The Dying Art Of The Fiesta Poster

The fiesta poster has a status akin to the posters of the 1960s that burst out of the psychedelia movement. They are, to use a dreadfully over-used word, "iconic" and can often seem to be as if not more important than the fiestas they are publicising.

One says, "has a status", but the past tense is now more appropriate. The posters had this status until crisis came along. Even this has taken a time to have an effect, but fiesta posters and their accompanying programmes are noticeably less elaborate. It has really only been this year, though, that there has been a marked austerity that has crept into fiesta publicity, while town halls might also be more aware of what they are commissioning, ever since Palma was caught out by a poster design for Sant Sebastià that had been nicked.

Sant Sebastià is some way off, but Palma has already announced a massive cut to the budget, which includes a saving of 100,000 euros on the fireworks. As one councillor sort of put it, it is difficult to justify spending 100,000 euros for half-an-hour's worth of going up in smoke. One might well ask if such spend had ever been justifiable. But with such a knife having been taken to the total budget, one can anticipate far less grand a publicity effort as well.

Palma might well take a lead from northern fiestas. Puerto Alcúdia's Sant Pere fiesta had a perfectly decent poster and programme this year, one that used images from the past and that were representative of tourism, fishing and the port's patron. What the town hall hadn't commissioned (or quite probably hadn't been encouraged to commission) was what had been the publicity for the two previous fiestas - one, a programme that was in the shape of a fish, the other, one that could be folded and made into a hat.

Both were all well and innovative, but as anyone who has ever had anything to do with printing in Mallorca can tell you, print costs are excessive (and unreasonable) enough as they are, without having to then factor in costs for complicated cutting and folding.

Pollensa's Patrona this year has made do with a very much simpler design approach. The poster shows the symbol of the town's "gall" (cock to you and me) with crossed swords to denote the Moors and Christians. Otherwise, the programme is largely stripped of colour, which compares with last year's reliance on colour photography. The saving won't necessarily be huge, but the design and the programme send out a message of austerity being applied.

Then there is the publicity for Can Picafort's Mare de Déu d'Agost fiestas. This year's efforts have taken on such an appearance of austerity that the poster looks as though it has been scanned from some old design, which it may well have been. The result, though, is shoddy, while the programme's use of colour is minimal to say the least.

Can Picafort, or rather Santa Margalida, spends a fair old wedge on fiestas, with a sizable chunk going on what is the most spectacular of all the northern fireworks displays. This seems to have escaped drastic cuts, but the publicity most definitely hasn't. It is a shame, because Can Picafort, rare for a Mallorcan fiesta, has in the past been able to graphically convey a sense of humour. The year after the naughty boys first released live ducks during the duck-tossing race and wore Power Rangers masks to disguise themselves, the fiesta poster showed two children with the same type of mask and a real duck. It was arguably the best poster that any fiesta had ever produced, probably helped by a town hall that had to be threatened with legal action if it didn't comply with the banning of live ducks, which it eventually did.

Both the posters and the programmes are pieces of publicity for imparting information. In this respect, elaborate productions are unnecessary, while printing either of them is questionable when the information is easily disseminated via the internet. But such a pragmatic approach misses the point. The programmes can be more minimalist, but the posters should still be of high impact. Apart from encouraging creative design, they serve as expressions for local communities, and in Mallorca, great emphasis is placed on artistic endeavour as an aspect of these communities, not least in Pollensa with its long association with art.

Posters are more than just a means of communicating, they have their own intrinsic worth not just as pieces of art but as a reminder of how communication once was, of a time when the poster was fundamental and very often was "iconic".


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Something's A Bit Fishy: Alcúdia and San Pedro

The San Pedro (Sant Pere / Saint Peter) fiestas kick off in Puerto Alcúdia tomorrow. The programme has a familiar feel to it - giants dancing, humans towering, demons running, San Pedro an-imaging and a-floating. The less familiar will be a "pirates" night party and Michael Jackson, or someone like him. It is, though, the very familiarity that makes one wonder as to the "brochure" that has been produced. Not for the first time, I have to question the expense of this promotion. I had questioned it B.C., but A.C. or D.C. if you prefer (after or during crisis), it should be questioned even more.

A fish. That's the brochure. Pages sprung together in the shape of a fish. Inevitably, it's only in Catalan. There may only be 15 pages of it, but the process of cutting it into the shape of a fish doesn't do a lot to limit costs. (I'm presuming it's been done with a custom die-cutter, and anything with the word "custom" when it comes to printing brings with it a premium.)

The result may well be different, but what's the point of it? If you are local, and especially local Mallorcan, who lives in Alcúdia or Puerto Alcúdia, you know full well when San Pedro occurs; you also know pretty much, with some exceptions, what the programme will comprise. Much of it is the same every year; same "events", same time, same day, same place. If you are local, but non-Catalan-speaking local, then the fish doesn't really address itself to you. If you are not local, but a visitor who hasn't a clue about Catalan, then you are deep-fried and battered into incomprehension. Always assuming you ever see a fish, which is unlikely.

At the tourist office in the port, they had a fish yesterday. One fish. Not several. Not a whole load. One. What they also had, and have had for about a week is a couple of A4 sheets in English, giving the programme. I should know because I did it for them. The tourist offices across Alcúdia and Pollensa and in Playa de Muro and Can Picafort also have these English sheets. The fish only appeared in the flesh, so to speak, yesterday.

I struggle to understand the impulse, especially during a period when belts are meant to be being tightened, to go to the trouble and expense of a fish. It's clever, of course it is. It's also well done. But this is not the point. And if you think that they haven't actually printed many, given that the tourist office had but one fish, then think again. A waiter at a nearby restaurant said there were a whole load of fish tossed into the entrance of his block of flats. Aimed at locals, but not visitors, one has to conclude. Perhaps if the tourist office had two fish, it could feed, via some miracle, the information appetite of a multitude of five thousand tourists. There again, I'm not sure if Saint Peter was involved in that particular gig.

Meanwhile in Muro, the bullfight on Sunday having been rained off, there is talk of hurriedly having to do a replacement poster for the re-arranged bull-off this coming Sunday. Bullfight posters, as much as the fight itself, have a symbolic power, but might they not just stick something over the existing one giving the new time. Not that they would need to, because anyone who plans on going will surely know anyway. Daft.

If you want to see the fish, you can download it here: http://www.ajalcudia.net/documents/santpere010.pdf. The English version is available on http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Circle In The Sand

Well with something of a soggy and muted fanfare which meant that the launch had to be transferred to the Auditorium, Alcúdia town hall proudly unveiled its new WiFi system for the beach a couple of days ago. Some of you may recall my reporting on this back in March (11 March: "Beach Baby Beach"). It was as well that they hightailed off to the Auditorium, didn't want any rain getting in and gumming up or flooding the works of a laptop or having their parade of keyboards rained on. Which does rather beg the question ... I mean a beach WiFi zone may sound like being at the forefront of technology and all that, but are people seriously going to be taking their computers onto the beach? Any electrical or electronic device on a beach is a wind-blown and Factor-50 recipe for disaster. Equipment may be more robust than it once was, but years ago I soon put paid to a Walkman when sand got inside it. It seems daft. Take a few hundred quid or euros' worth of computer with you, smear it with suntan oil, expose it to direct sunlight, threaten it with sand or spray or turn your back and let some light-fingered opportunist scurry off into the cover of the hotels and trees with your Dell or Toshiba. Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps there are sufficient numbers who wish to conduct their affairs from a beach-towel that they will fill the 500 connections that will be available at any one time (price 17.95 euros for 500 minutes of use). At least the network that has been established on the beach, which includes video surveillance, may be able to spot the chap legging it with the laptop. One advantage of the WiFi system is that it is meant to be very high-speed. Well, I trust that it will be and that it will not be prone to interruption. Local ADSL connections are basically pretty dire. Spain has one of the poorest broadband infrastructures in Europe, as I can testify to when I lose my connection, which is not uncommon. Otherwise we might yet be treated to those with their laptops walking round and round in circles on the sand trying desperately to pick up a signal as though they were looking to tune in a TV set of years ago.


And still on matters Alcúdia, the fiesta season is very nearly upon us. The first biggy of the season starts on 24 June, the week of Sant Pere or San Pedro if you prefer. Finally, the weather looks as though it may just have turned the corner and not be likely to throw up a tsunami or something that would disrupt the boat procession on the main night of the 29th of June. As ever, the town hall have very kindly sent me the programme (in Mallorquín) that I have battled to translate, not without having to email them to ask what certain things mean: there is no such thing as an English-Mallorquín dictionary, at least not one I've ever found. Anyway, duly done it is now going onto the WHAT'S ON BLOG and the fiestas section of the main website. This year sadly, there don't appear to be any former contestants from local "Pop Idol" equivalents, as was the case last year. But, as ever, the main gig will be the night of the 29th with its boats and fireworks. It is well worth attending, so let's just hope that those visitors away from the port area, i.e. in Bellevue or elsewhere, get to know about it. I do my bit, but it remains a largely under-publicised event where the tourist is concerned.


QUIZ
Chain - Jimmy McCulloch was in Wings and also Stone The Crows with whom Maggie Bell made her name. And what's her connection to P.J.Proby? Yesterday's title - Wham (see this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIzVoNq9f9s). Today's title - who?

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