Scot fights for expats' place in the sun

SHE is familiar on these shores as a daytime television regular where she extols the virtues of expat life under the Mediterranean sun to more than a million viewers a day.

But in her adopted home of Majorca, Kate Mentink-Duncan has become better known as a crusader against an alleged campaign of corruption and anti-British feeling which residents of one of the richest areas in Europe feel is being waged against them.

And the Edinburgh-born estate agent is to present a hard-hitting report to Brussels next month accusing Majorcans keen to stem the growing influence of British expats on the Balearic island of intimidation and vote-rigging, and demanding new rules to protect foreign voters in future.

Mentink-Duncan is the island’s first British-born councillor, elected last May in a contest which sparked the tension between the two communities. The 59-year-old represents the picturesque and affluent region of Calvia, which boasts more millionaires per hectare than anywhere else in the European Union.

The area includes the resorts of Magaluf, Palma Nova and Santa Ponca, as well as several upmarket whitewashed hill villages that have become hideaways for wealthy businessmen and foreigners.

There are 7,000 expats living in Calvia, most of them British, making up more than 20% of the region’s 30,000 population. And it is this group which broke 20 years of success for the Socialist PSOE party in the local elections by using new rules to support the centre-right Popular Party and their Scottish candidate.

Non-nationals can now vote in local and Euro elections wherever they live within the European Union, a position which Mentink-Duncan chose to exploit to enter the world of politics and which earned her the honour of being the first foreigner to swing an election within the European Union, with a majority of 258 votes.

But after the event Mentink-Duncan, a Majorcan resident for 25 years, received a string of complaints from British expats who claimed the socialist party tried to sabotage the non-Spanish vote. They said they had been warned they would not get business and development plans approved if they voted, and some claimed their names were not on the voters’ register despite having signed it.

Mentink-Duncan said: "Ex-pats were outraged, because some of the tactics use to stop them voting were shameless and have no place in a democratic Europe.

"We’ve helped a 30-strong group, along with some Germans and French, compile documentary evidence for their report, because so many people have said they were ‘warned off’ voting, with threats that their businesses would suffer or they’d be denied planning permission for renovation work on their homes. Others say they took the trouble to register to vote, but mysteriously found their names missing from voters’ registers at polling stations on election day."

One resident, a former Scottish miner who now owns a bar in Magaluf, said: "Just before the election some Majorcan acquaintances, who had connections at the town hall, made it quite clear it wouldn’t be in my interests to vote. I run my business totally above board, but you never know who’s capable of doing what here. I’m still nervous about even mentioning local politics."

A spokesman for the defeated Socialist party officials refuted the Britons’ claims. "There is no substance to them," he said.

But Mentink-Duncan is unimpressed. She said: "What’s at stake here is the most fundamental of EU freedoms: the right of Europe’s citizens to vote in countries where they choose to live. It’s all about transparency, finding out what went wrong and ensuring there’s no repetition."

With demographic shifts taking place across Europe - Spain’s foreign population is predicted to treble to six million by 2010, with a further 300,000 settlers anticipated from Britain - the Calvia case could provide a picture of things to come. Its new mayor, Carlos Delgado, acknowledged the importance of the expat vote: "Without them we wouldn’t have succeeded; the British definitely made the difference to the result."

Mentink-Duncan was a founder and eventually president of the Association of European Citizens, set up in 1993 to help non-Spaniards integrate into the country. Now the Calvia region’s councillor for European Issues and Tourism, she is making a mark at a time when the Balearic region is looking at ways to bolster its economy which has suffered from falling tourism numbers.

Mentink-Duncan moved to Majorca in 1980 with her husband, a Dutch hotelier, after living all over Europe operating hotels. But her first job was at carpet maker Templeton’s in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, where she set up the human resources and management training department.

She had considered a career in academia after gaining an MA in philosophy from Glasgow University, but decided against it, saying: "I was fed up of being poor".

Her capacity to deal with the rough and tumble of politics comes from an inner steel formed when Mentink-Duncan suffered terrible injuries in 1983, breaking her back after falling over a terrace wall at her hilltop home while playing with the family dog.

From splintered bones in the coccyx, she was bedridden for nearly two years. But, against the advice of neurosurgeons, she placed her faith in alternative treatments. "It was a long, painful recovery, hard going and very frightening at times," she said.

She was dealt another blow when her husband went to work one day in 1985 and never returned. She said: "He just couldn’t cope with looking after an invalid wife. I’ve not seen or heard from him since. And, though I thought we were comfortably off, shortly after he left I found out all our money disappeared with him."

She was divorced eight years later, and remarried last year to businessman David Hammond.

Now running a chain of estate agents, Mentink-Duncan has become a regular subject of the BBC’s Passport to the Sun which, presented by Nadia Sawalha, features the lives of those who live in the islands of Majorca and Ibiza.

Having lived away from her birthplace for so long, Mentink-Duncan said the most important thing for her was to be a European. "I might sound very un-Spanish at the hustings and I’m still very much a Scot at heart," she said. "But we’re all citizens of Europe now - and being a European comes first."

Holiday hideaway for the rich and famous

BRITONS have always had a soft spot for Majorca, and the appeal extends to celebrity buyers.

Hollywood aristocrats Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas, now official ambassadors for the island, own a 4m hilltop hideaway near the village of Deya. Fashion designer Katharine Hamnett and PR guru Lynne Franks have extravagant villas among the orange groves.

David Beckham is sniffing around a luxury villa on the exclusive Son Vida golf estate where his former Real Madrid team-mate Steve McManaman already has a home.

John Lennon’s son Julian owns Red, a jazz bar near the port, and club king Peter Stringfellow also owns a 2m villa there.

British film producer Matthew Vaughan, who is married to the supermodel Claudia Schiffer, owns a property in Camp de Mar.

Former boxing champion Nigel Benn lives at Santa Ponca on the south coast.

And former Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox (left) owns a secluded property high in the mountains near Esporles.