Cry Wolf: Hay Mucha Crisis
I have come to the conclusion that many a Majorcan rather likes there being mucha crisis. It has become a comforting state of being over the past three to four years; comforting in that it allows any form of enquiry that might require the handing over of money or the taking of action to be met with a shrug and a smug look of superiority. Hay mucha crisis but my crisis is better than your crisis, or is it that it is not as bad as your crisis? There's mucha and then there's mucha. Or even muchísima.
The chanting of the c-word is so predictable that it has caused a disruption to normal, everyday, banal intercourse. What's the point of asking how things are going when you know beforehand that they are not going and that they are accompanied by mucha crisis. You can't ever be sure that there really is mucha crisis, but you can be sure that it is being used an excuse even if it is merely poca or ninguna.
Maybe there's a business to be made out of making t-shirts emblazoned with the legend "don't tell me there's a crisis", so that whenever you encounter a Majorcan in whatever situation it might be, he or she might be deterred from parroting the "HMC" line. Except no one would buy the t-shirt because there is of course mucha crisis. Or they might buy one so long as they are given a hefty discount or can pay in instalments, and also so long as you can go along and collect the instalments, only to find that they have no dinero because there is ... you guessed it.
If and when there is no longer mucha crisis, how are people going to cope? Crisis dependency has taken hold. It will require treatment at crisis addiction clinics to restore the crisis dependent to normality. But there's little chance of post-crisis Balearics having a health service that is sufficiently restored to good health to be able to cater for the needs of the crisis addicts. So deep is the health service in crisis that it will take years to pay off its debts, if they ever are to be paid off. 550 million euros in the red at the end of 2011. A mere bagatelle to pay off.
Want crisis? I mean, really want crisis? Then look no further than IB-Salut. Oh, it functions well enough, despite the debt, but it is an example of how mucha crisis can border on the inhumane, as is the case with immigrants from some African, Asian and South American countries who have little or no resources or who can't prove that they have and who are being denied a health card that would enable them to get health assistance.
All sorts of questions arise from this, such as having paid into the social security system or not, but don't let's think this is something confined to people from some part of deepest Africa. What if you're British but unable to prove that you have work? There seems some confusion among IB-Salut health centres. In fact, some don't really know, though one or two do. Get lost. Hay mucha crisis, and that's the end of the matter.
A correspondent asked the question of his local health centre (not that it affected him but he wanted to find out). If you are not working, then would you get a new health card? It would depend, came the answer. On what wasn't clear. Hay mucha crisis explained it all, or rather didn't explain anything.
Proving entitlement or having entitlement is reasonable, but what isn't is the confusion that is allowed to creep in with the mucha crisis shrug and justification. It is heartless, callous and confirms that it is the case that your crisis, if you are not Majorcan/Spanish, is worse. As the same correspondent puts it, even if you have lived in Majorca for years, you are still a foreigner and you can piss off.
There is mucha crisis, of course there is, and it is being experienced by all sorts of people. 25% unemployment in the Balearics. Record number of households with everyone out of work. One in four people at risk of poverty or social exclusion. These people know about mucha crisis. It's the mucha crisis of the wolf-criers that makes so many despair. There's no sympathy when "hay mucha crisis", and they are down to their last finca or two.
* Just for those not up to speed with the native, "hay mucha crisis" (there is much crisis) is pronounced like "eye, moochah cree-sis".
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