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 collapse roads, increase housing costs, saturate beaches, and fill the airport. There are governments that barely leave a 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 the Almudaina. On the eve of a new demonstration against touristification, the president once again attributed the "out of control" growth of the Balearic Islands to eight years of left-wing governments. This is not a new argument, but one of the pillars on which the PP has built its narrative since arriving at the Consolat. And it made sense. At first.

Every government has a period of grace 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 more 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 oneself what, then, has been the Government's room for maneuver. What part of the housing price, of the tourist pressure, or of the feeling of saturation already responds to its own decisions? Governing consists, precisely, in assuming that, as time goes by, the present ceases to belong to those who came before.

There is also a small contradiction in this narrative. If everything bad responds to the inertia of the Pact, one would have to admit 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 mass tourism, 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 on the past. Governments do not. They must live on what they do while they govern, and blaming the inheritance is nothing more than an excuse.