Don’t tamper with Mallorca’s municipalities

In Escorca, the voters do something which no other voters in Mallorca do. They place a cross next to the name of a candidate. Why do they do this? It’s because there is a special procedure for municipalities with between 100 and 250 people. All candidates for the different parties are on the one ballot sheet. Escorca voters - 164 out of the 187 - are in fact not limited to the single cross. They can cross up to as many as four candidates. Odd? It most certainly is.

Escorca has eight immediate neighbouring municipalities, only one of which - Pollensa - has a larger land area (151.65 square kilometres). Alaro, Bunyola, Campanet, Fornalutx, Mancor de la Vall, Selva, Soller; they are all smaller. But they are obviously all bigger when it comes to people. Fornalutx, with 710, shares something in common with Escorca in that its population doesn’t reach four figures.

Otherwise, there is some commonality in that these are all municipalities in the Tramuntana or in the mountain range’s foothills. Commonality but distinctiveness, and Escorca is more distinctive than any other; it’s all the tall peaks. Yes, but does it go deeper? Definitely. There’s all the history and the principle of municipalism, which started knocking around on the Iberian Peninsula at least a thousand years ago. It arrived in Mallorca not thanks to the Muslims - they had administrative areas - but courtesy of the Catalans. By the fourteenth century, after Jaume II had established the various ‘agro-villages’, there were 33 municipalities. Many of the rest appeared in the early nineteenth century, Deya having been a peculiar exception. It managed to rid itself of Valldemossa and become independent in 1583. The most recently created municipality, Ariany, arrived in 1982, and the people of Ariany haven’t let Petra forget about it. The municipal shield features the keys of Saint Peter, something of a dig at Petra with its parish church of Sant Pere (Saint Peter).

You tamper with municipalities at your peril. Or that’s how it seems. Celebrated acts of ‘independence’, such as Campanet’s in 1372 after there had been indignation because it was rolled in with Sa Pobla, are part of folklore. In two years’ time, one can anticipate one hundredth anniversary celebrations in Consell, Lloret de Vistalegre, Mancor de la Vall and Ses Salines. In Alaro, Sineu, Selva and Santanyi respectively, they’ll be saying you used to be part of us.

The elections serve to highlight how small local administration can be - none more so than in Escorca, if only in population terms - but they also emphasise how strong this sense of municipality is. Far from wishing to somehow diminish it, one gets talk of ever greater localism: if not full municipality status, then the creation of a ‘minor local entity’, a sort of municipality within a municipality. Palmanyola, otherwise part of Bunyola, is the only example of this in Mallorca. Porto Cristo in Manacor is one place where there has been much discussion of seeking this status.

Voting for 53 mayors and 53 groups of councillors might appear excessive. But given that there are 8,131 municipalities in the whole of Spain, it doesn’t. These numbers have nevertheless been brought into question. Purely in terms of financial efficiency, it’s probably fair to say that rationalisation, mergers would have benefits. Logistically there would also be advantages, but the closest there has been to rationalisation has been the creation of so-called commonwealths, the ‘mancomunidades’ of shared resources and activities. These, though, have run up against their own problems and sheer indifference. Only one in Mallorca, that for the Pla region, can be said to function with any real sense of success.

The financial crisis and austerity pushed local authority organisation high up the agenda. The Spanish government of the Partido Popular imposed budgetary constraints on municipalities and started to toy with the idea of rationalisation. Which was as far as it went. It’s not a subject which is seriously on the table because there would never be agreement to it. The municipality is the people, and the ‘pueblo’ is the ‘pueblo’.

The identity of history determines everything. Traditions, legends, great events all shape this identity. In Pollensa, the ‘pollencins’ are called on to defend the municipality from the Moors; in Soller, it is the ‘sollerics’ who are likewise commanded. Saints and their intervention have, for example, spared the ‘porrerencs’ of Porreres. Fiestas are often an assertion of this historical identity. As to Escorca, well they probably have their own special form of identity. It comes from being so tiny but at the same time comparatively large, while the people get to place a cross. Why, for sake of argument, would you merge with Fornalutx when you’re the only ones who can get to do this?