The week through the pages of the Majorca Daily Bulletin

Green Shirt Strike

Throughout the week photographs of large crowds of green T-shirted striking teachers have dominated the Bulletin’snews pages. What the Balearic government had predicted would be a short-lived protest against the introduction of three-language teaching in schools (TIL -- tratamiento de lenguas) appeared instead to gather strength as the days passed and at one point even involved students themselves in the demonstrations. After three days the Balearic president, Jose Maria Bauza, attacked the teachers, saying "I can’t understand why anyone can question our children learning more languages in school". He also claimed that the three-language proposal had been approved by a majority of voters at the last election and accordingly it was his government’s responsibility to implement it.

As with most strikes that are not quickly resolved, the issues at stake in this dispute may have become more complex than they seemed initially. A photograph of a banner in support of the teaching of English and Catalan but not of Castilian Spanish may have confused many onlookers but a more basic objection by the teachers has probably been the lack of adequate preparation by the authorities for their additional responsibilities under the new TIL scheme.

Residencias Latest

While the teachers’ strike has seemed stalled there were welcome signs of movement on an issue that has irritated and even angered Majorca’s foreign residents for seven years -- the abolition of the old-type residence cards with photographic identification and their replacement by a certificate that has no legal standing.

The Calvia council, with the largest foreign community on Majorca, has made several attempts locally and in Madrid to find a way of persuading the various authorities involved to bring back the old cards, but without success.

In her weekly Calvia column in the Bulletin councillor Angela Guerrero described a new approach which, if approved at an early meeting of the Calvia council, will take the problem direct to the European Union in Brussels where it started as a side-issue to new legislation seven years ago.

She pointed out that although British residents have been most inconvenienced by the withdrawal of the cards since they have no national identity card and therefore legally always have to carry their passport, all foreign European citizens living in Spain want the card back in place of the "useless certificate".

Winter Woes

What has become an annual headline -- Big drop in winter flights -- arrived early this year, in fact in the very week that warm Majorcan sunshine was denying the official end of summer. The news of a ten per cent fall in services prompted a Letter to the Editor from John Little who suggested that they will inevitably be reduced if Majorca does not find a way of publicising its attractions in the winter months.

He suggested a TV commercial asking, "This winter do you want to walk, bicycle, golf, paint, bird watch, shop or just chill out -- then come to Majorca, we’ve got it all and it’s just two hours away". But by the end of the week another Bulletin front page was saying "Only three hotels in the Calvia will be open this winter".

It is a classic chicken-and-egg situation. In a Viewpoint editor Jason Moore wrote, "The airlines blame the hoteliers and the hoteliers blame the airlines." But he pointed out that there is probably more to do in the winter in Majorca than in the summer and that "the weather is better here than in Germany or Britain."

Gossip and Pollensa Church

Pollensa’s Anglican Church community was in the Bulletin’spages on three occasions during the week. The first was the brief news that the Church’s new vicar had resigned from his post, apparently because his "civil partnership" had led to a withdrawal by the local Catholic community of the use of its church for Anglican services -- an arrangement which had lasted for more than 25 years.

In his weekly column the Anglican Chaplain of Majorca, Revd David Waller, praised recent strong critical observations on gossiping by Pope Francis -- "Gossip always has a criminal side to it. There is no such thing as innocent gossip." The Revd Waller said: "A few weeks ago in this column I wrote what I hope was a gentle piece about gossip and the harm that it can do. Let me be quite open and say that I wrote that from within my own context at present given that I am dealing with the situation at the Anglican Church at Puerto Pollensa, which as you may surmise has been caused to a large degree by gossip as it has negatively affected the lives of several people."

Nonetheless, the Pollensa Anglicans are obviously a resilient lot -- the third Bulletin piece about them was two full pages of pictures of their annual Songs of Praise held on the beach. "Business as usual" was the caption.

Looking Back

The award of the Gold Medal of the Council of Majorca to Pere Serra, the founder and chairman of the Majorca Daily Bulletin on its 50th anniversary stirred memories for Doctor George Giri in his weekly Rural Life column. On the topical subject of language he recalled a very good teacher of Castilian at the Britich Club in Palma, and continued, "It is interesting, at that time we had no thoughts about Catalan. In our village of Mancor de la Vall few could read or write (the first proper school was built in the nineties), their local language of Mallorquin, due to isolation and lack of cars and roads, did not really have grammatical textbooks, and villagers would not be understood by a village next door if they did not want them to."

In Brief

The Balearic government reversed a decision to close the Centro Balears Europa in Palma. Its director, Kate Mentink and a staff of seventeen deal with matters affecting the Balearics within Europe.

In the first seven months of this year the number of cruise liners arriving in the Balearics increased by more than forty per cent over last year. The loners carried 778,000 tourist passengers.