From the Caribbean to the USA: the presidents' other trips

PalmaMarga Prohens' dances in the Dominican Republic have become the leitmotif of the latest parliamentary debates. The opposition does not forgive her the bachata class she took in mid-March during an institutional trip, during which she also met with the country's president, Luis Abinader. There are no documented precedents of Balearic presidents joining in Caribbean dances, a gesture that Prohens defended as a sign of "respect" for the hosts. However, the archives do account for the intense relationship that the governments of the Islands have maintained with Latin America. From Gabriel Cañellas' visit to Puerto Rico in 1992 to Francesc Antich's six-hour dinner with Fidel Castro in 2000, the presidents' foreign agenda has been packed.

In an interview on the occasion of the death of the Cuban leader in 2016, Antich referred to this meeting on La Ser. “He didn’t stop talking,” he said, recalling Castro’s extensive chat, who summoned him to the Palace of the Revolution in Havana. “I tried to speak on several occasions, but I couldn’t,” confessed the socialist. The dictator’s monologue lasted until past four in the morning, and some members of the Government team were already “half asleep” at the table. “When we were leaving, [Castro] stopped in a very long corridor and told me: ‘President, we haven’t talked about Varadero’,” Antich recalled. This still extended the conversation by half an hour.

All the presidents of the Islands have had an international agenda. In addition to Cuba, Antich visited Argentina (2008), Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic (2009), and Panama (in 2010, with the then Minister of Innovation, Pilar Costa). The first official trip of a president to the Caribbean dates back to 1992, when President Cañellas met with the elected governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rosselló, who had Majorcan roots. Under Cañellas' mandates (1983-1995), the networks of relationships with the Balearic communities in America were created and have been expanding. According to the official registry, Jaume Matas also toured the Dominican Republic and Cancun in 2005, and in 2006 he was in Colombia for three days. The trips of the popular politician were part of a strategy of expansion of tourist capital, and especially of some hotel chains. However, with the outbreak of corruption cases associated with the president, the Government's external action was not saved from judicial scrutiny. The well-known Cas Rasputín, which began after an official trip by Matas to Moscow (Russia), opened a debate on the limits of the Executive heads' agenda. Matas went to Argentina in April 1998, a trip that over time was linked to the Mapau corruption case, which ended with convictions for using public money to capture votes among Balearic descendants. He also flew to New York, supposedly to promote the island culture.

José Ramón Bauzá stood out for having an intense agenda in Madrid. However, he also traveled outside of Europe. In October 2013, he toured Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina. A month later, he accompanied the Princes of Asturias to the United States for the second centenary of the death of missionary friar Juníper Serra.

Despite the setbacks of the pandemic, Francina Armengol flew to Argentina in 2022. Two years earlier, she had also visited several cooperation projects financed by the Government in India. Although the most talked-about trip of her first term (2015-2019) was not led by the socialist, but by her vice-president, Gabriel Barceló (MÉS per Mallorca), who in 2017 ended up resigning for having accepted a trip with all expenses paid by Globalia to Punta Cana (Dominican Republic).

The tourism sector and its interests have often moved presidents to destinations such as Berlin (Germany), London (the United Kingdom), as well as to annual tourism fairs. In the same vein, presidents are increasingly pushed to travel to Brussels (Belgium) to defend the interests of the Islands in Europe. In addition to her last official trip to the Caribbean, Prohens also spent two days in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) in 2023, where she defended the candidacy of Menorca Talaiòtica for UNESCO World Heritage status.

The opposition, on the attack

The opposition's criticisms of the Government's external action are also a common occurrence. The PP accused Armengol of "escapism" for going to India, and Bauzá received similar attacks for leaving for Uruguay when teachers were in full protest. The left has also lashed out at Prohens for being abroad during the price crisis due to the war in Iran. In the last plenary session, the PSIB censured the cost of the president's institutional trips, which has risen in relation to Armengol's last term (from 2019 to 2023). Prohens has spent 151,841.55 euros on them, alongside the socialist's 98,173.95 euros, according to parliamentary group data. Two plenary sessions ago, socialist deputies left a towel and a jar of sunscreen on Prohens' seat. Since then, the debate has continued to be marked by the bachata.