The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that there have been mentions on the blog to the Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastià fiestas that are about to hit various towns: to hit with an incendiary force and with an explosion of flame and the nearest window blown out with heat.
Sant Antoni is hard-core Mallorca fiesta. Eschewed is the soft and smooth veneer of a sultry summer's eve, one of tourist scantiness, scattily viewed through a vacated sangria jug. This is winter fiesta, one of rawness both in weather and portrayal. Wild winds and wild men racing with fire, before all becomes calm and the local cats and dogs are dragged in front of men of the cloth for some ritualistic benediction. This is not a steak barbecue, but a dish of revulsion - an eel wrapped in spinach and doused with paprika. Or salami strapped into some bread and washed away with primitive wine.
Sant Antoni is hair-suit fiesta, one played out against the bitter breeze that cuts in from the exposure of the grey and wetlands of winter Albufera; one of herds of the island populace corralled into town centres by a police newly alert to an alien force of crowd safety, a police that then hovers on roundabouts, ready to test revellers for the impact of that primitive wine.
Sant Antoni is antiquity fiesta, one of the peculiar drone and rhythm of the ximbomba, a co-opted Mallorcan instrument, one taken from an Arabic heritage; one of the glosadors, the hierbas or mesclat-sinking singers of frightful, improvised caterwauling. Sant Antoni, in its heartland of Sa Pobla and Muro, is as old as churches of the towns: it is the towns. Sa Pobla, and the original oratory of Crestatx, are of the same vintage as the assumption of Sant Antoni within their midsts.
Sant Antoni is temptation and rejection of the devil, his modern-day cohorts being the men of fire, dressed as demons who run with flames. It is fiesta that, in the very absence of tourists in January, is a Mallorca party. There is a sense with all Mallorcan fiestas that, as a foreigner, one is somehow gate-crashing someone else's party, invading an alternative culture. But it is this - the different culture - that Sant Antoni is really all about. This is full-on Mallorcan fiesta. It may be a mistake, it may be missing a trick to not seek a wider international audience, but if one ever really wanted to understand the meaning of the Mallorcan fiesta, then Sant Antoni is it, and Sa Pobla and Muro do it better than most.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Peggy Lee (and others), http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5uggv_peggy-lee-fever-live_music. Today's title - from one of the most recognisable songs about fire.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
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