Island Social Promotions: this is how the PSM began

PalmIsland Social Promotions. This was the name displayed half a century ago on a premises on the central Can Verí street in Palma. Near where the newsroom of this media outlet you now hold in your hands, or on your screen, is located. Perhaps some might wonder what these promotions were. The answer is as simple as this: it was the front for a political party, then illegal, like all the others: the Socialist Party of the Islands (PSI), whose initials coincided with those of this entity. And that was its headquarters. Fifty years ago, on January 18, 1976, that PSI, which would later become the Socialist Party of Mallorca (PSM), made its presentation to the press.

The PSI, in the words of one of its founders, Antoni Tarabini, was "people who came from the world of the left, who believed it was important to give the left a nationalist content, and nationalist people, who thought that nationalism should be given a progressive content." People from the Communist Party (PCE), the Popular Socialist Party (PSP)—the party led nationally by Enrique Tierno Galván—and the Mallorcan National Alliance, a left-wing nationalist group promoted by, among others, Climent Garau and Josep Maria Llompart, all came together. What's curious is the round trip made by those who, like Celestí Alomar, Francesc Obrador, and Tarabini himself, had previously been part of the Communist Organization of Spain—Red Flag—and who, just a year earlier, had joined the Communist Party. They didn't last long: the prevailing conception within the PCE regarding the national question, or how the "democratic rupture"—the break with the dictatorship—should be addressed, led these same people to abandon their membership almost immediately and join the new PSI. This split was a major disappointment to the communists.

The cover of Producciones Sociales Isleñas for the new organization appears to have been Tarabini's own idea. Around the same time, the PCE (Communist Party of Spain) also used a sign with the name Centro de Estudios Sociales (Center for Social Studies), which could mean anything or everything, to camouflage its premises on Can Savellà Street, also in Palma. Obviously, it was a way to mislead the still-in-powerful regime about their activities.

At the meeting of political forces in the Cura sanctuary on January 31, 1976, Tarabini announced the formation of a new party: the Socialist Party of the Balearic Islands (PSI). Back then, political parties were named with an adjective indicating their ideology, not with a verb conjugation or a Latin word, as in more recent times. In addition to those already mentioned, the founders of the PSI included the historian Sebastià Serra, the artist Àngel Muerza, and the gallery owner Maria Dolors 'Niní' Quetglas; as well as Antoni Campins, José del Hoyo, Aina Sitges, Jesús Pérez, and Gabriel Feliu.

Leader? What leader?

Interestingly, unlike almost all other parties—then and now—the PSI had no visible leader—as visible as one could be at that time: neither president nor general secretary. When the party was officially launched in the newspapers on February 18, 1976, Celestí Alomar, who took charge, wanted to make it perfectly clear that he was merely a spokesperson. In that appearance, the new party defined itself as non-dogmatic and democratic; it expressed its desire to unite all socialist currents; it advocated for the socialization of the means of production; it defended the right to self-determination; it set as its objective a supranational federal state, with a statute of autonomy for the Balearic Islands, and it considered a single class-based trade union essential.

In April 1976, the first PSI assembly took place in Palma, where an executive committee was elected, comprised of Alomar, Del Hoyo, Muerza, Quetglas, Serra, and Tarabini. The assembly, which brought together all the members, was the party's highest body. At that time, there were about 150 members, the vast majority in Palma. Establishing a foothold in the rural areas of Catalonia (Part Forana) proved difficult.

The PSI soon chose allies: the Socialist Coordinating Committee of the Catalan Countries (Coordinadora Socialista de les Països Catalans), shared with the Socialist Convergence of Catalonia (Convergència Socialista de Catalunya) and the Socialist Party of the Valencian Country (Partido Socialista del País Valenciano), and the Federation of Socialist Parties (Federación de Partidos Socialistas), established that March, which brought together several of the aforementioned parties, as well as the Basque Socialists (Eusko Sozialistak) and the Socialist Party of Andalusia (Partido Socialista de Andalucía), later the Andalusian Party (Partido Andalusista). Two national parties were left out: the PSOE of the young Felipe González, with a clear advantage thanks to the support of the Socialist International and European socialist parties, and the PSP of the 'old professor' Tierno Galván. Some of the positions of that PSI are certainly curious, viewed half a century later. At that time, the European left was fascinated by the revolutions in the countries of the so-called Third World. This led to contacts with the National Liberation Front (FLN) of Algeria and with liberation organizations in the Sahara, Palestine, and Zimbabwe, as well as with the Chilean opposition in exile. Yugoslavia—then a single state—under Marshal Tito, with a socialist model distinct from the Soviet Union, for which it was condemned, was also a compelling model. The formula of 'self-management socialism,' based more on cooperatives than state control, gained traction. Even a faction of Carlism embraced it. According to Miquel Payeras, Antoni Tarabini stated that the Yugoslav model could be applied in the Balearic Islands.

Proposals made by the PSI at that time would be considered incredibly bold today and systematically labeled as Bolivarian or totalitarian. This is the case with the collectivization of building land. Back then, there wouldn't have been such an enormous housing problem as there is today.

The split between the two souls

The PSI had a significant presence in areas such as trade unions, culture, and the media. It was linked to the powerful Alternative for a Unitary and Democratic Union of Hospitality Workers (ASUDTH), of which Francesc Obrador was one of the leaders. When it ran in the elections the following year, it garnered the support of a remarkable group of Mallorcan cultural figures, including Llompart, Vidal Alcover, Damià Huguet, Lorenzo Capellán, Maria-Antònia Oliver, Antònia Vicens, and Encarnación Viñas, to name just a few. Regarding the press, that same year, the magazine Court It was acquired by a group of shareholders, including PSI members Alomar, Obrador, Tarabini, and Quetglas, and the dissenting and reformist member of parliament, Josep Melià. This was a turbulent period, as a group of dismissed editors complained that a party advocating for self-management socialism refused to apply this self-management to a company it controlled, even partially. The possibility of Melià joining the PSI was raised, but it never came to fruition.

The problem, as Antoni Tarabini would later diagnose, lay in the two opposing factions within the PSI: those for whom "the noun was nationalist and the adjective socialist," and those who defended the exact opposite. Some believed in a unification of socialist groups, while others advocated building a party with a distinct identity. The left must have this spirit of contradiction in its DNA. The storm broke just over six months after its founding. Part of the executive committee resigned, and several members, including two of the founders, Del Hoyo and Alomar, left the party. By then, with Arias Navarro replaced by Suárez as Prime Minister, it was clear that the reform—this time for real—was serious, and that elections were imminent. The Federation of Socialist Parties—and with it the PSI—Tierno Galván's PSP, and the PSOE established contacts regarding possible coalitions. In a meeting in Madrid, Antoni Tarabini met with the then Deputy Secretary of the PSOE, Alfonso Guerra, to try to reach an agreement. It was not possible. That, Tarabini told Guerra, was "a historic mistake."

The PSP and PSI did reach an agreement, and in the 1977 elections, they ran together in the Balearic Islands under the name Socialist Unity. They came in fourth place, with a respectable number of votes: 16,401 across the islands, but without winning any seats. For Tarabini, the fact that Francesc Obrador headed the list for Congress and he himself was a candidate for senator didn't help them much: they were seen as too confrontational and not politically correct, as it's called now.

Those results marked the beginning of the end for the Socialist Party of the Islands as such: the following December, the party assembly approved changing its name to the Socialist Party of Mallorca, although the acronym PSI was retained for some time. Two of its founders, Obrador and Tarabini, would join the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). Harmonizing the two factions had certainly proven impossible.

Information compiled from texts by Antoni Marimon, Miquel Payeras, Bartomeu Canyelles and Francisca Vidal, Catalina Amer Ballester, Jordi Pons Bosch and Arnau Company, the memoirs of Miquel Rosselló and Antoni Serra and interviews and articles in El Mundo/El Día de Baleares and Diario de Mallorca.