Bread and circuses

It was partly because of a concern that serious political groups might wish to muscle in on our college bailiwicks that there existed one of very few actual policies. Bread and circuses - events with free drink; that’ll keep ‘em happy!

It was a Roman thing - bread and circuses. The bread was in fact free wheat handed out to citizens. The grain dole, as it was referred to, started in 123BC. What a coincidence. That was the year when Quintus Caecilius Metellus Balearicus led his men in taking over Mallorca. If Cecilio Metelo, as he is more commonly known, adopted a bread and circuses policy, it might be said that he was the originator of the Balearic political model.

There was no bread, but the current mayor of Inca, Virgilio Moreno of PSOE, found himself on the wrong end of a complaint by the Partido Popular for having distributed free sugar. This was brown sugar. It was in sachets that bore the legend “A Inca, Moreno”. Hilarious. Moreno means brown. The mayor posted a video of himself handing out the sugar to Inca bars, the Virgilio smile a constant feature (I’ll come back to smiles). The PP took up the matter with the electoral board. No material for propaganda purposes can be distributed until the official election campaign starts.

Apart from his sugar, the mayor, like all candidates for elections wherever they are held, will have been promising if not the Earth, then something approximating to it. Sceptics and critics will have been watching on, deriding promises as bread for today, hunger for tomorrow.

Where the spending of money is concerned though, and certainly at municipal level, there cannot be promises that entail lavish expenditure. A system of financial fair play now exists, it having been introduced - partly because Brussels demanded it - to keep town hall spending in check. Gone are the days when massive debts were being run up and when the circuses could mean projects of dubious sense and legality. Mayors, be they incumbent or aspiring, know the limits. Or should do.

There is a daily feed of what the parties intend for the electorate. Reports diligently but hierarchically itemise the daily drip party by party. Commanding most space are the faded giants, PSOE and the PP, images carefully placed to see which one can out-smile the other (except when Francina Armengol adopts her sympathetic countenance). And the smiles tell a great deal. When Marga Prohens of the PP is beaming, it just doesn’t somehow look right. Both she and Armengol have been talking of their parties governing alone. Not in majority they won’t. Of the two, it’s hard to tell which one has the most to fear from coalition. Vox all appear to be terminally dour, a good reason for Prohens wanting to give them a wide berth. For Armengol, there is the vision of the smiling assassin of Més, Lluís Apesteguia, cut from a more radical Més cloth than Biel Barceló was.

The Podemos smile, if there is one, is tight-lipped, they not wishing to appear as if they are happy Podemos in case this is mistaken for backing Yolanda Díaz, the Spanish employment minister with the permanent smile who has put the cat among the Podemos pigeons by forming her own offshoot entity, Sumar. In the Balearics, they don’t know if they should be with her or against her.

But alas Ciudadanos, who have nothing to smile for, having disappeared down the election pan before the election has even happened. El Pi, meanwhile, convey a stern exterior. In full knowledge that they are making up the numbers, these could nevertheless prove to be crucial. Which is why they are stern. We are the potential kingmakers. There again, they said that in 2019 and they weren’t.

The days of bread and circuses are in the past, consigned to a time when Jaume Matas of the PP - prior to being hauled up in court on multiple corruption charges - could point the electorate in the direction of a fabulous new hospital, a Metro (which flooded when it opened), a velodrome and arena, a Palacio de Congresos (eventually). He even proposed a street circuit Formula 1 Grand Prix for Palma.
Are such promises needed? In one respect, no. I look at April’s employment figures (almost full employment and the official tourism season hadn’t started then) and wonder. But then this applies to just one party - PSOE. Nothing lasts in politics or in politics with minimal politics. The bread and circuses couldn’t have lasted. The time came for us all to graduate.