Celestí Alomar, reason and strength

Celestí Alomar has died at the age of 76, leaving a void as vast as an era. He did and was many other things, but he will be remembered as the counselor who implemented the ecotax in the Balearic Islands. He did this during his time as Minister of Tourism for the first government of the Pacte de Progrés, a government that had to endure the fiercest criticism throughout its existence—from adversaries, but also from those closest to them—and which now, twenty-five years later, many value and miss, and with good reason. The first Pacte de Progrés of the Balearic Islands governed from 1999 to 2003. In a short period, the deaths of President Francesc Antich and Vice-President Pere Sampol, and now Counselor Celestí Alomar, represent the premature disappearance of three key figures in the country's recent political history. I write "premature" because, although all three were around or over seventy years old, the death of those who truly work for the common good is always premature.The Pacte de Progrés was the first progressive government that the Balearic Islands had and was a pioneer in many things, here and in Spain. The ecotax promoted by Celestí Alomar was ahead of its time in uniting tourism policies with serious environmental policies. Alomar understood this tax as a tool for self-government and social cohesion. It earned him a fatwa, a war with the hoteliers, an economic sector with pretensions more of a caste than a lobby. In recent years I have had the pleasure of conversing a few times with Celestí Alomar and hearing him explain how one of those hoteliers chased him up the stairs of the Consolat de Mar shouting at him: “Don’t think you’ll work in the Balearic Islands again! Forget it!” He told it laughing, because Celestí Alomar was a master of irony and good humor. A geographer by training, he had specialized in tourism and did not disown it, but he claimed, in word and writing, that tourism needs limits to prevent touristification, that is, massification and speculation. He pointed out that excessive dependence on an industry like tourism leads to an economic model crisis, which is where the Balearic Islands and a large part of the Mediterranean are currently.A historic socialist, he was one of the founders of the PSI (later PSM, currently within the MÉS coalition) and then went on to be a member of the PSIB-PSOE, from which he resigned in response to the approval of Article 155. He always thought and spoke freely, and at the same time remained loyal to a progressive mindset based on two non-negotiable ideas: the common good and social justice. He did not want the creation of wealth to stop; what he wanted was for it to be distributed in favor of the community, of society. Good public services for citizens: this was his idea of country, of homeland. His legacy is that of reason over force, and that of force (of will, of thought) in the service of reason. As the director of Ara Balears, Jaume Perelló, told me, it may sound like a cliché, but there are no longer people like that in politics.