Juan Bauça is Santa Margalida’s grand demon. He is not a demon of the fire-running variety. He doesn’t even wear a mask, for Juan is demon-in-chief when Santa Catalina Thomàs (La Beata) walks the gauntlet of the pot-smashing demons at the September fiestas.
When he takes time off from being a demon, what does he do? Well, more than three years ago, prior to the pandemic, he and three others - not necessarily demons but aficionados at the very least of demonic culture - came up with the idea of creating a hotel in Santa Margalida village. The municipality has a whole load of hotels - they’re all in Can Picafort except for a couple of rural ones - but it doesn’t have an interior hotel in Santa Margalida itself. Juan and friends decided to do something about this. And as lovers of the demonic underworld, they also decided to give it a demon theme.
The aim is that S’Arracer del Dimoni will open in spring 2024. So it will be more than four years since the project began to take shape. Why so long? They had the property to convert, but - and apart from Covid - they ran up against all the bureaucracy for a project of this type. In all, it took two years and ten months to get the paperwork sorted out. Planning permission was one aspect, but another - and somewhat more problematic - was obtaining the registrations for the beds.
Tourist accommodation places haven’t been easy to come by. For hotels, they can be bought from the government’s consortium for accommodation places, but this requires places at other hotels to have been given up. Since February last year, no new places have been available, the outgoing government having adopted this measure to prevent further growth in tourist numbers. For Juan and partners, they only have eighteen rooms, so the number of actual beds is low. Even so, they had to wait their turn in being able to buy these places (3,500 euros each) and therefore have the necessary registration. One could say that they had the devil’s own job in getting everything sorted out.
The conversion will maintain some of the old building. Otherwise it will be adapted to current-day needs for a hotel. These include sustainability features such as solar panels which will generate much of the electricity. There won’t be a restaurant, as Juan explains that they want guests to spend in Santa Margalida establishments. The hotel, he hopes, will serve as a means of giving the local economy a boost. To this end, it will be open all year, an alternative to all the seasonal sun-and-beach of Can Picafort.
As to the demon theme, Juan and others won’t be racing around smashing pots. The decoration will say it all, e.g. paintings and photos of Santa Margalida demons, whose role in the La Beata procession has existed ever since the first (believed to have been in 1792, when Catalina Thomàs was beatified) and which managed to overcome an attempt by the Bishop of Mallorca to ban the demons in the mid-nineteenth century.
Town halls and the bad blood of pacts
If coalitions are needed to form town hall administrations after elections, and they normally are needed, the resulting alliances can create some bad blood. In Pollensa after the 2019 election, Junts Avançam could not forgive the UMP (Unió Mollera Pollencina) for switching pact allegiance from Junts to enable an administration led by Tomeu Cifre.
It was possible that a similar situation could have arisen in Sa Pobla, where the Partido Popular with six councillors (a majority of nine) had offered the mayor’s post to the Sa Pobla Independents (four councillors) if they switched from the previous pact with PSOE, Més and El Pi. This would have meant Biel Ferragut returning as mayor - he was from 2015 to 2019. Well, he will. But not with the PP. Bad blood.
An alliance confirmed some days ago and to be consummated on Saturday is Alcudia’s. A three-way pact, it is of the PP, Vox and the Unió per Alcudia (UxA). It is the latter with whom there is some bad blood, not because UxA have jumped from the previous pact (they weren’t part of it) but because of what happened in 2011. There are long memories in municipal politics, especially if they are those of PSOE and Més.
The PSM Mallorca Socialist Party was to become the major component in Més. In 2011, the PSM stood at the Alcudia municipal election. Heading the list of candidates was Carme García. An outcome of the election was that the PP had eight councillors, one short of a majority. It was thought - assumed - that the PSM (one councillor) would side with PSOE and the now defunct Convergencia in allowing the PSOE-Convergencia pact to continue. The PSM didn’t. Or rather, Carme García didn’t.
When it was announced that UxA had agreed a pact with the PP and Vox, all the old feeling came flooding back. Més reactivated the description of García - “a turncoat”. She spent the whole of the 2011-2015 as an unaccredited councillor and as first deputy mayor.
Has this been opportunism on her behalf not once but twice? One could interpret it as being so, but I’m not convinced. A five-way pact, which would have been the alternative, struck me as unworkable. García has explained that other parties weren’t prepared to facilitate the investiture of the PP’s Fina Linares as mayor. She and the UxA were, even if it meant an alliance with Vox, García having initially said that she could not contemplate a pact with extremes either from the right or the left (Vox or Podemos).
I believe that she’s sincere and that her basic motivations are to do the best for Alcudia. The bad blood should be set aside. But it won’t be.