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.