The Risk Of Tradition

While watching the Three Kings parade in Alcúdia on Saturday evening, an observation was made about the potential for an accident to happen, one that could involve a child scavenging for sweets being hit or run over by one of the floats. Around the time that this observation was being made, a six-year-old boy in Malaga was crushed by a float and killed.

Not all the Kings parades are as lax in terms of security as Alcúdia's is. The floats may have a "watcher", but this is all they have. Otherwise, there is very little control, except parental. The boy in Malaga, though, managed to slip away from his parents and joined other children in the hunt for sweets thrown from the floats. If there is insufficient security, accidents can happen, regardless of parental vigilance.

The mayor of Malaga has said that all safety regulations were in place but that the city's administration will have to look at its safety procedures in light of the accident. As ever, it takes a tragedy for changes to be implemented. 

In Sa Pobla next week, thousands of people will descend on the town for the Sant Antoni Eve celebrations. If you have never experienced Sa Pobla's "Nit Bruixa", you will not know just how overwhelming the event can be. Some who have been once swear they will never go again. Those who do go, repeatedly, are aware of the weight of the crowds, but the unaware can be taken aback as much by the pressure of people as by the frights provided by the demons.

The town hall has announced its safety plan, one aspect of which is being able to evacuate the Plaça Major within five minutes if anything were to go wrong. The square has a capacity of 10,000 people. There are many others who aren't in the square. Moving that number of people out of the square, and speedily, requires that there is somewhere for them to go.

And what could go wrong? Very simple. Sant Antoni is about fire and very often about fire in confined areas and close to buildings. Remarkably, there are very few incidents, but they are not unknown in the various towns that celebrate Sant Antoni.

Another aspect of Sant Antoni that comes with a risk is the marauding fire-run by the demons. Some years ago, the fire-run looked as though it was under threat because of a European Union directive on pyrotechnics. So concerned were demons groups and others that a delegation was sent to Brussels to lobby against restrictions. In the end, the directive recognised traditions at fiestas and so didn't expressly proscribe them. It was meant, though, to have introduced some greater restriction on children's involvement. If it did, it has been ignored. At Muro's Sant Antoni fire night, as soon as the fires are lit and the demons start their rampage, any number of kids emerge, their hoodies doused with water, and dance like maniacs under the fire-spitting tridents.

The healthy disregard for health and safety typifies attitudes towards traditions, and inevitably one draws comparisons with elsewhere. There may well be some tightening of procedures in general following the tragedy in Malaga, but will there also be a rush to demand compensation and for criminal proceedings, as would undoubtedly be the case in Britain? Maybe there will be. In Britain, though, none of this - the parades, the fires, the fire-runs - would be permitted; certainly not in the ways that they are conducted at any rate.

Yet, there is a contrariness when it comes to welfare, that of both humans and animals, and it is a contrariness that stems from the arbitrary definition of tradition. It is one that legislates that if a tradition is a hundred years or more old, then the tradition can persist. If it isn't this old, then it can't. Hence, you get the ridiculous situation by which live ducks are banned from being released in Can Picafort, yet a live cockerel can be stuck on top of a greasy pole in Pollensa on the day of Sant Antoni (and the climbing of the pine is another act of thumbing noses at health and safety). Neither should be banned, in my opinion. Certainly not if bullfights and bull-runs can be allowed to take place. The imposition of a time definition on tradition is faintly hypocritical. There is either animal welfare or there isn't.

But such is the way here. No one, least of all me, wants the restrictiveness that exists in Britain, but occasionally, and very sadly, a death brings home the risk. And in Malaga, one small boy who will never be brought home again.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.