The endless left
The Balearic left must be a prodigious political force. It has been in opposition for more than three years and still manages to cause road collapses, increase housing prices, saturate beaches, and fill the airport. There are governments that leave hardly any legacy. The Pact, on the other hand, seems to have discovered the secret of political immortality.
The latest proof was offered by Marga Prohens after her audience with the king at Almudaina. On the eve of a new demonstration against touristification, the president once again attributed the "unbridled" growth of the Balearic Islands to eight years of left-wing governments. It is not a new argument, but one of the pillars on which the PP has built its narrative since it came to power. And it made sense. At first.
Every government has a grace period to explain the inheritance received. The first budgets are not theirs. Many projects, either. Even some problems need time to be corrected. Blaming the previous one is part of the ritual of any political change. The others did it too.
What is most difficult to understand is that the inheritance continues to occupy the center of the discourse when the legislature is already drawing to a close. Because there comes a time when the explanation becomes an alibi.
If, with almost a full term, the main problems of the Balearic Islands continue to have the same responsible party, one must ask what, then, has been the Government's room for maneuver. What part of housing prices, tourist pressure, or the feeling of saturation already responds to its own decisions? Governing consists, precisely, in assuming that, over time, the present ceases to belong to the predecessors.
There is also a small contradiction in this narrative. If everything that is bad responds to the inertia of the Pact, it would have to be admitted that this same inertia will also have contributed to what does work. Inheritances do not distinguish between successes and errors. They are not activated only when it is politically convenient.
Beyond the Government's interpretation of the demonstration against overtourism, it is hard to believe that, less than a year before the elections, the Executive's main response is to look in the rearview mirror. The opposition lives in the past. Governments do not. They must live from what they do while they govern, and blaming the inheritance is nothing more than an excuse.