And Your Bra And Panties: Fiesta traditions

Cut along to your local fiesta and the last thing you might expect is to be presented with a group of "lads" proudly waving their prosthetic erections around. Depends what type of fiesta you go to though, I suppose. If traditional Mallorcan, then the only big knobs would normally be the local dignitaries as they make their entrances for the fiesta climax. But then how many years count as traditional? In Bunyola, there is a modern fiesta tradition. Come in your underwear, as in attend in your smalls, unless you're the boys with a woody strap-on and you invite the double entendre.

For six years, the Saint Matt fiesta in the town has featured a parade of "ropa interior" - that's bras and pants to you and me. The flaunting of the nearly nude is lubricated by free beer. Bread and circuses. It's an old trick, one I learnt at university: anaethetise the college population with regular and copious, gratis Boddies and Thwaites and they'll be bound to return you at the next elections. Give 'em enough and they'll do anything, like the lads during Bunyola's Friday parade or the lasses concealing their modesty with multi-coloured bouncy baubles.

This is a splendid new tradition. Not for the fact of bare flesh - you can cop an eyeful enough of that on your nearest beach - but because it is not the same. Not the same as all the other fiestas. Want to know what's going to be happening at this year's fiesta? Easy. Look at last year's programme, or the one from the year before. All you need do is change the dates, and with some fiestas you don't even need to do that. Alternatively you can simply look at the fiesta schedule from a different town: pipers a-piping; giants a-dancing; balls-de-botting. Yep, they'll all be there.

There is much to be said for continuity and for the headlining fiesta events that drag in the crowds - be they Moors and Christians having a bundle, the Beata procession of Santa Margalida or the grape fight of Binissalem's Vermar. The year-on-year familiarity of the fiestas can be reassuring in the same way as it is if you go to a different type of party and find that you know everyone. The only trouble is that you end up telling the same jokes, having the same arguments and disappearing behind the shed with the same adulterous missus.

The formulaic introspection of fiesta and the maintenance of tradition are increasingly the source of anxiety as the forces of the generation gap square up to each other in the market or church square. Not completely. There remain the honour and pride of, for instance, being selected as La Beata or as "vermadors" and "vermadores", but the good burghers of the Mallorcan towns are shaking their heads at what they see as a threat to the fiesta tradition - one that comes from the very breaking with tradition.

The night parties of the fiestas are, in their current incarnation, relatively new traditions. But so much concern do they now arouse that you have a town hall such as Sa Pobla scrapping the Districte 54. Partly this was for financial reasons, or so they said; the more pressing reason was the mess and noise. Sa Pobla is not the only town hall which worries for the future of fiestas if the young treat them merely as excuses for massive piss-ups. In Pollensa, much as the town hall tried to limit alcohol in the fiesta centre for the Patrona parties and to ask kindly that the squares and streets weren't used as lavatories, the ambience was awash with less of the romanticism than the brochures might have you believe.

In Sa Pobla this year the fiesta programme was one that could be enjoyed by those of all ages. That was what the town hall reckoned. But was it? Having unleashed the genie of the night parties, it is hard for the town halls to put them back in the bottle without some resentment. Moreover, there must be the temptation to retrench further into the past and into long-established tradition, thus provoking a greater distance between the generations.

In Bunyola the undies parade is for all generations. It is an example of tradition invigoration that is positive in both its harmlessness and its profound silliness, one that is different and at the same time respectful of the population as a whole; well, maybe the mock stiffies might not be. Perhaps, though, too much is made of the night parties and the apparent rejection of tradition by the young. There is another tradition - quite a bit older than Bunyola's. It is the Fornalutx "correbou". If you had spent some time looking at images of the reaction to the recent protest in the village against the bull run, you might have been surprised, shocked even. The reactionaries were predominantly the young. It doesn't add up. The young are meant to reject tradition.


QUIZ -
In your best lascivious voice, who requested "and now your bra and panties"?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.