Protest-free island

It was Rusiñol who popularised ‘the island of calm’. His book, ‘La illa de la calma’, gave Mallorca a slogan, one that is frequently referred to in the current day, if only by way of pointing out how things have changed over a period of more than one hundred years. And it was this slogan that the Catalan journalist Josep Pla drew on in the 1920s when considering politics in Mallorca. Pla wrote: “When it comes to politics, the Mallorcan is a completely indifferent being.”

Constant upheaval

Why would the Mallorcan be anything other? The island, to follow Rusiñol’s thinking, was an idealised place with a society and a landscape untouched by the industrialisation and pretty much constant upheaval of Catalonia.

Both Rusiñol and Pla were right up to a point, but it wasn’t as if Mallorca was totally immune to strife, not least where agricultural workers were concerned. The nineteenth century had ended with the disaster of the phylloxera that had struck the vineyards in 1891 and which had merely compounded the dreadful conditions of the island’s farm labourers. Poverty drove many to emigrate. For the industry that there was, organised labour - and this was very much more evident on the mainland - was hampered by the disagreements between the socialist movement and the anarcho-syndicalists.
The latter viewed unionism as a means to revolutionary change. PSOE, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, founded in 1879, and its close ally the UGT (General Union of Workers), which was founded nine years later, didn’t believe that the class struggle was a basic principle of trade union action.

In a sense, therefore, there was inertia rather than indifference, the consequence of the clashes between political ideologies and of the downtrodden and demoralised agricultural workforce. Despite this, as has been argued by historians like Gabriel Mayol, there was a portion of society with a background in social activism and who understood that protests were a useful form of expression.

Scathing attack

One example that contradicted both Rusiñol and Pla came from the weekly newspaper El Obrero Balear. This was founded in 1900 by the Balearic Socialist Federation, which was affiliated to PSOE. The paper wasn’t reticent in voicing criticism. In 1909, when the editor was a future mayor of Palma, Llorenç Bisbal, it ran a scathing attack on Antoni Maura, the Mallorcan who was the prime minister of Spain.

Maura was held responsible for what is remembered as Tragic Week, when socialists, republicans, freemasons and anarchists rose up in Barcelona and other cities in Catalonia against working-class reservists being sent to the conflict in Morocco. More than 100 civilians were killed in the clashes with police and army. The paper was shut down for a time by the authorities. Nine years later, there was a new demand to end the conflict, and this was an ingredient that provoked the most significant first of May protest in Mallorca.

By 1895, there was a celebration of International Workers Day in Mallorca, the global call having come at the 1889 International Socialist Workers Congress in Paris, which had been prompted by the Haymarket affair in Chicago three years earlier. But up to 1918, Labour Day had been relatively inconsequential. What tipped the balance in that year was a discontent that had been brewing for some years and which was given ever greater expression not just by the situation in Morocco but also by the rise of the Mauristas. Supporters of Antoni Maura, they have often been portrayed as the precursors of the radical right in Spain, including the Falange; they were not beyond engaging in street violence.

An editorial in El Obrero Balear read: “The memorable date for the workers is approaching. The universal festival of labour that the proletariat of all civilised countries celebrates on May Day is undoubtedly the most important and far-reaching in recorded history. Nothing like it has such sublime and redemptive significance. Nothing equals it in terms of grandeur, idealism and justice. Workers! Celebrate the labour festival with ever more enthusiasm and solemnity this year. Let no one go to the workshops or factories on May the first. Long live the party of the workers!”

Major rally

Demands were made following what was the first major rally to be held in Mallorca. These included an eight-hour working day and regulation of domestic work. The labour movement on the island was making some headway, but there was of course to be an interruption. This was to come with Franco, as the Primo de Rivera dictatorship’s attitude was very different. The Joint Committees (‘Comités Paritarios’) established in 1926 created a form of industrial relations that remained basically unaltered during the Second Republic. Collective bargaining practices were a feature of that dictatorship, and collective bargaining of the current day very much provides a context for Labour Day 2025.

Before coming to this, it might be noted that the post-Franco transition to democracy and the decades that have followed have not spawned major protests of a labour character. The death of the Generalissimo didn’t bring the workers onto the streets in great number. A 1977 protest demanding regional autonomy saw up to 40,000 people marching in Palma. This was the largest until the demonstrations against the Jaume Matas government from 2003 to 2007 and then the 2013 protest against José Ramón Bauzá’s education policies.

Year of protest

While there was union involvement, all these protests were broad in terms of participation. They were essentially demonstrations by civil society. And as for Labour Day, the numbers of workers taking to the streets has never been particularly great. In 2022, for example, the first rally to be held since 2019 because of the pandemic attracted around 1,000 people.

Inflation was shooting up and so the main demand was higher salaries, as it will also be this year.
The unions have been threatening to make this year a massive protest in favour of hospitality workers, as the negotiations for the new collective bargaining agreement have been getting nowhere. Strike action that could disrupt the tourism season is becoming more likely. The hospitality industry accounts for roughly 30% of the Balearic workforce, significant enough for a large demonstration of its own. But this first of May the unions, as well as demanding better pay and working conditions and a more equitable work-life balance, are pressing for the right to affordable and decent housing. In questioning the tourism model and highlighting housing, they are sharing a protest space with civil society, which has always achieved more in terms of demonstrating than the unions have by themselves.

Island of calm

The island of calm disguised the deprivations of an idealised society that never existed. Indifference there may once have been, and one still can’t count against apathy. The recent protest against the housing situation attracted far fewer people than last year’s. This was attributed to a demoralisation caused by not seeing meaningful action being taken. The unions might hope to rouse the people in their thousands. But will they?