Political Balls - Carlos Delgado and the politics of language

Some of you may already know the name of Carlos Delgado. He is the mayor of Calvià (Magaluf etc.). He is also a candidate for presidency of the Balearics Partido Popular (the conservative party), and were he to become leader, he could well also become president of the regional government.

Delgado is something of a controversial character. No, he's not mired in corruption scandals, but he is one of the main protagonists in the politics of language and is - essentially - pro-Castilian, a position that many in his party would also hold. For pro-Castilian, you can read - were you minded to - anti-Catalan. Delgado has made repeated pronouncements on the language issue, and in a feature from the "Diario" the headline starkly states that he could enter the region's administration "without knowing Catalan". For a Majorcan politician, this is a heck of an admission. If Delgado were to be the PP's candidate for president, you can bet your life that the election is likely to be sidetracked down the emotional language line. There are more important matters.

One area of the so-called "Catalan imposition" that Delgado would backtrack on (backtrack, sidetrack, we all get off track) is the Catalan requirement for public-sector workers, such as those in the medical service. It was this, more than anything, that gave rise to a demonstration in Palma last spring against the imposition.

There are many who will support Delgado for this reason alone, but there are many, even PP voters, who might find his own lack of Catalan a drawback. They wouldn't be wrong. However much many might agree that Catalan has encroached too far into public administration and other aspects of Majorcan life and society, it is the case that it holds joint official status alongside Castilian. An argument, and not an inaccurate one, is that Castilian's joint official status has been undermined, but the duality of language is a fact. A president of the Balearics should be a Catalan speaker. If nothing else, it is a matter of respect.

The current leader of the PP, José Ramón Bauzá, has also not been unknown for making pronouncements against Catalan. The language issue, he has been quoted as saying, has been "perverted" by the current administration, but he believes, as seemingly also does Delgado, that school textbooks should be freely available in the local dialects of the four Balearic islands. Doesn't sound like a strong pro-Castilian line (indeed it sounds rather contradictory), but one thing you can be sure of, especially if Delgado were to come to power, would be that the main language of teaching would become a major issue.

This is all a not insignificant social and political issue in Majorca, one cannot downplay it, but the worry is that it might assume far more prominence than matters of real importance, the economy for example. If all the corruption were not enough, politics in Majorca may be about to take its collective eye further off the ball.

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