In A City That Never Sleeps

There must, you imagine, be a point in the early morning of the second of August when DJ Enigma or Pako passes by a group of worthy pollencin ancients who look aghast at the ponytail and eyebrow piercing and who are weary from the noise of a night of endless partying in three whole squares of the old town, but determined to be there at five am for the traditional alborada. Fiestas are all about the old meeting the new, but not necessarily in the streets as one lot gets up and the other makes its way to bed. Except, that is, in Pollensa. Why anyone feels the need to get up for a tradition that was invented at the end of the nineteenth century in order to herald the final day of the fiesta week is lost on me. They could just as easily, you would think, pack it all in to thirty minutes at some sensible hour, like ten o'clock; time enough for a decent snooze and a lump of lard and sugar together with a stiff hierba for breakfast. But not with Patrona.

The locals have to suffer for their fiesta art, and that may well mean not having had any sleep ahead of a day that features make-believe Christians and Moors rampaging through the streets and a bloody great fireworks do at midnight. It might not be so bad, but the night before there was another grand party - the marxa fresca - that techno-ed across the Plaça Major. Actually, techno may not be accurate. There is a youtube of last year's marxa and that's got Madness playing. So much for traditional Catalan house or whatever the flavour of the dance world is these days. At least on the night of the Wednesday, the provocatively entitled "Decibels Pollença 2009" is confined to the footy pitch. No sound limiters there, one supposes. God forbid that an unsuspecting tourist booked his family of toddlers into the Hotel Juma on the Plaça Major in anticipation of a quiet few days of cultural tourism at the end of July and start of August. He'd get culture alright, Pants Breakers on the stage in the square and DJ Full-Attack larging it within easy sleep-shattering distance in the Monnares plaza.

Pollensa town hall, strapped for cash as it has been for several years now so much so that it is running a regular deficit in the region of a million of your European Euros, was meant to have been cutting its fiesta budget this year. Not that you would think that were you to take a look at the schedule for Patrona. It's like a mini-Glastonbury, replete with sound, Quakerist, saving-the-world enviro children's parties and benefits for Rwanda and the like. All that's missing is the mud, which is a shame as it would allow the Batley Townswomen's Guild to re-enact the Moors and Christians.

The simulation, Pythonesque or otherwise, is - in its billing - something of a curiosity, given that the Moors were anything but Moors. They were Turks, intent on turning the inns of Pollensa into kebab restaurants, but Moors is how we must call them. The term "moro" is one commonly used in the local languages; indeed Patrona features a comedy (ho-ho) called "No Hi Hara Moros A La Costa" which translates, more or less, as the coast is clear, i.e. there are no Moors on the coast. It will be one of the events that attracts rather fewer tourists than others, one would guess. Another more obscure feature of this year's Patrona is a "return to the sixteenth century" with music and entertainment of the period. 1550 was the year that the so-called Moors attempted their invasion. At Patrona they're making music to repel Moors by. They're making rather more music than that - 14 DJs, 20 groups of different sorts, plus some Mallorcan traditional music and that stuff from the 1500s.

Patrona - the fiesta of the sleepless.

Information on Patrona 2009 is on the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com.


QUIZ
Today's title - ol' blue eyes, or is that red eyes, is back.

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