Wondrous Stories: Muro's church

One of the beauties of churches is that you don't have to be religious to find them wondrous. Indeed, not being religious can be a benefit, as you will be more likely to keep your eyes open and your head up so that you can take in their magnificence, rather than closing your eyes and lowering your head in respect to or in hope of heavenly munificence.

Not all of Mallorca's churches are magnificent. Some are modern, such as that in Puerto Alcúdia. It is truly hideous, something that wouldn't look out of place on a council estate in Coventry. There aren't the contemporary horrors of rebuilt cathedrals, such as Coventry's, just some horrible looking constructions that you could easily fail to realise were churches. There are plenty of people who know Puerto Alcúdia who don't know there is a church there.

Alcúdia town, on the other hand, has the great pile of Sant Jaume that dominates the landscape to the left as you drive towards Puerto Alcúdia. Sant Jaume is something of a fraud, however. It isn't anything like as old as you imagine. The previous church all but collapsed in the nineteenth century; the current one is not quite 120 years old.

Nevertheless, the scale of Sant Jaume, most evident as you view it from a distance, is in keeping with the vastness of other older Gothic structures. One of the most imposing of parish churches is that of Muro town.

On the eve of the fiesta of Sant Joan (i.e. on 23 June), the Sant Joan Baptista church reached the grand old age of four hundred years. It took forty years to build, the previous church having been deemed too small for a village of some 1500 people. Nowadays Muro has a population of around 7000. Back in the sixteenth century the then bishop of Mallorca might have believed Muro was on the point of massive population growth. More likely he ordered the rebuilding on the grounds that if it was a church it had to be bloody enormous, regardless of how many people it might accommodate.

Sant Joan Baptista is far too big for purpose, and always was. But then the same can be said for most Catholic churches. They were absurd indulgences and are even more so for a contemporary society in which church attendance has dropped so alarmingly.

Nevertheless, we have the egotistical and boastful extravagance of Catholic church building to thank for the colossi that sit bang in the middle of Mallorca's old towns. And Muro's is one of the best examples, if only because it is so overwhelmingly obvious with a large empty square in front of it, emphasising its size and urban dominance.

It isn't because I'm a "murer" that I find the church one of the island's most appealing. And it isn't a case of familiarity breeding a familiarity of favouritism. I venture into Muro town relatively infrequently; I am far more exposed to churches in Alcúdia and Pollensa for example. The appeal lies in the fact that it is so self-regardingly and obstinately there. Though Alcúdia's Sant Jaume looms out of the landscape, close up it is less obtrusive, welded to the walls of the old town and tucked in front of a small plaza. Pollensa's churches similarly blend in. They are brooding presences, most obviously the ominous parish church in the Plaça Major, but the threat they hold is diluted by surrounding townhouses and narrow lanes. Muro's church in its isolationist preposterousness simply can't be avoided.

Moreover, there is something different about it. Gothic in style, it has a feel of the Byzantine, heightened by the presence of palms at its entrance. Is it a trick of the light or is the stonework really rather redder than you would normally expect? This isn't, or doesn't appear to be, the golden sandstone of the south-east of the island, that which makes Santanyi such an attractive town and appear to be in a permanent state of mellow sunset as a consequence. The stonework complements the ruddy, red earth to be found around Muro.

It is the physical presence and architecture of the church plus what it represents historically and socially that make it as fascinating as it is. And other churches in Mallorca have their own idiosyncrasies and their own stories to tell.

I'm not sure that they do tours of churches. Probably because it sounds too boring, and it would be if it were just about the religion. But they should do tours as there is way more to a Mallorcan church than prayer. So long as you keep your eyes open and your head up, they are their own not-so-little worlds of times gone by and of being communities' focal points. And they don't come any more focal than in Muro.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.