And The Beata Goes On

The last great local fiesta of the summer is now underway in Santa Margalida. It is the one that always announces itself as the "most typical" of the fiestas and one, therefore, to which one supposes only a smattering of tourists dare venture. Santa Margalida occupies something of a never land, some eight kilometres inland from its resort of Can Picafort; it is somewhere to which people never go, except the worthies who want their photos taken at this most typical of fiestas. The fiesta, known as La Beata in honour of the saintly Catalina Thomás who resisted the temptation of the devil, does a good job of getting itself hidden from anyone other than hardcore Mallorcans. You should try reading this year's publicity. Catalan with local idioms and with a font style that makes some letters rather questionable. Obscure it all is if you happen not to be Mallorcan. Maybe this is how they prefer it. The most typical and the most unintelligible.

Previously I have explained how a local "girl" comes to receive modern-day beatification by being elected for the Beata gig. You have to have paid your dues in order to qualify for the final knockout rounds, i.e. taken on some of the supporting roles in past Beata events. The publicity features photos of the various Beata fellow travellers - 12 of them in all - from which, one imagines, next year's Beata may come. Do you suppose they run a book?

Buried within the schedule of the fiesta's seemingly interminable sports contests, the obligatory DJs and pipers and whistlers, and of course Beata and the demons is something called a "glosada". It is, I confess, something new to me and therefore took a bit of hunting to try and make sense of what it actually is. Help was at hand from our trusty youtube. On there are some examples of "glosadors". And who they, you ask? They are, it would appear, sort of open-mike folk singers, unaccompanied, who stand on a stage, three or four of them, and take turns to sing (I use the word loosely) when not taking on board whatever it is in the paper cups in front of them. It is the most God awful caterwauling. If you must, try this for size - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zizsgc9_dJA. If you decide to go to La Beata, you might want to give the evening of 2 September a miss: gloss over the glosada, so to speak. Or you may decide that it is the highlight of the whole fiesta week, assuming that you find bad to be good. On the principle that the vast majority of those who take to a karaoke mike are no good, then one might argue that this is similar (just without the music and in an impenetrable language). Except some of the "glosadors" are meant to be vaguely good. I've got news for them ...

Info on the Beata is, as always, on the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com, and for the original publicity, go to the town hall's website - http://www.ajsantamargalida.net.


Control freaks
And of course it carries on. The price is not right debate. The editor of "The Bulletin" had been on hols. One found the lack of a comment in the leader about the prices rather conspicuous by its absence until two days ago. While yet more letters were saying much the same as all the other ones that had gone before, we were - yet again - told that something had to be done in the form of price control. There are times when I have the desire to hurl myself at high speed head first against a very solid wall. Can someone please tell me - how do you exert price controls on the likes of bar or restaurant menus? Perhaps "The Bulletin" knows but isn't saying. It would certainly be beneficial were it to say as we might then be a little wiser as to how price controls, even if they were a good idea, might actually be implemented. And what this might mean in terms of bars and restaurants' supply costs and their profit and loss accounts and in terms of how it all might be policed, and and and ...


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - U2, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEfSnjL0pd8. Today's title - it was beat of course, so who was it? '80s disco.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)