There is a well in Alcudia which, in August 1707, was covered over by the order of what then constituted a town hall. The local authority was concerned about the number of stones that children were throwing into it and possibly also by how many children might have disappeared into it.
A well from over three hundred years ago might seem like a peculiar starting-point for considering Mallorca's golfing heritage, but it was to prove be crucial in the creation of the island's first golf course. The well came to eventually be sited within Alcudia's electricity plant in the early years of the last century. The water was used to drive that plant, and the owner of the electricity distribution network in the town was a gentleman by the name of Pere Mas i Reus.
In 1933, Mas i Reus and Jaume Ensenyat acquired 198 hectares (around 490 acres) of land. It was sold to them by Joaquim Gual de Torrella, who himself had obtained the land from the bankrupt New Majorca Land Company, established by the British engineer Frederick Bateman for the purposes of draining and cultivating the Albufera wetland.
Mas i Reus, Ensenyat and Gual de Torrella's son, Mariano, were involved with an ambitious project. They planned to create a resort. Some one hundred plots were to be sold, a hotel was built and, central to the whole project, a golf course was created. Which was where the well came into the story. Its water was needed for the course and for the properties that were to be built on the plots. The well was, by then, no longer inside an electricity plant. The building had become a textile factory - Tapices Vidal - and Mas i Reus paid the factory two centimos of a peseta per cubic metre for general use of the water and seven centimos for watering purposes. In addition, he had to install a pipeline for the water to be supplied from the old town to the site.
The hotel was called the Hotel Golf. It is now the adults-only Vanity Golf, the home also to Team Sky when they train in Mallorca in the winter. The golf course was officially opened in February 1934. Ensenyat, in addition to believing that tourists could be attracted, felt that the course would be of value to the British (and American) residents in neighbouring Pollensa. Some members of this foreign community were invited to the opening.
What they witnessed and what they played was rudimentary. The course had nine holes, all of them on totally flat land. The greens were indistinguishable from the fairways, which were marked out with stones and shells. How successful (or not) the course was to prove to be, its life was short. The Civil War came, and the course was taken over and used as a landing-strip.
As for the well, that remains. The factory has long since closed, but it too remains, occupying a corner of Alcudia's market area. The well, though, has been accorded a certain status in the town's history, which speaks of it having a well-deserved place in the economic development of Alcudia and of Mallorca. How much greater or swifter that development might have been is purely hypothetical. The golf course and resort project were killed off by war. It wasn't until the 1960s that the plan for the resort, minus the golf course, was revived.
The importance of the well and therefore the provision of water cannot be underestimated. An indication of this was the fact that the Alcudia course wasn't strictly speaking the first. Mas i Reus and Ensenyat were both heavily involved with the Mallorca Tourist Board. Mas i Reus, though known more as an engineer, had joined its governing board as a spokesperson for the association of hoteliers in the mid-1920s. Both he and Ensenyat would almost certainly have attended a function at the Hotel Formentor in 1930, which was specifically for members of the tourist board. They would probably have observed that the hotel had a golf course.
Little is known about this course and it seems that it was never actually used. And the reason why not was that there wasn't sufficient provision for water to maintain it. A subsequent plan for the Formentor course never got off the ground. The year was 1936.
The Civil War and then the world war put everything on hold, including another plan for a resort with a golf course. Habitat Golf Santa Ponsa was founded in 1932, the garden city design of the whole resort having principally been the work of two Germans - a Berlin building tycoon Heinrich Mendelssohn and architect Max Säume.
It wasn't to be until 1964 that a golf course - a sustainable one - was inaugurated. The concept for the Son Vida course, originally just nine holes, was mainly that of one of the partners in the hotel, the American Steve Kusak. Another of the partners, Jose Luis Ferrer of Binissalem wine fame, was said by his daughter to have had no idea about golf or golf courses. Once he had visited courses in Monaco and Zurich, his enthusiasm for the development of the course was kindled. It was Prince Rainier of Monaco who teed off for the first time. Mallorca's golf was finally, and after the stuttering attempts before the war, on course.
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Monday, October 03, 2016
The Revival Of The "Excursion"
There's a short film that those good people from Fotos Antiguas de Mallorca have loaded onto YouTube and which shows an excursion from Palma to Soller on the train. The date says 1930, though there is a short bit which shows a steam train. The electrification of the line was from 1929. There is a further short bit which says Ferrocarril Alaro, so maybe that was a separate excursion.
Be the trains as they may be, the film - black and white - is typically evocative of times past. By the looks of the trees the excursion would have been in winter or early spring, though had it been in summer one doubts if the dress would have differed greatly. Going on an outing in those days required attire, as one can see from other images of the era, to include a cap, a bow tie and a suit, which of course was just the men.
The excursion probably wouldn't have occurred in summer, however. Too hot. While the film shows people sitting or ambling around, it also features a spot of rambling and hiking. A somewhat bizarre aspect of this is that people - parents and children - are doing some clambering clad in their Sunday best (and it may well have been a Sunday).
It is just possible that there were "foreigners" among those on the Soller train. By the time of the film, "excursions" were an important aspect of early Mallorcan tourism. The word "excursionista" when translated - excursionist - sounds somewhat odd. It isn't a word that is greatly used, the preference perhaps being for a day-tripper or tourist. But neither of these words capture the essence of "excursionista". While it can be used more broadly, that real essence is one of an excursion into nature - rambling, hiking, enjoying the open air.
We were informed recently that there are some 300,000 hikers who come to Mallorca in the low season. It's a figure that I personally find hard to believe, but then other tourist statistics can seem somewhat fanciful as well. Whatever the real number is, there are - shall we say - a lot of people who come to hike and ramble. And for the tourism authorities - regional government and especially the Council of Mallorca - this open-air excursionism is virtuous tourism: respectful of nature and environment, or at least one hopes that it is.
A curious aspect of this seemingly recent promotion of hiking is that it is absolutely nothing new. This is why those trippers in 1930 - citizens of Palma, added to by one or two from Bunyola - may have been sharing the carriages with the odd foreigner.
The Fomento del Turismo, the Mallorca Tourist Board, was founded in 1905. Under the first article of its constitution, there are five particular objectives: things to be developed and promoted. "Fomento" means both development and promotion. The fourth of these states that it will facilitate in a practical way all types of excursions by ways (roads, tracks) and "hiking trails". There will be signs to indicate ways. There will be guides and there will be accommodation (hostels).
At the time of its founding, the Fomento recognised the essential need to improve Mallorca's transport infrastructure. A reason why was in order to indeed facilitate the fourth item on its agenda. What was to follow in terms of roads, railways, tunnels was driven in no small part by a need to develop tourism.
By 1908, two commissions - one for "improvements and excursions", the other for "information and publicity" - had produced a short guide to "excursions from Palma to the island's interior". These were excursions yet to benefit from the Soller train. In that same year, a specific group was established - Grup Excursionista Lo Fèmur. The translation isn't too difficult: the femur, the longest of bones, was necessary for this excursionist activity, i.e. walking.
So here is evidence that Mallorca's tourism was from the very beginning intimately tied to hiking and walking. The mountains were obviously a key aspect, though not exclusively, and over time - up to the start of the Civil War - the excursion broadened its appeal. It ceased to solely be for walking. It was a cultural trip usually involving a bus to key "attractions" on the island, such as Formentor and the Caves of Drach.
Although hiking has remained a constant since those early days, it is only recently that one senses a real determination to recapture the essence of the excursion that had been identified in 1905. The Fomento's wish for signage, such as now for the dry-stone route, has been a long time in really becoming complete.
The Council of Mallorca is very committed to this type of tourism, but it is one that always been there. It's as though we have gone full circle.
Friday, July 29, 2016
On Individualism: Mallorcan Society
There is a hotel chain which, unless you have been to certain luxury establishments in the Dominican Republic and Mexico, you will probably never have heard of. Its name is the Excellence Group Luxury Hotels & Resorts. Excellence, from a look at its website, is most certainly what one could expect. There again, there are any number of hotel operators aspiring to provide excellence and indeed achieving it. So what makes this chain of interest?
The fact that it is the product of a joint venture involving two Mallorcan hotel groups - Prinsotel and Viva - does make it of interest. But it isn't what it offers that generates the greatest interest; it's the very nature of cooperation that does.
In "Preferente" magazine there is an opinion piece by I'm assuming Javier Mato. He refers to Excellence, using it as a rare example of cooperation, and in the opening sentence of this article he makes a startling observation. I quote: "Mallorcan society in general and tourism society in particular, highly individualist and only rarely united - such as when the water reaches its neck in the form of impositions and adverse political measures - should draw from the example of ... Excellence."
Where to begin with such a statement? It is loaded with implications of the Mallorcan psyche as well as with how business operates and, by extension, how the political culture operates. It is the "highly individualist" that really made me sit up and pay particular attention. Such a characteristic, by definition, runs counter to notions of collectivism, which I don't specifically mean in the political (communist) sense but in a broader one of collective attitudes, behaviours and objectives.
Another recent article - by Bernat Joan i Marí on the "dBalears" website - is simply entitled "Individualism". He decries its advance, though it might more appropriately be styled as selfishness, and makes an allusion to a time past when he would join with others in excursions to gather almonds and carobs. Such a romantic image is contrasted with what he calls "ultra-individualism", a movement of the present day causing "suffering to our islands".
He goes on in considering how there can be "bizarre" alliances of individual and collective interests. Like Mato, if it is indeed Mato, he refers to the tourism industry and the coalescing of business (hotel) interests in seeking to deny rights to others to make "democratic gains" from tourism by renting out their property. Adverse political measures, it might be noted, have yet to make the water rise to the neck of the hotel collective. They might yet do so, if the regional government regulates private accommodation against the wishes of the collective.
But is this any different to other societies? Or might it be that it is more keenly felt and observed in small island societies? The island mentality of Mallorca has been chewed over by many, though is it fair to conclude, as Mato appears to, that this is a mentality dominated by individualism? One can always dredge up the accusation that Mallorcans are only out to satisfy their own individual ends, a generality I don't subscribe to. But if true, is it so surprising?
Rooted in this society is the nature of Mediterranean insularity, an existence down the centuries that variously prompted grand levels of entrepreneurialism, the avaricious and generally negligent attentions of absentee noble landlords and grinding poverty: a survival of the fittest and the rest can go hang, and often were. Yet this doesn't give a complete picture, not if, for instance, one takes into account the collective uprisings, such as the Germanies of the sixteenth century. Yes it was a long time ago but much of what shaped Mallorca, its society and collective memory is from long ago.
The past haunts Mallorca, there's no getting away from the fact. At times it can appear to be overstated, but to underestimate its power would be to perform an injustice. In this context the thoughts of the Sa Pobla author Miquel López Crespí present a very different take to the individualist one. He writes, there's no question, from a socialist perspective and one also imbued with his own romanticism, such as recollections of nights of summer from the early 1950s when the people of his town would sing on what was once Sa Pobla's beach (now Muro's).
But he is scathing of the impact of mass tourism, of the "false modernity" of the middle class, of the "tyranny" of Palma and the assumptions of welfare to be derived from individualism that leads to the alienation of others. Alienation from an alternative version of Mallorcan society, one predicated on collective aims and wishes.
The cooperation of Excellence would be the antithesis of López Crespí's world view. Curious though it might be, however, there is a degree of similarity, but only a degree. Let's not get carried away. Behind joint ventures there are individual interests.
The fact that it is the product of a joint venture involving two Mallorcan hotel groups - Prinsotel and Viva - does make it of interest. But it isn't what it offers that generates the greatest interest; it's the very nature of cooperation that does.
In "Preferente" magazine there is an opinion piece by I'm assuming Javier Mato. He refers to Excellence, using it as a rare example of cooperation, and in the opening sentence of this article he makes a startling observation. I quote: "Mallorcan society in general and tourism society in particular, highly individualist and only rarely united - such as when the water reaches its neck in the form of impositions and adverse political measures - should draw from the example of ... Excellence."
Where to begin with such a statement? It is loaded with implications of the Mallorcan psyche as well as with how business operates and, by extension, how the political culture operates. It is the "highly individualist" that really made me sit up and pay particular attention. Such a characteristic, by definition, runs counter to notions of collectivism, which I don't specifically mean in the political (communist) sense but in a broader one of collective attitudes, behaviours and objectives.
Another recent article - by Bernat Joan i Marí on the "dBalears" website - is simply entitled "Individualism". He decries its advance, though it might more appropriately be styled as selfishness, and makes an allusion to a time past when he would join with others in excursions to gather almonds and carobs. Such a romantic image is contrasted with what he calls "ultra-individualism", a movement of the present day causing "suffering to our islands".
He goes on in considering how there can be "bizarre" alliances of individual and collective interests. Like Mato, if it is indeed Mato, he refers to the tourism industry and the coalescing of business (hotel) interests in seeking to deny rights to others to make "democratic gains" from tourism by renting out their property. Adverse political measures, it might be noted, have yet to make the water rise to the neck of the hotel collective. They might yet do so, if the regional government regulates private accommodation against the wishes of the collective.
But is this any different to other societies? Or might it be that it is more keenly felt and observed in small island societies? The island mentality of Mallorca has been chewed over by many, though is it fair to conclude, as Mato appears to, that this is a mentality dominated by individualism? One can always dredge up the accusation that Mallorcans are only out to satisfy their own individual ends, a generality I don't subscribe to. But if true, is it so surprising?
Rooted in this society is the nature of Mediterranean insularity, an existence down the centuries that variously prompted grand levels of entrepreneurialism, the avaricious and generally negligent attentions of absentee noble landlords and grinding poverty: a survival of the fittest and the rest can go hang, and often were. Yet this doesn't give a complete picture, not if, for instance, one takes into account the collective uprisings, such as the Germanies of the sixteenth century. Yes it was a long time ago but much of what shaped Mallorca, its society and collective memory is from long ago.
The past haunts Mallorca, there's no getting away from the fact. At times it can appear to be overstated, but to underestimate its power would be to perform an injustice. In this context the thoughts of the Sa Pobla author Miquel López Crespí present a very different take to the individualist one. He writes, there's no question, from a socialist perspective and one also imbued with his own romanticism, such as recollections of nights of summer from the early 1950s when the people of his town would sing on what was once Sa Pobla's beach (now Muro's).
But he is scathing of the impact of mass tourism, of the "false modernity" of the middle class, of the "tyranny" of Palma and the assumptions of welfare to be derived from individualism that leads to the alienation of others. Alienation from an alternative version of Mallorcan society, one predicated on collective aims and wishes.
The cooperation of Excellence would be the antithesis of López Crespí's world view. Curious though it might be, however, there is a degree of similarity, but only a degree. Let's not get carried away. Behind joint ventures there are individual interests.
Sunday, June 05, 2016
The Lost Beach Of The Small Huts
Curiously enough, there wasn't a complete and detailed national topographic map, i.e. one which showed precisely what constituted different places, e.g. municipalities. Under orders from the Geographic and Cadastral Institute, three municipalities had to sit down and figure out exactly where their boundaries were and who owned what. These municipalities were Alcudia, Muro and Sa Pobla. It was the latter of these which lost its beach.
Anyone familiar with the current-day geography of Mallorca will know that Sa Pobla is firmly a municipality in Mallorca's interior. So how did it ever come to have a beach? Well, it all had to do with Albufera. A great part of this wetland used to be within Sa Pobla. Nowadays only a relatively small part, well back from the sea, is in the municipality. And as a consequence of this one-time municipal "ownership", Sa Pobla in essence reached as far as the bay of Alcudia.
What happened in 1954 is hard to accurately pin down, but it has been said that Sa Pobla did not negotiate well and also failed to have any vision of the future. Beach tourism had yet to come to the bay of Alcudia (except for the original Club Med tents in 1950), so the town hall could possibly have been excused its lack of foresight. There was horse-trading mainly between Sa Pobla and Muro, and Sa Pobla believed it had got a good deal by grabbing interior land that had been Muro's. But by way of compensation, it lost what was effectively its beach.
The arrangement that now exists on the bay of Alcudia is that the boundary limit of Muro (and so Playa de Muro) is at the Camí Can Blau. This is a road that cuts inland from the main beach road. From this boundary line going eastwards is the first "sector" of Playa de Muro. This sector ends where the grand canal of Albufera enters the sea. This sector is what used to be Sa Pobla's beach.
The agreement of 1954 did in fact bring to an end a squabble that had existed between Alcudia, Sa Pobla and Muro for at least three centuries. Muro had always been the one to lose out when it came to its ownership of Albufera. The irony will now not be lost on the people of Sa Pobla: that Muro has become wealthy because of what is generally a high quality beach tourism. While Sa Pobla has had to rely on its traditional agriculture, Muro was able to diversify economically, thanks to the decision of 1954 which gave it a couple of kilometres of beach that it wouldn't have otherwise had.
One can find evidence of nostalgia for that old beach. The writer Miquel López Crespí, born in Sa Pobla in 1946, recalls the summer of 1954. The agreement had been signed in May of that year but had yet to take effect. It was the last summer that the people of Sa Pobla would go to their beach and put up what were makeshift small huts for the summer. They called it "Ses Casetes". This was unlike the Ses Casetes further along the bay where Playa de Muro meets Can Picafort, which is still very much there and consists of (mostly) one-time church-owned cottages.
The Sa Pobla Ses Casetes was like a shanty town, but it had its own bar, Figuera. Some fifty families used to go and take over the beach each summer. After 1954 they could of course still go to the beach but they couldn't install their temporary huts.
Miquel López Crespí, reflecting on the loss of the beach and then of the great changes that occurred because of tourism, has written: "Nothing now remains of that full moon in August at Bar Figuera when the owner, Jaume, would sing some of the old songs, accompanying himself with his peasant ximbomba."
* Photo of the canal where it enters the sea in Playa de Muro. To the left, from the Esperanza, is what was once the Sa Pobla beach.
Friday, April 29, 2016
When Mallorca Was A Conventions Pioneer
Palma's Palacio de Congresos is almost ready to go, almost being the operative word. There are things missing, such as seats in the auditoriums and anyone to actually manage the convention centre (and hotel). Neither of these is a minor detail. Both of these say much about how the centre's development has been blighted by the small print of tender agreements. The contest for the seats was ruled invalid (by a court) after one of the bidding companies which had been knocked out early on in the process complained. The court upheld the complaint. They're bidding all over again for the right to be the company which installs the seats.
They will also, once the specification has been finalised, be bidding for the management of the complex. There had to be a new bid because someone at the university (not a court therefore) determined that the award which had been made was not sound. The small print pertaining to the value of the hotel had been overlooked. It all got terribly complicated and terribly tedious. Let's pray that this next bid isn't also found to have some irregularity, though who can rule out that we won't have more of the same: an apparent inability to set watertight contractual conditions.
Retracing the tortuous path of how we got to where we are with the Palacio is unnecessary. It's all been explained time and time again. But there is one fairly fundamental issue that does perhaps still need explaining. Why was it ever considered to have been a good idea to build it in the first place?
A simple answer is that the then Balearic president, Jaume Matas, a man who never knowingly undervalued a good vanity project when one presented itself, decreed its building. This was despite advice that it would cost too much and couldn't guarantee a good return. But such were projects in those days. Let's think of others. Palma Arena, the metro, Son Espases. The latter can be excused, albeit that the courts have yet to truly sink their teeth into it.
Although there were those who advised against, there were also plenty who were in favour. Matas was not alone among the politicians. There was widespread, cross-party support for the Palacio. There was also plenty of business backing - if only in spirit rather than cash. Then there was the apparent need for and sense of a project that had been long neglected.
Palma and Mallorca had been left way behind by other convention centres. Madrid and Barcelona between them hoover up significant portions of the global exhibition and conference trade. They were doing so in 2003, the year that Matas became president for the second time. The mainland had other venues, some of them yet to be built. Why did Mallorca need one?
At the end of the 1960s, a time when the global industry for conferences and exhibitions was still in comparative infancy, this industry was barely unheard of in Spain. Facilities which existed were more or less confined to the 1929-built Montjuïc fair in Barcelona. But in 1967 and 1969 along came two facilities that, and it has been described thus, made Mallorca a pioneer at national level for events' facilities: they were the Pueblo Español, with its own palace of congresses, and Palma's auditorium.
The point is that Palma had the wherewithal to have become a major conventions centre. It didn't because, despite the advantages it enjoyed from the end of the 1960s, there was no real further investment. It was already appreciated that the type of tourism that conventions attracted was of a vastly more profitable nature than regular sun-and-beach tourism and that it helped to dilute the impact of seasonality. A spend of some seven times more should have been an element for building on those late 1960s advantages. They were not, unless one includes the comparatively inconsequential contributions of Playa de Palma's auditorium (1984) and the two auditoriums opened in 1999 - Alcudia and Cala Millor.
In the 1970s there were two important developments - there was the ABTA convention in Mallorca in 1973 (at the auditorium) and the Mallorca Tourism Congress of 1979. The latter, it was said, pointed the way towards a "new style of congress". But whatever the successes of these congresses, there was very little advancement of Mallorca's position as a destination for conventions. Not even the creation of the fairs and congresses department when the regional government was formed in 1983 made a great deal of difference.
It has been argued, and rightly so, that conference and exhibition tourism was of marginal concern for an island growing rich on an essentially one-dimensional type of tourism - sun and beach. The opportunities that had existed for Mallorca to have become a major conventions' destination were lost. The Palacio de Congresos was needed, but the idea for it in 2003 was some 25 years too late.
They will also, once the specification has been finalised, be bidding for the management of the complex. There had to be a new bid because someone at the university (not a court therefore) determined that the award which had been made was not sound. The small print pertaining to the value of the hotel had been overlooked. It all got terribly complicated and terribly tedious. Let's pray that this next bid isn't also found to have some irregularity, though who can rule out that we won't have more of the same: an apparent inability to set watertight contractual conditions.
Retracing the tortuous path of how we got to where we are with the Palacio is unnecessary. It's all been explained time and time again. But there is one fairly fundamental issue that does perhaps still need explaining. Why was it ever considered to have been a good idea to build it in the first place?
A simple answer is that the then Balearic president, Jaume Matas, a man who never knowingly undervalued a good vanity project when one presented itself, decreed its building. This was despite advice that it would cost too much and couldn't guarantee a good return. But such were projects in those days. Let's think of others. Palma Arena, the metro, Son Espases. The latter can be excused, albeit that the courts have yet to truly sink their teeth into it.
Although there were those who advised against, there were also plenty who were in favour. Matas was not alone among the politicians. There was widespread, cross-party support for the Palacio. There was also plenty of business backing - if only in spirit rather than cash. Then there was the apparent need for and sense of a project that had been long neglected.
Palma and Mallorca had been left way behind by other convention centres. Madrid and Barcelona between them hoover up significant portions of the global exhibition and conference trade. They were doing so in 2003, the year that Matas became president for the second time. The mainland had other venues, some of them yet to be built. Why did Mallorca need one?
At the end of the 1960s, a time when the global industry for conferences and exhibitions was still in comparative infancy, this industry was barely unheard of in Spain. Facilities which existed were more or less confined to the 1929-built Montjuïc fair in Barcelona. But in 1967 and 1969 along came two facilities that, and it has been described thus, made Mallorca a pioneer at national level for events' facilities: they were the Pueblo Español, with its own palace of congresses, and Palma's auditorium.
The point is that Palma had the wherewithal to have become a major conventions centre. It didn't because, despite the advantages it enjoyed from the end of the 1960s, there was no real further investment. It was already appreciated that the type of tourism that conventions attracted was of a vastly more profitable nature than regular sun-and-beach tourism and that it helped to dilute the impact of seasonality. A spend of some seven times more should have been an element for building on those late 1960s advantages. They were not, unless one includes the comparatively inconsequential contributions of Playa de Palma's auditorium (1984) and the two auditoriums opened in 1999 - Alcudia and Cala Millor.
In the 1970s there were two important developments - there was the ABTA convention in Mallorca in 1973 (at the auditorium) and the Mallorca Tourism Congress of 1979. The latter, it was said, pointed the way towards a "new style of congress". But whatever the successes of these congresses, there was very little advancement of Mallorca's position as a destination for conventions. Not even the creation of the fairs and congresses department when the regional government was formed in 1983 made a great deal of difference.
It has been argued, and rightly so, that conference and exhibition tourism was of marginal concern for an island growing rich on an essentially one-dimensional type of tourism - sun and beach. The opportunities that had existed for Mallorca to have become a major conventions' destination were lost. The Palacio de Congresos was needed, but the idea for it in 2003 was some 25 years too late.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Windmills: Industrial Heritage Of The Present Day
There was a great deal of interest in windmills last week. It was to do with the Euroregion windmills' route, the Euroregion in question being the one to which Mallorca belongs (Catalonia, the Pyrenees, Languedoc, Roussillon). Six Mallorcan windmills officially became part of this route. Four of them are privately owned and have been restored, while two are town hall properties (one in Montuiri, the other in Manacor). The Council of Mallorca is backing the route, meaning that it is to be promoted as an example of the island's heritage and of its industrial heritage in particular.
Of the four privately owned mills, there is one in both Montuiri and Manacor as well, plus ones in Porreres and Llucmajor. They go under names that, in some instances, indicate ownership just like estates and houses, such as Molí de Can Nofre (in Montuiri). The two publicly owned ones are called Molí des Fraret for reasons that escape me. A fraret is a puffin in Catalan. The word may be a corruption from fariner to indicate flour mill. Whatever the meaning, the windmill in Manacor dates from the eighteenth century, as does its counterpart in Montuiri, which now doubles as the archaeological museum for the Son Fornés Talayotic site in the town.
Most of the windmills are from a similar time. In Montuiri, where there are several mills, Can Nofre is in fact the oldest, as it was built in the seventeenth century. But the windmills of Majorca are from much older times. References to pre-Catalan times don't seem to exist, though there were undoubtedly mills during the Muslim period. The first true documentation comes from the thirteenth century. Ramon Llull mentioned them, while the oldest specific reference is to the windmill of S'Alqueria Blanca in Santanyi in 1262.
Windmills didn't really come into their own until the sixteenth century, however. This was when the period of windmill expansion started and it was to continue into the twentieth century. The originals were of roughly similar design and specification: up to eight metres high, ten metres in diameter and with walls some one metre thick. This was the spec, in any event, of the traditional flour mill. The designs of others varied, as did their purpose: some for extracting water, while there were others that were water mills, i.e. driven by running water.
But water extraction had mainly relied on animal power. Donkeys and mules would walk round and round, blindfolded in order to prevent sickness. The animals would also be used to grind wheat, salt and clay. Known as the "molinos de sangre", the mills of blood, there had been a time when donkeys and mules hadn't been needed: slaves were deployed instead.
The greatest revolution with windmills wasn't to be until the mid-nineteenth century: 1845 to be precise. It was then that the first true water mill, i.e. one that harnessed wind to extract water, was used by the Dutch engineer Paul Bouvij for accelerating the drying of wetlands in the Prat de Sant Jordi in Palma.
This mill, with a lateen sail-style wheel, was added to by ever more innovative designs, primarily the "ramell" (for flower) designs. And by now, the new mills were almost exclusively used to get water out of the ground. While they were to be found all over the island, there were concentrations in specific areas: in and around Palma; in the south-eastern zone of Campos and Ses Salines; and in the potato and vegetable-growing region of Sa Pobla and Muro. Further and ever more modern designs came along as technology introduced the American-style wind pump in the 1920s and then wind turbines for electricity generation from the 1930s.
Though the windmills are part of an old industrial heritage, they are also very much part of the present. Of water-pumping windmills, a census of 2002 registered more than 2,500, getting on for a half of them in the Palma area. In Campos there were over 600. Of flour-grinding mills, a different census in the late 1990s put their number at 796, with concentrations in Llucmajor, Felanitx, Palma and Manacor. So it has been the case that the ancient technology, adapted to contemporary use, has seen the number of mills increase over the years. Between 1960 and the start of the last century, over 600 water mills were added.
Index for February 2016
Basketball - 8 February 2016
Beach chiringuitos - 10 February 2016
British abroad - 26 February 2016
City branding and emotion - 5 February 2016
Corruption trials - 25 February 2016
EU referendum - 23 February 2016
Floating waterparks - 11 February 2016
Green taxes v. tourist tax - 9 February 2016
Groundhog Day and Mallorca - 4 February 2016
Holiday rentals and government - 17 February 2016
Hotel receptionists - 19 February 2016
Joan Binimelis - 21 February 2016
Libraries in Mallorca - 15 February 2016
Mallorca Maritime Museum - 18 February 2016
Mariano Rajoy and Pedro Sánchez - 14 February 2016, 28 February 2016
Més and the Balearic government - 24 February 2016
Palma town hall and managing people - 16 February 2016
Place names: Palma and Alcudia - 1 February 2016
PSOE and the dangers of Podemos - 2 February 2016
Tourism technology - 13 February 2016
Tourist tax - 6 February 2016, 7 February 2016, 12 February 2016, 20 February 2016, 22 February 2016, 27 February 2016
Windmills in Mallorca - 29 February 2016
Zika and other plagues - 3 February 2016
Of the four privately owned mills, there is one in both Montuiri and Manacor as well, plus ones in Porreres and Llucmajor. They go under names that, in some instances, indicate ownership just like estates and houses, such as Molí de Can Nofre (in Montuiri). The two publicly owned ones are called Molí des Fraret for reasons that escape me. A fraret is a puffin in Catalan. The word may be a corruption from fariner to indicate flour mill. Whatever the meaning, the windmill in Manacor dates from the eighteenth century, as does its counterpart in Montuiri, which now doubles as the archaeological museum for the Son Fornés Talayotic site in the town.
Most of the windmills are from a similar time. In Montuiri, where there are several mills, Can Nofre is in fact the oldest, as it was built in the seventeenth century. But the windmills of Majorca are from much older times. References to pre-Catalan times don't seem to exist, though there were undoubtedly mills during the Muslim period. The first true documentation comes from the thirteenth century. Ramon Llull mentioned them, while the oldest specific reference is to the windmill of S'Alqueria Blanca in Santanyi in 1262.
Windmills didn't really come into their own until the sixteenth century, however. This was when the period of windmill expansion started and it was to continue into the twentieth century. The originals were of roughly similar design and specification: up to eight metres high, ten metres in diameter and with walls some one metre thick. This was the spec, in any event, of the traditional flour mill. The designs of others varied, as did their purpose: some for extracting water, while there were others that were water mills, i.e. driven by running water.
But water extraction had mainly relied on animal power. Donkeys and mules would walk round and round, blindfolded in order to prevent sickness. The animals would also be used to grind wheat, salt and clay. Known as the "molinos de sangre", the mills of blood, there had been a time when donkeys and mules hadn't been needed: slaves were deployed instead.
The greatest revolution with windmills wasn't to be until the mid-nineteenth century: 1845 to be precise. It was then that the first true water mill, i.e. one that harnessed wind to extract water, was used by the Dutch engineer Paul Bouvij for accelerating the drying of wetlands in the Prat de Sant Jordi in Palma.
This mill, with a lateen sail-style wheel, was added to by ever more innovative designs, primarily the "ramell" (for flower) designs. And by now, the new mills were almost exclusively used to get water out of the ground. While they were to be found all over the island, there were concentrations in specific areas: in and around Palma; in the south-eastern zone of Campos and Ses Salines; and in the potato and vegetable-growing region of Sa Pobla and Muro. Further and ever more modern designs came along as technology introduced the American-style wind pump in the 1920s and then wind turbines for electricity generation from the 1930s.
Though the windmills are part of an old industrial heritage, they are also very much part of the present. Of water-pumping windmills, a census of 2002 registered more than 2,500, getting on for a half of them in the Palma area. In Campos there were over 600. Of flour-grinding mills, a different census in the late 1990s put their number at 796, with concentrations in Llucmajor, Felanitx, Palma and Manacor. So it has been the case that the ancient technology, adapted to contemporary use, has seen the number of mills increase over the years. Between 1960 and the start of the last century, over 600 water mills were added.
Index for February 2016
Basketball - 8 February 2016
Beach chiringuitos - 10 February 2016
British abroad - 26 February 2016
City branding and emotion - 5 February 2016
Corruption trials - 25 February 2016
EU referendum - 23 February 2016
Floating waterparks - 11 February 2016
Green taxes v. tourist tax - 9 February 2016
Groundhog Day and Mallorca - 4 February 2016
Holiday rentals and government - 17 February 2016
Hotel receptionists - 19 February 2016
Joan Binimelis - 21 February 2016
Libraries in Mallorca - 15 February 2016
Mallorca Maritime Museum - 18 February 2016
Mariano Rajoy and Pedro Sánchez - 14 February 2016, 28 February 2016
Més and the Balearic government - 24 February 2016
Palma town hall and managing people - 16 February 2016
Place names: Palma and Alcudia - 1 February 2016
PSOE and the dangers of Podemos - 2 February 2016
Tourism technology - 13 February 2016
Tourist tax - 6 February 2016, 7 February 2016, 12 February 2016, 20 February 2016, 22 February 2016, 27 February 2016
Windmills in Mallorca - 29 February 2016
Zika and other plagues - 3 February 2016
Monday, January 25, 2016
Historical Records: Mallorca in photos
Every picture tells a story. Today's obsession with social networks is both positive and less positive. Among all the vanity stuff, the endless selfies and plates of breakfast and Sunday roast, there are the endless treasures of landscapes, seascapes and buildings. But even these can have their monotony factor. However good the photo might be, yet more shots of Pollensa's Calvari, Palma's Cathedral or Cala Tuent are just that - yet more shots. There is nothing that isn't photographed - both well and not well - and uploaded to social media.
It didn't of course used to be like this. The scarcity of photographic evidence made what there was the very essence of historical treasure. Contemporary overfamiliarity lessens the impact. Much of today's photography - the stuff which can typify social media at any rate - lacks durability. This is not historical record for future generations, simply the deployment of technologies in the here and now.
A photographic exhibition has been ongoing since the end of October. It has now moved from the Archduke Louis Salvador building at the university to the same institution's Sa Riera. It will finish in mid-February. Its title is "Tourism in the Balearic and Pityusic Islands: A brief graphic history". Its very title is somewhat odd but also significant. The Balearics is a generic name for an archipelago that comprises the Gymnesian and Pityusic Islands: Mallorca and Menorca and Ibiza and Formentera. The Balearics is the catch-all. How often is the antiquity of the real island names referred to?
A publicity leaflet for this exhibition is itself somewhat odd. Its main image shows a dockside. There is an old post office (Correos) van parked next to what looks as though it may be a large fishing boat. A car is being winched onto the boat. It doesn't somehow seem representative of tourism, yet it probably was. It was taken in Palma in 1956. The photographer was Tom Weedon. This British resident of Fornalutx is one of the key names in Mallorca's photographic past. In October 2013, an exhibition of his work was opened at Palma's La Misericòrdia. Two years later, virtually to the day, the university's exhibition opened, with Weedon's curious Palma dockside photo assuming pride of publicity place.
Quirky and unexpected, the photo captures more than just a tourism past. Vehicles, people, technology, view: they are essential ingredients of excellent historical record, the scarce resource which, when it is made available, will always have the potential to intrigue and fascinate.
There is something else that is odd about the exhibition. Awareness of it has been limited. I came across it thanks to, yes, social media. I can't recall there having been any particular announcements or fuss made about it. And yet the title makes clear that here is a collection for something that is endlessly fascinating: Mallorca's past.
Of other images, there is one for two gentlemen in bathing costumes taken at the balneario in El Terreno in either 1919 or 1920. Here, El Terreno, is where tourism, more in the style of foreign residential tourism, was centred. There is a further one of a shanty town that was taken in 1966. It was situated by the Can Pere Antoni beach in Palma. Its significance is immense. Such shanties used to exist, side by side with tourism development. Some housed workers who were employed in building, while others were for the poor. One of the abiding images I have of the first time I came to Mallorca was of a small shanty at the back of the hotel we stayed at in Arenal.
The specific source from social media that led me to find out about this exhibition was the Facebook page for Fotos Antiguas de Mallorca. This, together with a separate blog, is the most remarkable single photographic resource devoted to Mallorca's past, and not only tourism past. A labour of social media love, it throws up the occasional teases or questions. Where is this a photo of? A recent black-and-white one shows a cove with a handful of buildings and a mountain in the background. It isn't said when it was taken, but the answers as to where it is are varied: Camp de Mar, Colonia Sant Pere, Cala Agulla. The more likely answer is Cala Barques in Cala Sant Vicenç.
The Balearic tourism ministry wishes to use some of the revenue raised by the tourist tax to assist in preservation of the islands' heritage. This ministry has, however, and via its promotional wings, consistently failed in presenting this heritage, through photography and other media, to a tourist public. Old talk of a tourism museum was only ever talk: it never happened. If it believes in heritage, it should make an award to Fotos Antiguas de Mallorca.
It didn't of course used to be like this. The scarcity of photographic evidence made what there was the very essence of historical treasure. Contemporary overfamiliarity lessens the impact. Much of today's photography - the stuff which can typify social media at any rate - lacks durability. This is not historical record for future generations, simply the deployment of technologies in the here and now.
A photographic exhibition has been ongoing since the end of October. It has now moved from the Archduke Louis Salvador building at the university to the same institution's Sa Riera. It will finish in mid-February. Its title is "Tourism in the Balearic and Pityusic Islands: A brief graphic history". Its very title is somewhat odd but also significant. The Balearics is a generic name for an archipelago that comprises the Gymnesian and Pityusic Islands: Mallorca and Menorca and Ibiza and Formentera. The Balearics is the catch-all. How often is the antiquity of the real island names referred to?
A publicity leaflet for this exhibition is itself somewhat odd. Its main image shows a dockside. There is an old post office (Correos) van parked next to what looks as though it may be a large fishing boat. A car is being winched onto the boat. It doesn't somehow seem representative of tourism, yet it probably was. It was taken in Palma in 1956. The photographer was Tom Weedon. This British resident of Fornalutx is one of the key names in Mallorca's photographic past. In October 2013, an exhibition of his work was opened at Palma's La Misericòrdia. Two years later, virtually to the day, the university's exhibition opened, with Weedon's curious Palma dockside photo assuming pride of publicity place.
Quirky and unexpected, the photo captures more than just a tourism past. Vehicles, people, technology, view: they are essential ingredients of excellent historical record, the scarce resource which, when it is made available, will always have the potential to intrigue and fascinate.
There is something else that is odd about the exhibition. Awareness of it has been limited. I came across it thanks to, yes, social media. I can't recall there having been any particular announcements or fuss made about it. And yet the title makes clear that here is a collection for something that is endlessly fascinating: Mallorca's past.
Of other images, there is one for two gentlemen in bathing costumes taken at the balneario in El Terreno in either 1919 or 1920. Here, El Terreno, is where tourism, more in the style of foreign residential tourism, was centred. There is a further one of a shanty town that was taken in 1966. It was situated by the Can Pere Antoni beach in Palma. Its significance is immense. Such shanties used to exist, side by side with tourism development. Some housed workers who were employed in building, while others were for the poor. One of the abiding images I have of the first time I came to Mallorca was of a small shanty at the back of the hotel we stayed at in Arenal.
The specific source from social media that led me to find out about this exhibition was the Facebook page for Fotos Antiguas de Mallorca. This, together with a separate blog, is the most remarkable single photographic resource devoted to Mallorca's past, and not only tourism past. A labour of social media love, it throws up the occasional teases or questions. Where is this a photo of? A recent black-and-white one shows a cove with a handful of buildings and a mountain in the background. It isn't said when it was taken, but the answers as to where it is are varied: Camp de Mar, Colonia Sant Pere, Cala Agulla. The more likely answer is Cala Barques in Cala Sant Vicenç.
The Balearic tourism ministry wishes to use some of the revenue raised by the tourist tax to assist in preservation of the islands' heritage. This ministry has, however, and via its promotional wings, consistently failed in presenting this heritage, through photography and other media, to a tourist public. Old talk of a tourism museum was only ever talk: it never happened. If it believes in heritage, it should make an award to Fotos Antiguas de Mallorca.
Monday, December 28, 2015
Oddities Of 2015
Some examples of the varied and sometimes unusual past and present in Mallorca that appeared in my Enjoying Majorca column in the Bulletin.
The alternative fiesta of Sant Canut that competes with Palma's Sant Sebastià in January. "Being a saint, sort of, Sant Canut comes in the form of an image to be carried by the faithful. Dressed in a white, druidic gown with very long black hair, he holds an oversized joint; a very oversized joint."
The Portol (Marratxi) sardine tradition for the end of Carnival. "The Portol sardine, as is the case with some sardines elsewhere, doesn't actually get buried. The Mallorcans enjoy nothing more than setting fire to something, and little excuse is needed for a festivity to feature a roaring bonfire. The comedy sardine is toast, its final moments being marked by the sound of a trumpet reveille."
The "picadors". Not the lancing horsemen of the bullfight, but ... "The picador was the sleazy, smarmy, greasy Latin lover, the tourist gigolo of legend. He wasn't a myth. He genuinely did exist. And there were few places where he existed in greater number than in Mallorca (of the 1960s)."
Mallorca's bulldog spirit: its bulldog. "This canine, which came from guard dogs that were on King Jaume I's ships, is considered to be the only dog that is native to Mallorca. Its name is the Ca de Bou: bulldog. It has another name, and that is the Dogo Mallorquín."
The Duke of Swing. "A waiter in the San Pedro (Puig de Sant Pere) area of Palma. His name was Pedro (or Pere) Bonet." He was born in 1917 and at the start of the 1930s he began to be exposed to the music and entertainment of Fred Astaire, Django Reinhardt and the King of Swing, Benny Goodman. "Bonet de San Pedro was to eventually join this unofficial royalty: he became the 'Duke of Swing'."
The weirdness of Hairy John. "Sant Joan Pelós, Saint John the Hairy. He has been around for centuries and on the feast day of Saint John (the Baptist), he prances around in Felanitx once more, wearing his strange mask and then handing out carnations to the spectators. His whole demeanour, his whole idiot-dancing style, plus the flowers make him a dead ringer for a flower power hippy of the late 1960s."
Moscari's bachelor boys and girls. The day of Santa Anna (26 July) is also the day of the "Fadrí" in Moscari: bachelor boys and bachelor girls, aka "fadrins" and "fadrines". No one seems to know why this day is as it is, but whatever the origins, at ten in the morning the "Fadrí Major" appears: the chief bachelor boy. He carries a reed adorned with ribbons and flowers and is joined by "fadrins" and "fadrines" in traditional dress.
The Embala't of Sencelles. "There is little about it which makes much sense. What have mobylette motor cycles got to do with anything? Who knows, but there they are from some time after midday, hurtling around the streets while their riders are fired at with water pistols. The streets and roads get semi-flooded and will later on have more water deposited on them when the bales of packed hay arrive in town. And these come thanks to two teams - a male and female one. The two bales are then wheeled into the town's centre and unwrapped. This is when the battle kicks off. What does it entail? Nothing, other than chucking hay and smothering someone in it."
The Esporles sweet fair. "A giant sweet shop and a magician's bakery. Sugar, cream, chocolate, custards, this is a wonderland conjured up by some candy wizard. This is Esporles on the first Sunday in October: Mallorca's tribute to all our yesterdays of the pick 'n' mix and the corner shop with its penny-costing flying saucers and pink shrimps."
Jimi Hendrix in 1968. "The story of the Sgt. Pepper's gig has it that Hendrix cracked the walls with the volume that came out of his Marshall and Sound City speakers. Those attending were mostly British tourists. Hendrix was all but unknown in Mallorca, save for the likes of various locally based musicians, among whom were a couple of members of Los Bravos. After the performance - legend has it - Hendrix was involved in a night of decadence with four Swedish young ladies."
The alternative fiesta of Sant Canut that competes with Palma's Sant Sebastià in January. "Being a saint, sort of, Sant Canut comes in the form of an image to be carried by the faithful. Dressed in a white, druidic gown with very long black hair, he holds an oversized joint; a very oversized joint."
The Portol (Marratxi) sardine tradition for the end of Carnival. "The Portol sardine, as is the case with some sardines elsewhere, doesn't actually get buried. The Mallorcans enjoy nothing more than setting fire to something, and little excuse is needed for a festivity to feature a roaring bonfire. The comedy sardine is toast, its final moments being marked by the sound of a trumpet reveille."
The "picadors". Not the lancing horsemen of the bullfight, but ... "The picador was the sleazy, smarmy, greasy Latin lover, the tourist gigolo of legend. He wasn't a myth. He genuinely did exist. And there were few places where he existed in greater number than in Mallorca (of the 1960s)."
Mallorca's bulldog spirit: its bulldog. "This canine, which came from guard dogs that were on King Jaume I's ships, is considered to be the only dog that is native to Mallorca. Its name is the Ca de Bou: bulldog. It has another name, and that is the Dogo Mallorquín."
The Duke of Swing. "A waiter in the San Pedro (Puig de Sant Pere) area of Palma. His name was Pedro (or Pere) Bonet." He was born in 1917 and at the start of the 1930s he began to be exposed to the music and entertainment of Fred Astaire, Django Reinhardt and the King of Swing, Benny Goodman. "Bonet de San Pedro was to eventually join this unofficial royalty: he became the 'Duke of Swing'."
The weirdness of Hairy John. "Sant Joan Pelós, Saint John the Hairy. He has been around for centuries and on the feast day of Saint John (the Baptist), he prances around in Felanitx once more, wearing his strange mask and then handing out carnations to the spectators. His whole demeanour, his whole idiot-dancing style, plus the flowers make him a dead ringer for a flower power hippy of the late 1960s."
Moscari's bachelor boys and girls. The day of Santa Anna (26 July) is also the day of the "Fadrí" in Moscari: bachelor boys and bachelor girls, aka "fadrins" and "fadrines". No one seems to know why this day is as it is, but whatever the origins, at ten in the morning the "Fadrí Major" appears: the chief bachelor boy. He carries a reed adorned with ribbons and flowers and is joined by "fadrins" and "fadrines" in traditional dress.
The Embala't of Sencelles. "There is little about it which makes much sense. What have mobylette motor cycles got to do with anything? Who knows, but there they are from some time after midday, hurtling around the streets while their riders are fired at with water pistols. The streets and roads get semi-flooded and will later on have more water deposited on them when the bales of packed hay arrive in town. And these come thanks to two teams - a male and female one. The two bales are then wheeled into the town's centre and unwrapped. This is when the battle kicks off. What does it entail? Nothing, other than chucking hay and smothering someone in it."
The Esporles sweet fair. "A giant sweet shop and a magician's bakery. Sugar, cream, chocolate, custards, this is a wonderland conjured up by some candy wizard. This is Esporles on the first Sunday in October: Mallorca's tribute to all our yesterdays of the pick 'n' mix and the corner shop with its penny-costing flying saucers and pink shrimps."
Jimi Hendrix in 1968. "The story of the Sgt. Pepper's gig has it that Hendrix cracked the walls with the volume that came out of his Marshall and Sound City speakers. Those attending were mostly British tourists. Hendrix was all but unknown in Mallorca, save for the likes of various locally based musicians, among whom were a couple of members of Los Bravos. After the performance - legend has it - Hendrix was involved in a night of decadence with four Swedish young ladies."
Sunday, November 29, 2015
A Hundred And More Years Of Mallorcan Football
In March 1916, they formed a football team. Its name was initially the Alfonso XIII Football Team, a quite deliberate adoption of an Anglicised form. Football was, after all, an English (British) sport. The Alfonso of the name was the king. Fifteen years later, he was to leave Spain. He went into exile at the start of the Second Republic and the Republican government subsequently charged him with high treason. In the same year, sensing the way the tide was turning, what had, in 1916, very quickly become the Real Sociedad Alfonso XIII, changed its name to CD Mallorca. The sporting club of Mallorca had very nearly acquired its current name; the Real was to be restored in 1948.
This year is the one-hundredth anniversary of Real Mallorca, a hundred years notable more for the lack of distinction than for the gaining of it, but a hundred years are, nonetheless, something to be proud of, even if the club's emergence came some years after others in Spain which were to become part of the fabric of the nation's football. Its first ever match, on the Buenos Aires ground in Palma, was against a team that had been formed right at the end of the nineteenth century. The Futbol Club Barcelona turned up in March 1916 and beat its hosts five-nil. Reports suggest that Barcelona, being guests, hadn't wished to seem ungrateful for the hospitality that had been extended.
Football, it should be said, was not especially popular back in those days. In Spain generally it had been introduced largely thanks to British sailors and workers and also to young Spaniards who had gone to Britain to study. Barcelona, it might be noted, owed a great deal to one Hans Gamper for getting it up and running just over a month before the nineteenth century became the twentieth. Its first players were all foreign.
A couple of years after Barcelona was formed, the first references to "foot-ball" appeared in the Mallorcan press. A Palma magazine for cyclists made references to matches that were being played in Barcelona. Meanwhile, a writer for "La Almudaina", a newspaper of the time, reported on having been invited to watch an exhibition of "foot-ball" that was given by some British sailors: the naval introduction of the sport had crossed from the mainland.
At this time, sport as it was in Mallorca was confined to cycling, sailing, swimming and horse trials. A teacher at the Gimnàstica de l'Institut Balear, a certain Adolfo Revuelta, had to inform the youth of Palma about this odd sport. It was a ball game between two teams of eleven players on a large field at each end of which was a goal, and each team had to try and kick the ball into the other's goal. Simple enough, you would think, and so of course it was to prove, though initially there wasn't a great deal of local interest.
Despite this apparent indifference, teams started to emerge. Although what was to become Real Mallorca is probably fairly described as the first proper club in Mallorca, the first true match is said to have been played in December 1902. Created by members of the Palma "Cercle Ciclista", they called themselves "España", and they took on a Catalan team (result unknown). The following year, a team known as Palmesano, run by our friend Adolfo Revuelta, challenged España. The good teacher's instructions hadn't been entirely successful, as Palmesano had overlooked the part about kicking the ball into the other team's goal: they lost 7-0.
In 1904, they held the first Balearic Championship. Again, cycling was to assist in football's development. Veloz, a team which played at the Tirador velodrome in Palma, played in front of a couple of thousand spectators and became Balearic champions. In 1908, it was Menorca's turn: Mahón FC proved superior to Veloz, España and others.
One says that Real Mallorca was the first proper club, and in the sense that it was established as a company - a "societat" - then this is true, but there were teams which predated it, of which one, CD Binissalem, is very much alive and kicking nowadays. As is often the case with evidence from Mallorca's past, this can be contradictory. For instance, it is suggested that CD Manacor was also around before 1916, though there is equally good evidence to suggest that it wasn't.
One thing is for certain though, and that is that the Alfonso XIII Football Team was started in 1916, while it is also certain that España - Spain - was the first actual football team in Mallorca.
This year is the one-hundredth anniversary of Real Mallorca, a hundred years notable more for the lack of distinction than for the gaining of it, but a hundred years are, nonetheless, something to be proud of, even if the club's emergence came some years after others in Spain which were to become part of the fabric of the nation's football. Its first ever match, on the Buenos Aires ground in Palma, was against a team that had been formed right at the end of the nineteenth century. The Futbol Club Barcelona turned up in March 1916 and beat its hosts five-nil. Reports suggest that Barcelona, being guests, hadn't wished to seem ungrateful for the hospitality that had been extended.
Football, it should be said, was not especially popular back in those days. In Spain generally it had been introduced largely thanks to British sailors and workers and also to young Spaniards who had gone to Britain to study. Barcelona, it might be noted, owed a great deal to one Hans Gamper for getting it up and running just over a month before the nineteenth century became the twentieth. Its first players were all foreign.
A couple of years after Barcelona was formed, the first references to "foot-ball" appeared in the Mallorcan press. A Palma magazine for cyclists made references to matches that were being played in Barcelona. Meanwhile, a writer for "La Almudaina", a newspaper of the time, reported on having been invited to watch an exhibition of "foot-ball" that was given by some British sailors: the naval introduction of the sport had crossed from the mainland.
At this time, sport as it was in Mallorca was confined to cycling, sailing, swimming and horse trials. A teacher at the Gimnàstica de l'Institut Balear, a certain Adolfo Revuelta, had to inform the youth of Palma about this odd sport. It was a ball game between two teams of eleven players on a large field at each end of which was a goal, and each team had to try and kick the ball into the other's goal. Simple enough, you would think, and so of course it was to prove, though initially there wasn't a great deal of local interest.
Despite this apparent indifference, teams started to emerge. Although what was to become Real Mallorca is probably fairly described as the first proper club in Mallorca, the first true match is said to have been played in December 1902. Created by members of the Palma "Cercle Ciclista", they called themselves "España", and they took on a Catalan team (result unknown). The following year, a team known as Palmesano, run by our friend Adolfo Revuelta, challenged España. The good teacher's instructions hadn't been entirely successful, as Palmesano had overlooked the part about kicking the ball into the other team's goal: they lost 7-0.
In 1904, they held the first Balearic Championship. Again, cycling was to assist in football's development. Veloz, a team which played at the Tirador velodrome in Palma, played in front of a couple of thousand spectators and became Balearic champions. In 1908, it was Menorca's turn: Mahón FC proved superior to Veloz, España and others.
One says that Real Mallorca was the first proper club, and in the sense that it was established as a company - a "societat" - then this is true, but there were teams which predated it, of which one, CD Binissalem, is very much alive and kicking nowadays. As is often the case with evidence from Mallorca's past, this can be contradictory. For instance, it is suggested that CD Manacor was also around before 1916, though there is equally good evidence to suggest that it wasn't.
One thing is for certain though, and that is that the Alfonso XIII Football Team was started in 1916, while it is also certain that España - Spain - was the first actual football team in Mallorca.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Why The Surprise? Mallorca on film
The Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival, the curtain on which comes down this evening with its awards ceremony, was partly intended to show off Mallorca to potential producers and/or directors. Recently, Oliver Stone was in Mallorca and was heard to comment that he was "surprised" by Mallorca. He hadn't realised quite how well the island is blessed in terms of landscapes and what have you. His comment naturally led some to conclude that he will be filming here some time soon. Stone may well do, while participants at the film festival might also feel inclined to use Mallorca as future locations.
In a way, though, it's surprising that Stone and other film people might be surprised by Mallorca. It's not as if there isn't a long history of the moving picture on the island, both for the making of films and for the use of film for promotion (the two of which have, at times in the past, coalesced for propaganda purposes).
While nowadays there are any number of videos that show off Mallorca, back in the day, moving images were somewhat scarce. But this relationship with film dates from the very earliest days of the moves to attract tourists to Mallorca at the start of the twentieth century.
Over a hundred years ago - it's not clear exactly when but probably 1910 - the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourist Board) felt moved to send its congratulations to one Josep Tous Ferrer, who was the owner of the Teatro Lírico (Lyric Theatre) in Palma. He had shot short films of a variety of scenes that characterised the island and had sent them to cinematographers in Spain and overseas. Well, he probably didn't personally shoot them, as he was a fairly leading figure in Palma business life: I'm assuming he was the same Josep Tous Ferrer who founded the newspaper "Ultima Hora" in 1893.
The Lyric was inaugurated on 1 February 1902, and in 1910 it started showing films - hence the conclusion that it was in 1910 when the tourist board was congratulating Tous on his efforts. This apparent visionary of multimedia was the forerunner, the pioneer of documentaries and films of Mallorca that were to follow, and the tourist board itself was swiftly in on the act. In November 1911 it was announced that a film would be made of "all the beauties and idiosyncrasies" of the island and that it would be sent - free of charge - to "all Spanish and foreign cinematographers", as it would be an excellent means of promotion.
Whether "all" the cinematographers received a copy isn't known, but in the following year something extraordinary in the world of film occurred. Leon Gaumont and the French Gaumont company filmed "In The Isle Of Majorca", the isle of Mallorca in colour. It used the system that Gaumont had devised, Chronochrome, which was to prove to be an invention that didn't really have legs. Nevertheless, and so the claim is made, the first ever colour film was made in Mallorca, and it was about Mallorca, a short travelogue that showed images of Palma, of Valldemossa and Pollensa.
It's doubtful that this film was widely seen at the time, while its existence was clearly forgotten about, only for it to be rediscovered a few years ago. One question surrounding it is why Gaumont chose Mallorca to be what seemed its pilot usage. Perhaps the efforts of Tous and/or the tourist board had worked, and a foreign cinematographer had taken the bait.
It was to be many years later that the propaganda element entered the equation. The Franco regime saw the cinema as a means of showing Spain off in a rather better light than the international community considered the country. Consequently, there were to be certain famous films made in Mallorca. One uses the word "famous" advisedly. The films were more notorious for being somewhat ropey in terms of plots or so obscure that no one, not even the actors, had a clue what was going on: this was the fate of "The Magus" with Michael Caine in 1967. But before this was George Sanders in the 1950 smuggling yarn, "Black Jack", and then, in 1962, the most daring film of the era (for Mallorca, that is): "Bahia de Palma" with Elke Sommer in a bikini.
The surprise is, therefore, that there should be a surprise. Maybe Oliver Stone will take the bait, just as Leon Gaumont appeared to have in 1912. If he does, the colour will be something of an improvement.
In a way, though, it's surprising that Stone and other film people might be surprised by Mallorca. It's not as if there isn't a long history of the moving picture on the island, both for the making of films and for the use of film for promotion (the two of which have, at times in the past, coalesced for propaganda purposes).
While nowadays there are any number of videos that show off Mallorca, back in the day, moving images were somewhat scarce. But this relationship with film dates from the very earliest days of the moves to attract tourists to Mallorca at the start of the twentieth century.
Over a hundred years ago - it's not clear exactly when but probably 1910 - the Fomento del Turismo (the Mallorca Tourist Board) felt moved to send its congratulations to one Josep Tous Ferrer, who was the owner of the Teatro Lírico (Lyric Theatre) in Palma. He had shot short films of a variety of scenes that characterised the island and had sent them to cinematographers in Spain and overseas. Well, he probably didn't personally shoot them, as he was a fairly leading figure in Palma business life: I'm assuming he was the same Josep Tous Ferrer who founded the newspaper "Ultima Hora" in 1893.
The Lyric was inaugurated on 1 February 1902, and in 1910 it started showing films - hence the conclusion that it was in 1910 when the tourist board was congratulating Tous on his efforts. This apparent visionary of multimedia was the forerunner, the pioneer of documentaries and films of Mallorca that were to follow, and the tourist board itself was swiftly in on the act. In November 1911 it was announced that a film would be made of "all the beauties and idiosyncrasies" of the island and that it would be sent - free of charge - to "all Spanish and foreign cinematographers", as it would be an excellent means of promotion.
Whether "all" the cinematographers received a copy isn't known, but in the following year something extraordinary in the world of film occurred. Leon Gaumont and the French Gaumont company filmed "In The Isle Of Majorca", the isle of Mallorca in colour. It used the system that Gaumont had devised, Chronochrome, which was to prove to be an invention that didn't really have legs. Nevertheless, and so the claim is made, the first ever colour film was made in Mallorca, and it was about Mallorca, a short travelogue that showed images of Palma, of Valldemossa and Pollensa.
It's doubtful that this film was widely seen at the time, while its existence was clearly forgotten about, only for it to be rediscovered a few years ago. One question surrounding it is why Gaumont chose Mallorca to be what seemed its pilot usage. Perhaps the efforts of Tous and/or the tourist board had worked, and a foreign cinematographer had taken the bait.
It was to be many years later that the propaganda element entered the equation. The Franco regime saw the cinema as a means of showing Spain off in a rather better light than the international community considered the country. Consequently, there were to be certain famous films made in Mallorca. One uses the word "famous" advisedly. The films were more notorious for being somewhat ropey in terms of plots or so obscure that no one, not even the actors, had a clue what was going on: this was the fate of "The Magus" with Michael Caine in 1967. But before this was George Sanders in the 1950 smuggling yarn, "Black Jack", and then, in 1962, the most daring film of the era (for Mallorca, that is): "Bahia de Palma" with Elke Sommer in a bikini.
The surprise is, therefore, that there should be a surprise. Maybe Oliver Stone will take the bait, just as Leon Gaumont appeared to have in 1912. If he does, the colour will be something of an improvement.
Friday, October 30, 2015
The One Peseta Tax
It is 1931. Mallorca, as with the rest of Spain, is enduring the upheaval that had characterised most of the century to that point and would continue to. The Second Republic had been declared and was to survive for only five years before it became a notional government during the years of the Civil War. Despite all the endless turmoil, Mallorca had been able to develop its tourism industry, and by the start of the 1930s it had become a successful industry - in relative terms of course - though one which the Depression most certainly didn't assist. Nevertheless, from 1930 to 1935, the number of tourists to the island doubled from 20,168 to 40,045 (yes, incredibly, they had accurate statistics then, or seemed to have). Between these years the number of cruise ships also rose from 83 to 109, but the passengers they carried increased dramatically from 15,991 to 50,363.
Tourism facilities were mainly located in Palma. This wasn't exclusively the case, as there were pockets of tourism, such as Puerto Pollensa with the Hotel Formentor and other hotels of some antiquity - the Illa d'Or and the Miramar - as well as Soller, which had been opening up to a largely French tourism market for some years. There was the development of the early resorts, some that survived, such as Palmanova, and one or two which never really took off - who now knows about the Pueblo Español that was Alcanada near Alcudia?
But it was Palma to which tourism looked to create anything approaching volume of tourists, and the city contributed this thanks in no small part to the boom in cruise shipping. In those days the passengers would most certainly come ashore and spend not a few hours but a day or more. They could take advantage of the excursions to various parts of the island - to the Caves of Drach, to Formentor and elsewhere - for the princely sum of eleven pesetas (why eleven?).
Between 1930 and 1935 the number of hotels in Palma increased from 48 to 69. Here was then something of a tourism success story, but with this success came the interests of politicians which were at variance with those who were the ones who made this success possible - the businesspeople who formed the Fomento del Turismo, the Mallorca Tourist Board.
Local government in those days was anything but stable. Mayors came and went and sometimes lasted only a few months. One such mayor was Lorenzo Bisbal. He was a PSOE mayor between April and October 1931, and during this period the town hall in Palma announced something that made the tourist board shout with horror. There was to be a tourist tax. It would involve the charging of one peseta per day per tourist who was staying in the 48 (and increasing) hotels in the city.
The tourist board set about attempting to prevent the tax being introduced or to at least get it scrapped as soon as possible. Whatever happened to this tax is unclear. But Bisbal was replaced by another PSOE mayor, Francesc Villalonga Fabregas, who in just as short order as Bisbal was replaced by Bernat Jofre, and he was a hotel director and, most importantly, the boss of the Hotel Victoria, which is now the Gran Melia Victoria. It's probably safe to assume that the tax didn't survive once Jofre assumed the mayoral seat.
This story just perhaps goes to show that success can be risked by the intervention of politicians. Tourism in the 1930s was on a steep upward curve. Why potentially stall this with a tax? Tourism today is not on such an upward trend, but there's no questioning Mallorca's current popularity, into which have wandered the intentions of politicians.
The Mallorca Tourist Board, often confused with being a government body, which it has never been, is opposed to the tax now just as it was opposed to Palma's tax in the 1930s. Perhaps there do have to be checks on the ambitions of the private sector, but is a tax the way to do this? Was it the way in the 1930s and is it the way now? It's doubtful.
Lorenzo Bisbal was not to be a victim of the Civil War: he died in 1935. There is one slight coincidence between him and the current day. His first surname was Bisbal, but his second was Barceló, the same as the tourism minister who is so intent on introducing the latest version of the tourist tax. Perhaps Biel has leafed through his tourism history and discovered that a Barceló was involved in the old one peseta tax. Or perhaps he has also looked at what happened in Ibiza in the 1930s. There, tourism development was well behind Mallorca's. Its tourist board wasn't founded until 1933, and unlike its Mallorcan counterpart, what was suggested? A tourist tax to help fund tourism development.
Tourism facilities were mainly located in Palma. This wasn't exclusively the case, as there were pockets of tourism, such as Puerto Pollensa with the Hotel Formentor and other hotels of some antiquity - the Illa d'Or and the Miramar - as well as Soller, which had been opening up to a largely French tourism market for some years. There was the development of the early resorts, some that survived, such as Palmanova, and one or two which never really took off - who now knows about the Pueblo Español that was Alcanada near Alcudia?
But it was Palma to which tourism looked to create anything approaching volume of tourists, and the city contributed this thanks in no small part to the boom in cruise shipping. In those days the passengers would most certainly come ashore and spend not a few hours but a day or more. They could take advantage of the excursions to various parts of the island - to the Caves of Drach, to Formentor and elsewhere - for the princely sum of eleven pesetas (why eleven?).
Between 1930 and 1935 the number of hotels in Palma increased from 48 to 69. Here was then something of a tourism success story, but with this success came the interests of politicians which were at variance with those who were the ones who made this success possible - the businesspeople who formed the Fomento del Turismo, the Mallorca Tourist Board.
Local government in those days was anything but stable. Mayors came and went and sometimes lasted only a few months. One such mayor was Lorenzo Bisbal. He was a PSOE mayor between April and October 1931, and during this period the town hall in Palma announced something that made the tourist board shout with horror. There was to be a tourist tax. It would involve the charging of one peseta per day per tourist who was staying in the 48 (and increasing) hotels in the city.
The tourist board set about attempting to prevent the tax being introduced or to at least get it scrapped as soon as possible. Whatever happened to this tax is unclear. But Bisbal was replaced by another PSOE mayor, Francesc Villalonga Fabregas, who in just as short order as Bisbal was replaced by Bernat Jofre, and he was a hotel director and, most importantly, the boss of the Hotel Victoria, which is now the Gran Melia Victoria. It's probably safe to assume that the tax didn't survive once Jofre assumed the mayoral seat.
This story just perhaps goes to show that success can be risked by the intervention of politicians. Tourism in the 1930s was on a steep upward curve. Why potentially stall this with a tax? Tourism today is not on such an upward trend, but there's no questioning Mallorca's current popularity, into which have wandered the intentions of politicians.
The Mallorca Tourist Board, often confused with being a government body, which it has never been, is opposed to the tax now just as it was opposed to Palma's tax in the 1930s. Perhaps there do have to be checks on the ambitions of the private sector, but is a tax the way to do this? Was it the way in the 1930s and is it the way now? It's doubtful.
Lorenzo Bisbal was not to be a victim of the Civil War: he died in 1935. There is one slight coincidence between him and the current day. His first surname was Bisbal, but his second was Barceló, the same as the tourism minister who is so intent on introducing the latest version of the tourist tax. Perhaps Biel has leafed through his tourism history and discovered that a Barceló was involved in the old one peseta tax. Or perhaps he has also looked at what happened in Ibiza in the 1930s. There, tourism development was well behind Mallorca's. Its tourist board wasn't founded until 1933, and unlike its Mallorcan counterpart, what was suggested? A tourist tax to help fund tourism development.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Mallorca's Identity Conundrum
It is, when you think about it, a bit odd. There you are, stuck on an island some 250 kilometres off the Spanish mainland to which your owners (the Spanish) paid scant regard for several centuries. And yet there you are, nevertheless, a part of Spain. It is the lot of islands that they tend to belong to someone, albeit that the Maltese have eventually made a pretty decent fist of not being.
A distinction needs to be made between Spain the state and Spain the mainland. Not that Spain, as such, existed when the Catalans and Aragonese arrived in the thirteenth century. It was the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabel of Castile - more than two hundred years after the conquest - that sowed the seeds of a unified Spain. But even this union didn't dispense with Ferdinand's Crown, that of Aragon. It was to be roughly 250 more years before the Crown was dismantled together with Mallorca's part within it. Three hundred years ago marked the moment when Mallorca became definitively a part of the Spanish nation and a centralised one at that.
But prior to the enactment of the Nueva Planta decree and subsequently, Mallorca was largely ignored. Yes, it had some trading significance as well as some strategic military importance, but to all intents and purposes it was a colony, one remote from the Spanish state and mainland. It had its Viceroy, its Governor and then its Captain-General. But here, fundamentally, was an island which owed nothing to the more ancient history of Spain or indeed Catalonia. In the cultural mix of Spain, one forged from invasion and migration, Mallorca and the Balearics were the missing link (as were the Canaries). The islands and the islanders were never of the Visigoth stock which determined the course of the development of the Iberian peninsula. Not that is, until a branch line of Visigoth inter-mingled descendants came and took it over in 1229.
Colonialism, both Catalan and Spanish, implanted culture, but even now the arguments rage as to what this culture actually is or should be, and so extend to the seemingly endless quest to understand the identity (linguistic and otherwise) of the island and of the islanders. Within this debate, there is the vital factor of what happened some sixty years ago. For so long a sort of afterthought appendage to the rest of Spain, Mallorca suddenly assumed a position of critical importance. It wasn't to be the nation's bread basket so much as the nation's principal foreign-exchange agency. Tourism, ultimately, was all about money, and only some of it was for Mallorca.
The new colonisation wasn't solely that by tourists or by foreigners buying up what were then cheap-as-chips properties. It was one of enormous labour migration. In the 1950s, before the boom started, migration contributed roughly 7% of population growth. By 1970 this had risen to almost 30%, a great deal of it coming from parts of Spain without the old Aragonese connection: Andalusia, most notably.
The population of Mallorca in 1960 was just over 360,000. It has since grown by over 500,000, and within this increase is the detectable influence of the mainland. Which are the most popular surnames in Mallorca? Well, they're not ones of specifically Catalan origin. They are García, Martínez.
While many migrants will, so to speak, have gone native, is it the change in demographics of the past sixty years which helps to explain the results of the latest study of Mallorcan and Balearic identity? The annual Gadeso research is a significant sociological survey and it consistently shows that Mallorcans consider themselves as much Spanish as they do citizens of the Balearics. What it also shows is that a majority (63%) identify more with Mallorca than with the Balearics. This isn't particularly surprising, but what might be considered to be surprising is the almost total absence of sentiment towards Catalonia. A mere two per cent of Mallorcans identify with the "Catalan Lands".
The Council of Mallorca president, Miquel Ensenyat, has some justification in referring to the "colonial" nature of the financing arrangement between Mallorca and the Balearics and the state. The islands are disadvantaged, and one can argue that the colonisation from the 1960s has consistently been more to the advantage of the state than to the islands. Yet despite this, and despite what the likes of Ensenyat ultimately avow - a form of Mallorcan independence within a Catalan Lands nationalism - the popular sentiment for this, as shown by Gadeso, simply doesn't exist.
This is political sentiment, so a similar survey of cultural sentiment might well show a very different result in terms of Catalan identity, but it is nonetheless rather odd that those centuries of Spanish neglect should now appear to show a firm connection with Spain and almost none with the lands that introduced that original cultural identity.
A distinction needs to be made between Spain the state and Spain the mainland. Not that Spain, as such, existed when the Catalans and Aragonese arrived in the thirteenth century. It was the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabel of Castile - more than two hundred years after the conquest - that sowed the seeds of a unified Spain. But even this union didn't dispense with Ferdinand's Crown, that of Aragon. It was to be roughly 250 more years before the Crown was dismantled together with Mallorca's part within it. Three hundred years ago marked the moment when Mallorca became definitively a part of the Spanish nation and a centralised one at that.
But prior to the enactment of the Nueva Planta decree and subsequently, Mallorca was largely ignored. Yes, it had some trading significance as well as some strategic military importance, but to all intents and purposes it was a colony, one remote from the Spanish state and mainland. It had its Viceroy, its Governor and then its Captain-General. But here, fundamentally, was an island which owed nothing to the more ancient history of Spain or indeed Catalonia. In the cultural mix of Spain, one forged from invasion and migration, Mallorca and the Balearics were the missing link (as were the Canaries). The islands and the islanders were never of the Visigoth stock which determined the course of the development of the Iberian peninsula. Not that is, until a branch line of Visigoth inter-mingled descendants came and took it over in 1229.
Colonialism, both Catalan and Spanish, implanted culture, but even now the arguments rage as to what this culture actually is or should be, and so extend to the seemingly endless quest to understand the identity (linguistic and otherwise) of the island and of the islanders. Within this debate, there is the vital factor of what happened some sixty years ago. For so long a sort of afterthought appendage to the rest of Spain, Mallorca suddenly assumed a position of critical importance. It wasn't to be the nation's bread basket so much as the nation's principal foreign-exchange agency. Tourism, ultimately, was all about money, and only some of it was for Mallorca.
The new colonisation wasn't solely that by tourists or by foreigners buying up what were then cheap-as-chips properties. It was one of enormous labour migration. In the 1950s, before the boom started, migration contributed roughly 7% of population growth. By 1970 this had risen to almost 30%, a great deal of it coming from parts of Spain without the old Aragonese connection: Andalusia, most notably.
The population of Mallorca in 1960 was just over 360,000. It has since grown by over 500,000, and within this increase is the detectable influence of the mainland. Which are the most popular surnames in Mallorca? Well, they're not ones of specifically Catalan origin. They are García, Martínez.
While many migrants will, so to speak, have gone native, is it the change in demographics of the past sixty years which helps to explain the results of the latest study of Mallorcan and Balearic identity? The annual Gadeso research is a significant sociological survey and it consistently shows that Mallorcans consider themselves as much Spanish as they do citizens of the Balearics. What it also shows is that a majority (63%) identify more with Mallorca than with the Balearics. This isn't particularly surprising, but what might be considered to be surprising is the almost total absence of sentiment towards Catalonia. A mere two per cent of Mallorcans identify with the "Catalan Lands".
The Council of Mallorca president, Miquel Ensenyat, has some justification in referring to the "colonial" nature of the financing arrangement between Mallorca and the Balearics and the state. The islands are disadvantaged, and one can argue that the colonisation from the 1960s has consistently been more to the advantage of the state than to the islands. Yet despite this, and despite what the likes of Ensenyat ultimately avow - a form of Mallorcan independence within a Catalan Lands nationalism - the popular sentiment for this, as shown by Gadeso, simply doesn't exist.
This is political sentiment, so a similar survey of cultural sentiment might well show a very different result in terms of Catalan identity, but it is nonetheless rather odd that those centuries of Spanish neglect should now appear to show a firm connection with Spain and almost none with the lands that introduced that original cultural identity.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
The Pantomime Mule Of Manacor
The mule has its own place in Mallorca's story. Along with the donkey, it was a prime source of energy for mills and wells. Blindfolded, in order to prevent sickness, the mule or the donkey would be harnessed and walk in a circle to extract water or grind wheat - mills were even used to grind salt and clay. The mule was not the only source of power. Man was as well: slaves. When the slave trade came to an end, the mule reassumed greater duties, unless there was sufficient wind to do its job for it. The mills driven by mules, donkeys and humans were known as "molinos de sangre": mills of blood.
In 1891 the town hall in Palma was approached with a request to create the city's first public transport system. On 20 September of that year, this system was inaugurated. It went to Porto Pi and was 4.4 kilometres long. It was a tram, but more specifically a "tram of blood": it was driven by mules.
The first mule trams were known as ripers, rippers, riperts or ripperts. They existed in other cities - Barcelona and Madrid, for example - and the inconsistency in spelling may be purely down to local usage. They all had a common root, though, and that was one Monsieur Ripert, a carriage-maker from Marseille. He came up with the design, others stole it but used his name, and so emerged the riperts (or whatever they were called). In truth, they weren't really trams at all but a forerunner of the bus, but they were around for a good number of years after the first journey in 1891: the proper, electrified tram line to Porto Pi wasn't to start until 1916. Nevertheless, there were mule-drawn riperts heading out to what were still suburbs in the 1920s, such as El Terreno.
Elsewhere on the island, the mule was being affected by the arrival of technology. While much of Mallorca remained stuck in the nineteenth century, the first bicycle had appeared in the 1860s, the train had arrived by the final quarter of the 1800s and then the car and real buses came along in the first quarter of the 1900s. The Sóller train, went it opened in 1912, was to cut the journey time from Palma from four hours to one hour: it was also a lot more comfortable and a lot less hairy (the journey, that is, as opposed to the mule).
Eventually of course, the mule was to lose its transport source of employment, though for the mule population there were still the mills, the wells and the hard labour of the countryside. Nowadays, it would be hard to place a figure on how many mules there are in Mallorca; it is easier to place a price on the mule, if adverts on the internet are anything to go by. There is one available for 600 euros; three others for 250 euros each - urgent sales on account of the owner having to move away.
In its different ways, therefore, the mule has its place in the Mallorcan story, one that is both urban and rural, but it is the countryside, or at least more rural areas, where the mule remains more honoured today. This said, Manacor is a fairly large urban area and long a centre of industry. Manacor has, however, acquired a mule. Not a real one but a pretend one. The "mulassa" of Manacor, which is basically like a pantomime horse with one playing the front, another playing the back, was revealed in front of 200 or so expectant citizens of Manacor last week. It danced, it cavorted, the folk musicians made music. The mulassa had arrived and its first big performance will come at this year's Sant Jaume fiestas.
Mallorca has its range of odd characters that take to the streets at fiesta time: the giants, the big heads, the dragons, the cavallets. And the Manacor mulassa, it might be said, falls into the general category of the latter: figures with a horsey theme. The artist Sebastià Riera Pocovi has been responsible for the mulassa, and the significance of the mule is that there was, in times gone by, a tradition of there being a raffle to win a mule on Sant Jaume day.
But there is more to the mulassa than this local tradition. The figure of a mule goes back centuries in Catalan fiesta tradition. La Mulassa de Barcelona, for example, can trace its history to 1601. It seemingly disappeared from the festivities' scene around 1812 but was revived in the late 1980s. It goes on tour, and it has appeared in Mancor de la Vall, while the Mulassa de Falset (in Catalonia) has turned up in Santa Maria del Cami. Now Manacor has one, maybe it will go on tour as well, though it's more likely that every town and village will want one.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Fiesta Of Vendetta: Canamunt, Canavall
I recently had a conversation about "mafias" in Mallorca. A point I made was, as I have written in a previous article, that it is a term used widely and pejoratively and almost always inaccurately, though I could concede that there is the old saying about Mallorca that it is "Sicily without the guns". Yes, came a response, that may be true, but then the Cosa Nostra had learned from Mallorca. This may or may not be true, but Mallorca had, historically, circumstances not dissimilar to those which gave rise to the original Sicilian mafia of the nineteenth century and which produced the island-wide warfare that broke out at the end of the sixteenth century and that lasted for much of the following century. This was perhaps Mallorca's most infamous interlude: the Canamunt and the Canavall vendetta.
The background to these two factions was what had happened in the decades before the vendetta started. Following the Germanies civil war 1521 to 1523, there were land confiscations and land grabs by a nobility which was often absent as well as any number of lawsuits and a general absence of interest in Mallorca on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Things didn't improve under his son, Philip II, and so Mallorca was largely left to its own devices and to lawlessness that was never far from the surface and which finally and truly surfaced as a result of the feud between two families - the Anglada and Rossinyol. They and their supporters came to acquire the names Canamunt and Canavall because they lived in the villages of Amunt and Avall in Palma.
Things all kicked off in 1598 and what was to follow was in a sense another civil war but not between the poor and the rich, which was essentially what the Germanies had been about, but between rival nobilities and others who were drawn into the conflict from right across the island. It was time, until things calmed down in the 1660s, of appalling violence, assassination, banditry and protection racketeering. Here were, in essence, two mafias going head to head in a vendetta because honour had supposedly been impugned.
Banditry, not exactly uncommon in the Mediterranean of former times, was to be a principal cause of the rise of the mafia after Sicily had been liberated from a feudal system but also exposed to the desires of land grabbers who could act with freedom because the island was so poorly policed. But well before it emerged, Mallorca was ripe with the trappings of what was to consume the Italian island, and it even included the 1619 assassination of a judge - Jaume Joan de Berga y Salas - who had sought to bring criminals to justice. The vendetta was such that the reasons for it having started were forgotten as gangs and gangsters, who would align themselves with one of the two factions (occasionally swapping sides), created decades-long mayhem. The viciousness was dreadful and certain towns suffered more than others. The Canavall of Pollensa were especially unpleasant. A woman and two daughters were raped because they were suspected of being for the Canamunt; more than 130 people were murdered.
In light of all this, you might well ask why anyone would wish to create a fiesta which takes as its theme the Canamunt and Canavall vendetta. Well, the collective Orgull Llonguet in Palma wants to do precisely this, and it would seem that there is going to be a Canamunt i Canavall fiesta this summer. The provisional date had been 12 July but may now be 1 August. Orgull means pride, and the llonguet is a type of bread. The collective describes itself as being "gastro-festival". In other words, it has been and is engaged in creating different types of fiesta for Palma where there has been discontent with the organisation of January's patron saint celebrations for Sant Sebastià and where there isn't a summer fiesta as such.
What they have in mind for this fiesta heaven only knows, though a promised battle will feature nothing more dangerous than water. It is probably safe to say that it will all be tongue in cheek in the same way as Sant Kanut is, this being the alternative Sant Sebastià fiesta. For Sant Kanut an image of this fake saint is carried in the style of the images of real saints. The name comes from the Catalan "canut" to mean a marijuana joint. Indeed, the association of Canamunt-Ciutat Antiga residents in Palma already have a fiesta in which there is the wacky image of Sant Rescat (Saint Rescue), and the Orgull Llonguet one will complement this in making what is hoped will become a major summer fiesta in the city.
It seems a strange old justification for a fiesta, but then strange things happen in Mallorca. Fortunately, they are not the strange of the seventeenth century.
The background to these two factions was what had happened in the decades before the vendetta started. Following the Germanies civil war 1521 to 1523, there were land confiscations and land grabs by a nobility which was often absent as well as any number of lawsuits and a general absence of interest in Mallorca on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Things didn't improve under his son, Philip II, and so Mallorca was largely left to its own devices and to lawlessness that was never far from the surface and which finally and truly surfaced as a result of the feud between two families - the Anglada and Rossinyol. They and their supporters came to acquire the names Canamunt and Canavall because they lived in the villages of Amunt and Avall in Palma.
Things all kicked off in 1598 and what was to follow was in a sense another civil war but not between the poor and the rich, which was essentially what the Germanies had been about, but between rival nobilities and others who were drawn into the conflict from right across the island. It was time, until things calmed down in the 1660s, of appalling violence, assassination, banditry and protection racketeering. Here were, in essence, two mafias going head to head in a vendetta because honour had supposedly been impugned.
Banditry, not exactly uncommon in the Mediterranean of former times, was to be a principal cause of the rise of the mafia after Sicily had been liberated from a feudal system but also exposed to the desires of land grabbers who could act with freedom because the island was so poorly policed. But well before it emerged, Mallorca was ripe with the trappings of what was to consume the Italian island, and it even included the 1619 assassination of a judge - Jaume Joan de Berga y Salas - who had sought to bring criminals to justice. The vendetta was such that the reasons for it having started were forgotten as gangs and gangsters, who would align themselves with one of the two factions (occasionally swapping sides), created decades-long mayhem. The viciousness was dreadful and certain towns suffered more than others. The Canavall of Pollensa were especially unpleasant. A woman and two daughters were raped because they were suspected of being for the Canamunt; more than 130 people were murdered.
In light of all this, you might well ask why anyone would wish to create a fiesta which takes as its theme the Canamunt and Canavall vendetta. Well, the collective Orgull Llonguet in Palma wants to do precisely this, and it would seem that there is going to be a Canamunt i Canavall fiesta this summer. The provisional date had been 12 July but may now be 1 August. Orgull means pride, and the llonguet is a type of bread. The collective describes itself as being "gastro-festival". In other words, it has been and is engaged in creating different types of fiesta for Palma where there has been discontent with the organisation of January's patron saint celebrations for Sant Sebastià and where there isn't a summer fiesta as such.
What they have in mind for this fiesta heaven only knows, though a promised battle will feature nothing more dangerous than water. It is probably safe to say that it will all be tongue in cheek in the same way as Sant Kanut is, this being the alternative Sant Sebastià fiesta. For Sant Kanut an image of this fake saint is carried in the style of the images of real saints. The name comes from the Catalan "canut" to mean a marijuana joint. Indeed, the association of Canamunt-Ciutat Antiga residents in Palma already have a fiesta in which there is the wacky image of Sant Rescat (Saint Rescue), and the Orgull Llonguet one will complement this in making what is hoped will become a major summer fiesta in the city.
It seems a strange old justification for a fiesta, but then strange things happen in Mallorca. Fortunately, they are not the strange of the seventeenth century.
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
The Never-Ending Argument Of Language
There was this interview. It was with the philologist who is responsible for linguistic use at the IB3 broadcaster. At the conclusion of the interview she says of the Balearic language that it doesn't exist. To speak of a Balearic language is provocative, just as it is when one refers to the Catalan of Mallorca. It is the philological way, but she doesn't like it because, for centuries, we have called it Mallorquín.
In Mallorca, it can appear, there are more philologists than you can shake a dictionary at. These "students" of languages, be they actual students, professors or hobbyists, proliferate to an extent that is hard to comprehend for those of us brought up without an obsession with arguing over languages and their historical significance. Philologist was a word, a profession if you like, that I was well aware of before coming to Mallorca, but never had it occurred to me that there would be a place where the philologist seems as common as the town hall official, and as equally bloody-minded in all likelihood.
And the town halls have their own quasi-philologists, the councillors who are charged with the responsibility for what, through literal translation, is linguistic normalisation but which is better translated as standardisation. Either noun will do, as the whole term is a euphemism for Catalan. Or is it?
The philologist of the interview, Mariantònia Lladó, has a contentious responsibility at IB3. Anything to do with language has the potential to be contentious - which is one reason why there are so many philologists knocking around - and at IB3 it has been just this. It has all had to do with an issue that will, for the great majority of you, seem impenetrable and arcane, but that is because you will not be obsessed with the detail of language, one that is so micro-scrutinised that there are arguments which haggle over the use of the word "the". At IB3, "the" became a politico-philological battle. The Partido Popular, which ruled the broadcaster through its government vice-president Antonio Gomez and then José Manuel Ruiz, who failed so spectacularly in becoming mayor of Calvia, insisted that the Mallorquín "the" should be used and not the Catalan "the". Mariantònia, elsewhere in the interview, reveals her "the" preference, lamenting the fact that, except out in the villages of Mallorca, the "new generations" use the literary "the", i.e. the Catalan one.
For the Bauzá PP, so desirous of distancing itself from anything marked with the stamp of Catalonia, the intervention over "the" at IB3 went to the heart of its linguistic politics, and the very notion of there being a linguistic politics can strike many as being somewhat absurd. But that's because they are not bound up in the ceaseless polemic that can appear to define all politics of Mallorca.
The PP line, and that of Mariantònia (and I hope I'm not misrepresenting her), is to promote the languages of the islands at the expense of Catalan. Yet this can appear to be - in political terms - contradictory. The PP disassociates itself from notions of nationalism - those which are not Spanish nationalist - but it advocates a distinct language, Mallorquín. And what, as far as nationalism is concerned, is more nationalist than a language? But then, it isn't contradictory if it is accepted that there are minority languages/dialects within the framework of the grand nationalism of Spain and it also isn't contradictory if this acceptance is one to cock a snook at the pretensions of Catalan nationalism which involve a geographically broader area than just Catalonia - the mythical Catalan Lands.
Inherent to this line is an argument that the languages of the islands, and each island lays claim to having one, are the products of some form of separate development. Well, quite clearly there has been. When there are 250 plus kilometres of sea that divorce Mallorca from the Catalan heartland as well as a history of Arabic language and Vulgar Latin (and it is this which is the root of the "the" argument), there was bound to have been linguistic modification. But the mother tongue is Catalan (and/or variants that themselves influenced and created Catalan). To refer to the "Catalan of Mallorca" is, however, says Mariantònia, provocative. And in this, for many Mallorcans in my experience, she is right. Mallorcans speak Mallorquín and not Catalan, albeit there are obvious, very strong similarities.
So, one comes back to this business of linguistic normalisation, sometimes determined at town halls by councillors who proudly speak their Mallorquín (and nothing else) but within an ideological framework of Catalan nationalism and with responsibility for the normalisation of Catalan. And ditto the schools, where the argument is over the promotion of Catalan, not of Mallorquín.
Still, this all helps to allow philology to flourish and for there to be never-ending arguments, and the fact is that they will never end.
In Mallorca, it can appear, there are more philologists than you can shake a dictionary at. These "students" of languages, be they actual students, professors or hobbyists, proliferate to an extent that is hard to comprehend for those of us brought up without an obsession with arguing over languages and their historical significance. Philologist was a word, a profession if you like, that I was well aware of before coming to Mallorca, but never had it occurred to me that there would be a place where the philologist seems as common as the town hall official, and as equally bloody-minded in all likelihood.
And the town halls have their own quasi-philologists, the councillors who are charged with the responsibility for what, through literal translation, is linguistic normalisation but which is better translated as standardisation. Either noun will do, as the whole term is a euphemism for Catalan. Or is it?
The philologist of the interview, Mariantònia Lladó, has a contentious responsibility at IB3. Anything to do with language has the potential to be contentious - which is one reason why there are so many philologists knocking around - and at IB3 it has been just this. It has all had to do with an issue that will, for the great majority of you, seem impenetrable and arcane, but that is because you will not be obsessed with the detail of language, one that is so micro-scrutinised that there are arguments which haggle over the use of the word "the". At IB3, "the" became a politico-philological battle. The Partido Popular, which ruled the broadcaster through its government vice-president Antonio Gomez and then José Manuel Ruiz, who failed so spectacularly in becoming mayor of Calvia, insisted that the Mallorquín "the" should be used and not the Catalan "the". Mariantònia, elsewhere in the interview, reveals her "the" preference, lamenting the fact that, except out in the villages of Mallorca, the "new generations" use the literary "the", i.e. the Catalan one.
For the Bauzá PP, so desirous of distancing itself from anything marked with the stamp of Catalonia, the intervention over "the" at IB3 went to the heart of its linguistic politics, and the very notion of there being a linguistic politics can strike many as being somewhat absurd. But that's because they are not bound up in the ceaseless polemic that can appear to define all politics of Mallorca.
The PP line, and that of Mariantònia (and I hope I'm not misrepresenting her), is to promote the languages of the islands at the expense of Catalan. Yet this can appear to be - in political terms - contradictory. The PP disassociates itself from notions of nationalism - those which are not Spanish nationalist - but it advocates a distinct language, Mallorquín. And what, as far as nationalism is concerned, is more nationalist than a language? But then, it isn't contradictory if it is accepted that there are minority languages/dialects within the framework of the grand nationalism of Spain and it also isn't contradictory if this acceptance is one to cock a snook at the pretensions of Catalan nationalism which involve a geographically broader area than just Catalonia - the mythical Catalan Lands.
Inherent to this line is an argument that the languages of the islands, and each island lays claim to having one, are the products of some form of separate development. Well, quite clearly there has been. When there are 250 plus kilometres of sea that divorce Mallorca from the Catalan heartland as well as a history of Arabic language and Vulgar Latin (and it is this which is the root of the "the" argument), there was bound to have been linguistic modification. But the mother tongue is Catalan (and/or variants that themselves influenced and created Catalan). To refer to the "Catalan of Mallorca" is, however, says Mariantònia, provocative. And in this, for many Mallorcans in my experience, she is right. Mallorcans speak Mallorquín and not Catalan, albeit there are obvious, very strong similarities.
So, one comes back to this business of linguistic normalisation, sometimes determined at town halls by councillors who proudly speak their Mallorquín (and nothing else) but within an ideological framework of Catalan nationalism and with responsibility for the normalisation of Catalan. And ditto the schools, where the argument is over the promotion of Catalan, not of Mallorquín.
Still, this all helps to allow philology to flourish and for there to be never-ending arguments, and the fact is that they will never end.
Monday, June 08, 2015
A Short History Of The Potato
There has long been debate as to who actually was responsible for introducing the potato to England. But regardless of the competing claims of Sir Francis Drake or Thomas Harriot, the potato was to prove to be a grand agricultural success. But before it turned up in England, it had appeared in Spain, which is only logical given that the Spaniards had been all over southern America like a rash from the moment that Columbus didn't discover America but rather the Caribbean. By the second half of the sixteenth century, the potato was being cultivated in Spain, such as in the Basque Country, but its migration to other parts of the country was slow. And right at the back of the potato revolution queue was Mallorca.
They held the annual potato fair in Sa Pobla at the weekend. The spud is to Sa Pobla as the orange is to Sóller, yet remarkably enough it was Sóller where it was once cultivated in some abundance, possibly equally as much as in Sa Pobla. But this cultivation wasn't to occur, with anything like intensity, until roughly 300 years after the Spaniards of empire had first introduced the potato to Spain.
It was the Menorcans who were responsible, and they in turn had the British to thank. Wherever the Briton roamed in occupation, he took the potato with him, and so Menorca became the nursery for what was, many years later, to become a primary source of Sa Pobla's agricultural economy.
It was, it would seem, one Alexandre de Cauterac who was the chief initial advocate of the potato. In 1799, he recognised that the potato could become an important crop as part of the recovery of parts of the Albufera wetlands next to Sa Pobla. While the reclaiming of the wetlands through the drainage by the British engineers in the second half of the nineteenth century is rightly recognised as having created greater agricultural possibilities, there had already been some small-scale reclaiming. The land was deemed suitable for vegetable growing. Up until then, Sa Pobla's economy had been based on vines, cereals, hemp and flax. Despite the water of the wetlands, the town's agriculture, and indeed the town itself, was relatively poor. In the sixteenth century, for example, it had been observed that "the village which is poorest in water ... is that of Sa Pobla, where the number of wells does not even reach ten".
But even once the potato was revealed to the island, the cultivation was slow to take off. Mallorca's Captain General offered a prize in 1816 for the best potatoes to be grown in Alcudia and Sa Pobla. Twenty years later the Mallorcan Economic Society of Friends of the Land were issuing reports commending cultivation, but though the potato was being grown, the volume was such that it was almost a luxury. The Sóller growers of the mid-1860s were able to command high prices for this new and delicious food. Nevertheless, the potato's popularity among Sa Pobla's farming community was on the rise. Though he didn't specifically identify the potato, the Archduke Louis Salvador, whose "Die Balearen" was as much a census of economic production on Majorca as a work of cultural observation, was able to say in 1872 that 477 hectares of production on marshy farmland included vegetables, by which he mainly meant the potato.
Initially, the potatoes were grown as animal feed. There was a reluctance to eat something that was grown in soil, as there was an assumption that it might not be good for the health. But elsewhere, such as in France, the potato was gaining a reputation as the "bread of the poor", so by around the mid-nineteenth century cultivation started to take off, albeit it was to remain mostly for personal consumption rather than to be on a grand scale. The Archduke could see that there was development, but it wasn't until the British engineers got to work that there was the land for more intensive production.
Different varieties of potato were introduced but it was to be the Royal Kidney variety which was to truly turn Sa Pobla into the potato economy it became, and this didn't appear until 1924. By then, the town's potatoes were being exported to the UK, but with the Royal Kidney, production grew massively and so did the export trade. Sa Pobla was to become a part of British eating habits: the town was exporting a variety of new potato. As the town had also benefited from the introduction of rice in Albufera around the turn of the twentieth century, this once poor agricultural town ceased to be poor.
So, the potato fair - a celebration of the gastronomy, very much removed from the days when there was a reluctance to eat potatoes - symbolises Sa Pobla's potato agricultural tradition: a tradition which is more recent than one might have thought.
They held the annual potato fair in Sa Pobla at the weekend. The spud is to Sa Pobla as the orange is to Sóller, yet remarkably enough it was Sóller where it was once cultivated in some abundance, possibly equally as much as in Sa Pobla. But this cultivation wasn't to occur, with anything like intensity, until roughly 300 years after the Spaniards of empire had first introduced the potato to Spain.
It was the Menorcans who were responsible, and they in turn had the British to thank. Wherever the Briton roamed in occupation, he took the potato with him, and so Menorca became the nursery for what was, many years later, to become a primary source of Sa Pobla's agricultural economy.
It was, it would seem, one Alexandre de Cauterac who was the chief initial advocate of the potato. In 1799, he recognised that the potato could become an important crop as part of the recovery of parts of the Albufera wetlands next to Sa Pobla. While the reclaiming of the wetlands through the drainage by the British engineers in the second half of the nineteenth century is rightly recognised as having created greater agricultural possibilities, there had already been some small-scale reclaiming. The land was deemed suitable for vegetable growing. Up until then, Sa Pobla's economy had been based on vines, cereals, hemp and flax. Despite the water of the wetlands, the town's agriculture, and indeed the town itself, was relatively poor. In the sixteenth century, for example, it had been observed that "the village which is poorest in water ... is that of Sa Pobla, where the number of wells does not even reach ten".
But even once the potato was revealed to the island, the cultivation was slow to take off. Mallorca's Captain General offered a prize in 1816 for the best potatoes to be grown in Alcudia and Sa Pobla. Twenty years later the Mallorcan Economic Society of Friends of the Land were issuing reports commending cultivation, but though the potato was being grown, the volume was such that it was almost a luxury. The Sóller growers of the mid-1860s were able to command high prices for this new and delicious food. Nevertheless, the potato's popularity among Sa Pobla's farming community was on the rise. Though he didn't specifically identify the potato, the Archduke Louis Salvador, whose "Die Balearen" was as much a census of economic production on Majorca as a work of cultural observation, was able to say in 1872 that 477 hectares of production on marshy farmland included vegetables, by which he mainly meant the potato.
Initially, the potatoes were grown as animal feed. There was a reluctance to eat something that was grown in soil, as there was an assumption that it might not be good for the health. But elsewhere, such as in France, the potato was gaining a reputation as the "bread of the poor", so by around the mid-nineteenth century cultivation started to take off, albeit it was to remain mostly for personal consumption rather than to be on a grand scale. The Archduke could see that there was development, but it wasn't until the British engineers got to work that there was the land for more intensive production.
Different varieties of potato were introduced but it was to be the Royal Kidney variety which was to truly turn Sa Pobla into the potato economy it became, and this didn't appear until 1924. By then, the town's potatoes were being exported to the UK, but with the Royal Kidney, production grew massively and so did the export trade. Sa Pobla was to become a part of British eating habits: the town was exporting a variety of new potato. As the town had also benefited from the introduction of rice in Albufera around the turn of the twentieth century, this once poor agricultural town ceased to be poor.
So, the potato fair - a celebration of the gastronomy, very much removed from the days when there was a reluctance to eat potatoes - symbolises Sa Pobla's potato agricultural tradition: a tradition which is more recent than one might have thought.
Friday, January 02, 2015
The Year Of The Archduke
2015 is officially the Archduke's year, the regional government having confirmed that it would be in 2013. The statement which the government issued in September of that year referred to its responsibility to promote and celebrate individuals of maximum relevance to the history and culture of the Balearics. There will, therefore, be a good deal spoken and written about the Archduke this year and there will be exhibitions, such as a major one that will open at Palma's Casal Solleric at the end of February.
Yet, for all that this will be the Archduke's year, what sort of an impact will it have? The answer to this may well be reflected in the fact that for some or perhaps many of you reading this, there needs to be an explanation as to who the Archduke was and as to why he is deemed to be important as he was. To cut a long story short, the Archduke Louis Salvador of Austria turned up in Mallorca in the 1860s, was charmed, bought land and properties, invited a load of intellectual friends to the island, became an honorary president of the Mallorca Tourist Board (Fomento del Turismo) and, above all, wrote the many volumes that comprise "Die Balearen", a narrative encyclopedia of the islands, the scope of which remains unmatched and unsurpassed.
The impact will be reserved mainly for the German-speaking market. The books were, after all, written in German. There are Spanish and Catalan versions but no English translation. Promotion will thus focus on German visitors, many of whom will already be very familiar with the Archduke. It is perhaps a generalisation to suggest that German tourists are more curious about Mallorca than their British counterparts, but there is some truth to it, and a good reason why is because of the Archduke and "Die Balearen". It is a work of enormous cultural significance for Mallorca but it is also of enormous significance in having helped to establish a bond between Germany and Mallorca that is far stronger than that between the UK and the island. Arguably, therefore, "Die Balearen" is more culturally relevant to Germans and German-speakers than it is to Mallorcans.
This is the year of the Archduke, but this will also be the first year of another historical figure whose importance is greater still. By a remarkable coincidence, Ramon Llull died 700 years ago, or at least his death is normally said to have occurred in June 1315 (there is some evidence to suggest that it was the following year). Because of this uncertainty the celebration of the anniversary of his death will straddle 2015 and 2016, while it won't officially begin until November. The coincidence of the anniversaries of the deaths of the Archduke and Llull is made stronger because of the connection between the two, principally the fact that the Archduke bought the Miramar monastery in Valldemossa which Llull had persuaded King Jaume II to assist him in founding in 1276.
Mallorca has produced its intellectuals but none can match Llull in terms of the breadth of his interests, studies and innovations and none can lay a claim to his having been the original populariser of Catalan on the island. Llull, therefore, dominates Mallorcan cultural history. He is pre-eminent among a select group whose influence on this history is absolute, and the Archduke is one of that group but the only one of modern times with the possible exception of Antoni Maria Alcover.
Cultural history forms part of what Mallorca desires by way of alternative tourism. But it is a culture which suffers by comparison with parts of Spain in appearing to be less than rich. This year, however, throws up the odd coincidence of the Archduke and Llull's anniversaries, and this coincidence does, moreover, create a link to the current day. From Llull, Miramar and so the Aragon crown and the kings of Mallorca through to the Archduke and his acquisition of Miramar and thence to tourism. The Archduke was not just an honorary president of the tourist board, he is often referred to as the founder of the island's tourism. So, 2015 offers a unique opportunity to promote culture through the joining together of the Archduke and Llull. It would have to be a promotion with sufficient force in order to break through the barrier of unawareness of visitors, but it could be done. Sadly, it won't be. It should be the year of Mallorcan cultural history: the Archduke and Llull side by side.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Microgroove Sensation: Radio and TV
When they were tuning the TV in, they were probably benefiting from the original test card that TVE used. This comprised what looked like a games board with five mysterious circles. Prior to that first broadcast in 1956, there must have been households who were glued to the test card, listening to the voice reminding them that 28 October was the big day.
It is worth bearing in mind that in Britain the first commercial television channel, ITV, started in 1955. The development of consumerism was a factor of 1950s Britain as well. At the same time as ITV was launching, in Mallorca and most of Spain there was no consumerism and certainly no telly. So, in the absence of television, it was the radio which was the main source of home entertainment, and in Mallorca that meant, unsurprisingly, Radio Mallorca.
Founded by the brothers José and Onofre Fuster, Radio Mallorca first broadcast in November 1933. Ten years later it became part of the Sociedad Española de Radiodifusión and it enjoyed a monopoly until two other stations emerged. One was called Radio Juventud (youth radio, if you like) and the other was Radio Popular, which started broadcasting in 1959. It was under the auspices of the Bishop of Mallorca, so you can probably imagine that it adopted particular attitudes to content, but one thing that was notable about Radio Popular was that much of its programming was in Mallorquín, unlike the other two stations. Though it was essentially a church broadcaster, it didn't deal only in religious shows. It came to be highly significant because, in addition to using the local language, it put out programmes which discussed local culture and heritage. It played, therefore, an important role in starting a revival of Mallorcan culture that hadn't been subjugated by the Franco regime but which equally hadn't been given any great deal of prominence.
It would be wrong, though, to think that Radio Popular was all religion and culture, because enter into the equation a young presenter by the name of Miquel Vives Martí. He was to transform Radio Popular by introducing youthful programming, including a sort of Top 40 music show. Radio Popular and Radio Mallorca, from the early 1960s, went pretty much head to head, but if Vives was the mastermind of music on Radio Popular, over at Radio Mallorca there was another young presenter who arguably became the most important voice ever of Mallorcan radio. And he was Miguel Soler.
Born in Murcia in 1939, Soler's ambition was to be a journalist. As it happens, he became one - with "Ultima Hora" - but he also became, at the age of twenty-one, the driving-force behind youthful music shows at Radio Mallorca. In 1961 he came up with the idea for a show called "Torneo en microsurco" (tournament of microgroove). The show which went out every week day at quarter past two was a sensation.
Of course, what both Soler and Vives could play was subject to restriction. It was primarily Spanish music that wouldn't fall foul of a regime that could no more understand Elvis than it could permit him; which was to subsequently also be the case with The Beatles. But some American music was allowed: Paul Anka, for example. So long as it was bland and uncontroversial, it was ok.
Radio Mallorca still exists. It celebrated its eightieth anniversary last year, and earlier this year Miguel Soler produced a book - "El club de los 60" - a collection of writings for "Ultima Hora" from back in the day and of stories of others who were to the vanguard during the unforgettable years of the 1960s.
The television set in Colonia Sant Pere doubtless caused its own sensation, but in 1964 radio dominated, and so did Miguel Soler.
Photo: The TVE test card.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Curiosities In The Sky: Mallorca and airplanes
The first airline was Aero Marítima Mallorquina, and as the name suggests it operated seaplanes, the principal purpose of which was for carrying post between Palma, where the planes landed by the port, and Barcelona. It was founded in 1921. Thirteen years later, another airline, Aero-Taxi de Mallorca, became the first which catered for tourists. However, aircraft and tourism had a rather longer association. In 1910, the Chamber of Commerce, alert to the possibilities that tourism might offer Mallorca, organised an exhibition of Balearic produce and a week of sports activities. There was a further attraction: the first airplane that the people of Mallorca would have ever seen.
The plane was a Blériot XI. Its pilot was the Frenchman, Julien Mamet. This monoplane was essentially in kit form. Mamet travelled by boat from Barcelona to Palma, accompanied by the disassembled Blériot. On 28 June at the Balearic Hippodrome near Pont d'Inca, invited dignitaries witnessed the first flight over Mallorcan land. The next day the public were allowed in. There was applause as the monoplane took to the skies. But the applause was shortlived. The plane crashed, Mamet suffered only minor injuries, but a third flight was cancelled and Mamet left Mallorca and never returned.
Six years later, a pilot from Santander, Salvador Hedilla, became the first to fly across the sea from Barcelona. The monoplane took two hours and sixteen minutes to make its journey. And in 1921, Miquel Colomer from Barcelona gave flying exhibitions in an Aviatik biplane at both Son Bonet and Son Sant Joan. For the princely sum of four pesetas for a fifteen-minute spin, punters were able to take to the air themselves. Colomer was involved with that first airline - Aero Marítima Mallorquina. On what was a test flight in April 1922, Colomer's seaplane crashed into the sea between Palma and Barcelona. His body was never recovered.
Those magnificent men in their flying machines of the early twentieth century provide just some of the curiosities in Mallorca's aviation story. But as curious were planes which had ceased to be planes and which were converted. These were the "disco planes" of Mallorca. They didn't actually fly of course - and let's hope no bright spark has the idea to replicate the current-day party boat with the party airplane - they were on terra firma and the first was created in Porto Cristo.
In time for the summer season of 1976, the Discopub D-3 opened for business. It was a converted Douglas DC-4 propeller-driven aircraft. It was found at Son Sant Joan, having been taken out of use the previous year. Actually transporting the plane from Palma to Porto Cristo by road seemingly ended up costing more than the plane itself had, as it had to be taken apart and then put back together again. Nevertheless, the disco in a plane proved to be a great success.
For some four years all went well until rumours started to surface. They suggested that the disco was doubling as a brothel. Less than salubrious types were said to have got involved. The owners took the decision to close it, and the disco plane was left where it was, all but abandoned. But not quite. It became attractive to vagrants. In August 1983, tragedy struck. A fire broke out. A homeless man lost his life. The burnout plane was eventually removed.
Undeterred by the experiences in Porto Cristo, someone in Magalluf had the idea for another disco plane. Getting an accurate timeline on this plane's existence has proved quite difficult - perhaps there are those who remember it - but it would seem to have been plonked in Magalluf at the end of the 1980s. It was a Douglas DC-6, which had apparently been purchased for 100,000 pesetas, and the disco was called, so it would appear, Bertorelli's Bar. It wasn't a great success, lasting only some five years. It ended up looking an eyesore and was ultimately broken up and disposed of.
The adventures with the disco planes are unlikely to be repeated, but adventures they were, just as Mamet and others had engaged in their early adventures and had amazed the local people, who had probably been equally amazed to have one day found a plane doubling as a disco.
Photo of the Magalluf disco plane, found in an edition of "Entre Tots" magazine, 1993.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Mallorca's History ... In Catalan
On 19 November 1981 the culture department at the Council of Mallorca held the first of what has since become an annual conference. It was the first Jornades d'Estudis Històrics Locals. A prime objective of this conference was to allow young researchers to present their projects and discuss them with those of greater seniority and experience. Initially, project submission was open only to researchers who were resident in the Balearics. This soon changed. The door was thrown open to international researchers, and some of the results of these conferences were published.
Next week, on 28 and 29 October, the thirty-third conference will take place. It will be held at the university's Sa Riera building in the street named after one of the more important figures in recent Mallorcan history, Miquel dels Sants Oliver, the journalist and political thinker who, it might be argued, was the father of twentieth-century Mallorcan tourism. Its theme will be the era of the Taifa of Denia, the Muslim kingdom that was one of various other taifas that were formed after the disintegration of the Caliphate of Cordoba. The Denia taifa was all important in Mallorcan history, as it controlled Mallorca. One of the presentations is entitled "Power and culture in Mallorca (or rather Mayurqa) in the eleventh and twelfth centuries". Others include the use of coins in the taifa and the relationship between Islam and Christianity.
Overseeing all this is the Institute of Balearic Studies. a consortium for the diffusion and promotion of Balearic culture and the development of the Catalan language. Presentations, papers have, therefore, to be in Catalan, and you wouldn't really expect them not to be. But this does have one drawback. The audience is not as wide as it might be.
In December 2009 the institute published a whole collection of papers. It stretches to over five hundred pages. I have a copy, and much as I might attempt to read some of it, over five hundred pages would be taking an interest a bit far. Yet, what this particular publication contains (and it is the second volume) are papers devoted to the theme of studies of the local press by which is meant not so much newspapers or magazines but research devoted to towns across Mallorca. The conference on local history studies is not the only conference of its type. There are similar conferences in various towns as well. Alcúdia, as an example, will be holding its latest conference over three days at the end of next month; the ninth such conference to be held.
The collection of papers published in 2009 doesn't cover every town on the island - it was the second volume after all - but if I start to list the towns that it does cover, then you will get an impression of how comprehensive the collection is: local studies in Alcúdia, in Algaida, in Ariany, in Campanet, in Campos. In addition, there is a separate collection - "The Civil War in Mallorca: village by village" - while there are also papers to do with Menorca. Most of the papers are entitled "local studies of ...", but there is one which dispenses with this. It is simply called "The Local History of Pollensa". It is in fact more a history of historians who have contributed to the town's history, but its pages are naturally enough full of the stuff of the local history.
The papers in the collection, though academic, are not presented in the manner in which much academic research is, i.e. in the formulaic style highly valued by academia in which methodology and proof of research rigour can seem to assume greater purpose than the message and which is thus totally baffling to anyone unused to, for instance, the detail of statistical analysis or literature reviews.
This might all sound like dry stuff but it isn't, and fortunately some of the more extreme academic material which does get published in the proceedings of town's local studies conferences finds its way into more digestible forms, such as the histories which town halls have produced. I have, by way of example, a couple - one for Sa Pobla and one for Santa Margalida. They're in Catalan, but they are also goldmines of information.
The point is, though, that someone without any understanding of Catalan wouldn't even start to read them, and so vast resources go to waste in terms of taking local history to a wider audience. And these are vast resources. Mallorca does history extraordinarily well and in great detail: not just the broad brush stuff of conquest, kings and battles but the more focused stuff, as with the histories of each town.
Mallorca desperately wants the foreign visitor to engage with its history and its culture. It has a wealth of history and of material which explains it. Development of the Catalan language by all means, but history is not or should not only be Catalan.
Next week, on 28 and 29 October, the thirty-third conference will take place. It will be held at the university's Sa Riera building in the street named after one of the more important figures in recent Mallorcan history, Miquel dels Sants Oliver, the journalist and political thinker who, it might be argued, was the father of twentieth-century Mallorcan tourism. Its theme will be the era of the Taifa of Denia, the Muslim kingdom that was one of various other taifas that were formed after the disintegration of the Caliphate of Cordoba. The Denia taifa was all important in Mallorcan history, as it controlled Mallorca. One of the presentations is entitled "Power and culture in Mallorca (or rather Mayurqa) in the eleventh and twelfth centuries". Others include the use of coins in the taifa and the relationship between Islam and Christianity.
Overseeing all this is the Institute of Balearic Studies. a consortium for the diffusion and promotion of Balearic culture and the development of the Catalan language. Presentations, papers have, therefore, to be in Catalan, and you wouldn't really expect them not to be. But this does have one drawback. The audience is not as wide as it might be.
In December 2009 the institute published a whole collection of papers. It stretches to over five hundred pages. I have a copy, and much as I might attempt to read some of it, over five hundred pages would be taking an interest a bit far. Yet, what this particular publication contains (and it is the second volume) are papers devoted to the theme of studies of the local press by which is meant not so much newspapers or magazines but research devoted to towns across Mallorca. The conference on local history studies is not the only conference of its type. There are similar conferences in various towns as well. Alcúdia, as an example, will be holding its latest conference over three days at the end of next month; the ninth such conference to be held.
The collection of papers published in 2009 doesn't cover every town on the island - it was the second volume after all - but if I start to list the towns that it does cover, then you will get an impression of how comprehensive the collection is: local studies in Alcúdia, in Algaida, in Ariany, in Campanet, in Campos. In addition, there is a separate collection - "The Civil War in Mallorca: village by village" - while there are also papers to do with Menorca. Most of the papers are entitled "local studies of ...", but there is one which dispenses with this. It is simply called "The Local History of Pollensa". It is in fact more a history of historians who have contributed to the town's history, but its pages are naturally enough full of the stuff of the local history.
The papers in the collection, though academic, are not presented in the manner in which much academic research is, i.e. in the formulaic style highly valued by academia in which methodology and proof of research rigour can seem to assume greater purpose than the message and which is thus totally baffling to anyone unused to, for instance, the detail of statistical analysis or literature reviews.
This might all sound like dry stuff but it isn't, and fortunately some of the more extreme academic material which does get published in the proceedings of town's local studies conferences finds its way into more digestible forms, such as the histories which town halls have produced. I have, by way of example, a couple - one for Sa Pobla and one for Santa Margalida. They're in Catalan, but they are also goldmines of information.
The point is, though, that someone without any understanding of Catalan wouldn't even start to read them, and so vast resources go to waste in terms of taking local history to a wider audience. And these are vast resources. Mallorca does history extraordinarily well and in great detail: not just the broad brush stuff of conquest, kings and battles but the more focused stuff, as with the histories of each town.
Mallorca desperately wants the foreign visitor to engage with its history and its culture. It has a wealth of history and of material which explains it. Development of the Catalan language by all means, but history is not or should not only be Catalan.
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