The siren songs of the island PSOE
Prominent politicians of the Transition close to nationalism recount to ARA Balears their transfer to the party of Felipe González, which forty years ago won its first general elections
PalmaThe death of Franco in November 1975 awakened many hopes. In the Balearic Islands, the PSI (Socialist Party of the Islands) was already founded in 1976. One of its founders was the sociologist from Palma, Antoni Tarabini, now 82 years old. “It was,” he says, “a very plural party. It was, however, more federalist than nationalist. A year later, ahead of the first general elections scheduled for June 1977, two other colleagues and I were summoned to Madrid. The PSOE leadership proposed that we form a federated party like the PSC of Catalonia, led by Joan Raventós. I agreed, even though I knew we would lose the elections.”
Since October 13, 1974, the reins of the PSOE had been in the hands of Felipe González. At the legendary Suresnes congress (Paris), Isidoro, as that 32-year-old Sevillian lawyer in a corduroy jacket was known, had been proclaimed secretary-general of the party, replacing Rodolfo Llopis, the icon of the socialists in exile. The victory, however, in the 1977 elections went to Adolfo Suárez's UCD, which brought together moderate sectors from both Francoism and the opposition. Then, in the Islands, the great diaspora within the PSI occurred. “There were people,” asserts Tarabini, “who moved directly to the PSOE; others founded the PSM (Socialist Party of Mallorca), of a nationalist nature [in December 1977], and others, like me, decided to stay home.” That, however, would be a short break in the sociologist's tireless career as an activist. In 1973, he had already been one of the founders of Gadeso (Cabinet for Tourism and Socioeconomic Studies), which he chairs today. During the late Franco period, Tarabini, who had studied in Rome and Barcelona, militated in the underground, first in the Red Flag and later in the Communist Party.
Antoni Tarabini, the federalist
Tarabini declares himself a federalist and not a nationalist: “Nationalism has many facets and the concept is often confused with the idea that Madrid does not give the Balearic Islands the money that corresponds to them”. Even so, the sociologist always collaborated with the Obra Cultural Balear (OCB) since its foundation in 1962: “Together with the writer Antoni Serra and the journalist Andreu Ferret, we organized courses to teach people how to read the newspaper. We were clear that, to defend the language, it was necessary to defend other things”. Faced with the suspicions that those courses raised, in 1975 the Civil Governor Carlos de Meer ordered the arrest of Tarabini. They imposed a fine of 150,000 pesetas on him, which he was able to pay thanks to donations from his colleagues.
The rest that this activist imposed on himself with the restoration of democracy would last very little. “In 1979, two years after having left the party, the PSOE proposed me to be their candidate for the mayoralty of Calvià. They considered that I was a good profile after we, from Gadeso, had promoted the construction of 400 social housing units in the Galatzó urbanization, near Santa Ponça,” he notes. That move turned out half-successful: “In those first municipal elections we did not win, but we did not lose. We formed a coalition government with independent people. I was in charge of the Urban Planning area.” In 1983, Tarabini would move from the Calvià city council to that of Palma. With the socialist mayor Ramon Aguiló, in office since 1979, he would occupy the Department of Tourism and Transport. In 1987, at the end of the term, he would abandon active politics.
Jaume Armengol, the Catalanist
Another historic leader of the Transition, although with a different trajectory, was the pharmacist and writer from Inca, Jaume Armengol. At 84 years old, he is the father of the current socialist president of the Balearic Government. He has just published his memoirs Aquells anys, aquelles veus (Perifèrics). With a grandfather who was already mayor of Inca, he confesses to being a Catalanist thanks to the influence of his father: “He was also a pharmacist, but during the Second Republic he dedicated himself to teaching Catalan at the high school. However, my Catalanist consciousness was awakened in Barcelona, where I went to study Pharmacy in the fifties. Upon finishing my degree, at the hand of Eduard Artells, I started working in the pharmacy section of the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana. There I met the great figures of the anti-Franco resistance, among them Jordi Carbonell, Heribert Barrera and Pere Quart”.
Having already returned to Mallorca, from 1976 to 1979, Armengol would be president of the Inca delegation of the OCB. In 1976 he did not hesitate to join the PSI. With the diaspora of 1977, however, he joined the nationalist project of the PSM. He himself would found the party in Inca, for which he ran in the first municipal elections of 1979. He would be elected first deputy mayor and president of the Treasury, Culture and Health commissions. After 36 years of dictatorship, from these positions, the pharmacist would be one of the pioneers in the Balearic Islands to promote historical memory and the linguistic normalization of the streets. “We translated them –he points out– into Catalan and we changed all those that bore the names of generals. The most iconic was General Franco street, which came to be called Major street, which was how everyone already referred to it. For making those changes I received serious anonymous threats”.
In 1982, at the end of the legislature, Armengol left politics to dedicate himself to cultural activism from the OCB. A few years later, with Felipe González already as president, he would hear the siren songs of the PSOE. “One day –he recalls– the socialists Joan March Noguera and Damià Ferrà-Ponç [former secretary general of the PSM, in 1987 he had changed sides] came to look for me. They proposed that I join their party. I told them I was a nationalist. But they insisted that, at that time, the autonomist branch prevailed in the island delegation of the PSOE. They ended up convincing me. If I had been in Catalonia, I would not have left the Republican Left. Here, however, the only way there was to have a change of government was to choose the useful vote”.
To be able to be in the PSOE ranks, Armengol demanded to act there as an independent: “In 1987, however, with Antoni Pons, from UM, as mayor, they made me spokesperson and I ended up joining the party. Then, within the PSM, there was some bad blood. There even appeared graffiti against me at the socialist party headquarters. I, however, have always had a very good relationship with my former colleagues. Proof of this is that in 1991, when the left won in Inca, they voted for me as mayor”. The pharmacist took advantage of the position, which he held until 1995, to put his nationalist ideology into practice: “I managed to Catalanize the PSOE group in Inca, which was very Castilianized”.
Celestí Alomar, the ‘lone wolf’
Without being a member of the PSM, another nationalist who also felt seduced by the socialists was the 73-year-old Celestí Alomar from Llubí. In 1973, along with Tarabini, he had also been one of the founders of Gadeso and in 1976, of the PSI. He did not hesitate to head home during the diaspora of 1977 either. Between 1979 and 1980, however, he would be a collaborator of the politician from Artà, Josep Melià, during his time as Secretary of State for Information in Suárez's UCD Government. After having dedicated himself professionally to the tourism sector, Alomar would return to politics as an independent. He would do so with various positions in the Government of the conservative Gabriel Cañellas: managing director (1990-1991) of the Balearic Tourism Institute (Ibatur) and director general of Tourism Planning of the Balearic Government (1991-1993). Between 1994 and 1996, he would move to Madrid to serve as director general of Tourism Strategy for Felipe González's socialist government.
Despite collaborating with him, the Llubí native is very critical of González: “I never believed in him or in Alfonso Guerra. They were more concerned with the fight for power than with the transformation of a left-wing society. I was clear about this before the Filesa corruption cases and the state terrorism of the GAL erupted, which in 1996 caused the defeat of the PSOE”. In 1998, however, Alomar decided to join the party, which, in the Balearic Islands, had been called PSIB-PSOE since 1990: “I was at an age where I was tired of being a lone wolf. At that time, at the national level, the party had begun a primary process, from which Josep Borrell would emerge as the candidate for the 2000 general elections. I considered it a democratizing measure that distinguished the party from the rest”.
From 1999 to 2003, during the First Pact of Progress of the socialist Francesc Antich, Alomar served as Minister of Tourism. One of his flagship measures was the ecotax, highly criticized by hoteliers. “I acted –he says– in coherence with my way of thinking. Implementing a tax that would have an impact on the improvement of our environmental resources was a way of claiming national sovereignty. This idea, however, was not shared by the most Spanish nationalist sector of the PSIB”. In 2017, in the midst of the Catalan Process, Alomar left the party: “I could not consent to my political group supporting the application of Article 155 in Catalonia”.
In 1999, a new era began in the Balearic Islands. For the first time, the Socialists, led by Francesc Antich (former mayor of Algaida), accessed the presidency of the regional government. For 16 years, it had been in the hands of the PP. Already in 1995, Maria Antònia Munar, of Unió Mallorquina (UM), had broken the hegemony of the Popular Party at the Council of Mallorca. With only two deputies, she led a progressive government with Pere Sampol, of the PSM, as vice-president, and Antich as island councillor for the Environment.
In 1998, Antich was appointed secretary-general of the PSIB and candidate for the Consolat de Mar. He won in a primary election against Andreu Crespí. He did so very narrowly with the slogan ‘We must be more PSIB than PSOE’. The Algaida native thus reclaimed one of the two currents that had existed within the ranks of the island's Socialists since the seventies: the so-called ‘autonomists’, represented by Joan March Noguera and Damià Ferrà-Ponç, a former PSM militant. Crespí, on the other hand, was the man of the ‘officialists’, more in tune with the state apparatus of Ferraz. Among his main defenders were Fèlix Pons, former president of Congress (1986-1996) and former Minister of Territorial Administration (1985), and Ramon Aguiló, former mayor of Palma (1979–1991).
Finally, in 1999, Antich, thanks to the support of Munar’s UM, ousted Jaume Matas from the presidency of the Balearic Government – he had been there since 1996 after Gabriel Cañellas and Cristòfol Soler had resigned. This marked the start of the First Pact of Progress, which included heavyweights from the PSM: Pere Sampol as vice-president and Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry; Damià Pons as Minister of Education and Culture, and first Joan Mayol and later Mateu Morro as Ministers of Agriculture and Fisheries. The slogan for that legislature was ‘Four islands, one country, no borders’. Jordi Bayona, then Antich’s director-general of communication, explains the context: “It was the result of a brainstorming session with our advertising advisors. We wanted to sell the idea of a country from a social-democratic perspective. Antich wanted his own brand that would not be confused with the nationalism of the PSM”. He would always say: ‘In the defense of this land, no one will beat me’. He knew, however, that he was operating within a state-wide party”.
The journalist regrets the action taken by the environmental group GOB in the middle of the 2003 election campaign to revalidate the progressive government: “The day before the elections, they set up a montage in front of the Consolat de Mar. They built a wall of cinder blocks with the legend: ‘Pact of Progress = Pact of Cement’. We did not understand that complaint after having increased the protected surface area. Two days later, most environmentalists fell into depression due to the victory of Matas’s PP”. The Pact lost those elections by one deputy in Formentera and another in Ibiza, where the left had run separately. In 2004, Bayona would fictionalize that first left-wing legislature in the book 4-E. The Years of Exception.