by the British red tops once more. This time it was  The Mirror  and a video of some bloke dressed as a woman being given a thrashing by a dwarf during an S&M stag-party do in an - as yet - unnamed Maga bar.
The Mirror conveniently posted a photo of a dwarf with a bike on its website and quoted “a source close to the Magalluf bar scene” who said that nothing had changed, despite the vow to clean the place up. Yep, the red tops will do anything they can to drag Maga’s name down further, will ensure they have their slime-ball moles in place in order to try and dish some dirt and will also manage to misunderstand.
Politicians had told local media last year, the paper said, that Magalluf would be a “mature tourist zone”, thus totally failing to understand (or perhaps deliberately so) that this is not a reference to behaviour. Idiots.

City of metal

You have to hand it to Podemos, they do come up with some cracking stuff now and then. Som Palma, which is how Podemos is known in the city, reckons it’s got a new theme for Palma: “European city of rock ‘n’ roll and heavy metal”. Palma365 would have to create an additional slogan: “passion for metal”.
 Is this all a reflection of the Pablo Iglesias ponytail? Not necessarily.
The Soms say it’s to do with taking into account citizens’ tastes in music. More democratic. Actually, they may have a point, though heavy metal? There again, Palma is treated to the appearance of the Mein Schiff cruise ship, the one which transports hundreds of German rock fans around the Med for five days of heavy metal at sea, which is a frankly horrific idea, but is doubtless a heavenly one for air-guitar-playing, head-banging aficionados of the genre. Musical democracy? Maybe.

Escorca - where they vote for each other

Escorca's  a strange place. As a municipality it is quite large but only because there are some damn great mountains which make it so. Population-wise it isn’t large.
It is in fact tiny, so tiny that the population has now dropped below 250, and this has meant a change to the normal municipal election rules. With fewer than 250 people, the town hall can only have five councillors (you may ask why so many are in fact required), and the system of voting is altered from the normal one of the “list”.
The electorate will be able to vote for four candidates (regardless of party) of names on one single sheet of paper. There are three parties standing at the election - the PP, whose number one candidate is the current mayor, Antonio Solivellas, Més and El Pi. The PP has four candidates, the other parties have five, significantly fewer than the number which appear on lists in other municipalities.
But as there are so few people in Escorca, if the lists were long  ones, they’d all be voting for each other.
This may all sound a bit daft, but I’m not sure that it is.
Depending where you live, the lists of candidates for different parties can be as long as your arm. Do you know these people? Of course you don’t. Do you care who they are?
 No. But in an open election, you may well know more.
You may indeed wish to vote for candidates from different parties.
 Escorca may just have it right.