The Three Miquels Of Pollensa

The La Patrona fiestas start in Pollensa tomorrow. The first concert for this season's Pollensa Festival is staged on Sunday. The fiestas and festival commencement have coincided for many years, while they have also been events to cause the happy coincidence of the involvement of great names from Mallorca's literary and arts worlds and specifically Pollensa's literary and arts worlds. (I should point out that coincidence does not only imply chance occurrences. It can simply mean to happen at the same time or a drawing together of two things. Put an imaginary hyphen after the "co" and the stress and therefore meaning is quite different: co-incidence.)

Of those who have been party to this co-incidence, there is, as one example, Miquel Capllonch. For the generally uninitiated, he is the giver of his name to Puerto Pollensa's square, albeit no one really refers to the Plaça Miquel Capllonch, preferring the more mundane church or market square. Capllonch, a native of Pollensa, is and has been celebrated by both the festival and Patrona. His music has been performed at the festival, while he holds a very special place in the traditions of Patrona; one tradition in particular, the dawn chorus awakening of the "alborada" on the day of Mare de Déu dels Àngels, the day of La Patrona, the day of the Moors and Christians.

At 5am on the morning of 2 August, a silence is meant to descend on Pollensa. It is a silence to emphasise the reverence given to the playing of the alborada. Capllonch is typically associated with the alborada, and rightly so, but he was not the original composer. He was 21 in 1882 when it was performed for the first time; at the start, therefore, of his career as one of Mallorca's foremost musicians - composer, organist, pianist. He reinterpreted the original that had been the work of a Galician, Nicolas de Castro.

If the co-incidence of Capllonch with both festival and Patrona might be somewhat incidental, the same cannot be said of Miquel Bota Totxo. If at some point prior to his death at the age of 84 in 2005 the question had been asked who was the greatest living "pollencin", the answer almost certainly would have been Bota. He was a figure from the literary world who bears very great comparison with Alexandre Ballester in neighbouring Sa Pobla. Like Ballester, he became the town's chronicler, while he was also a poet, writer, journalist and dramatist.

When the festival was founded in 1962, Bota was made its vice-president. In 1971, the pregón oration was introduced to the Patrona fiestas for the first time. It was Bota who delivered it. The title was "the angels smile on our peace". Bota's extraordinary contribution to Pollensa life, society and culture touched so many aspects of the town (and also of Mallorca) that it is hard to do them justice. He ranks alongside Miquel Costa i Llobera in terms of his importance to Pollensa's literary tradition.

Costa i Llobera and Miquel Capllonch were the two figures who bequeathed to Pollensa its cultural tradition. Though this tradition was to be firmly established by non-Mallorcans, such as the artists of the "Pollensa school" and the violinist Philip Newman, these two pollencins were the ones who laid the foundations of what eventually became the festival, while Costa i Llobera is intimately associated with Patrona. At the closing of the fiestas, his "song of joys" features along with a further interpretation of the alborada and the singing of "Visca Pollença". It is fitting that this year's Patrona celebrations will include an open evening at the family home - Can Llobera - now restored and due to house the town's library, and among its documents and books will be works by Bota Totxo.

The three Miquels of Pollensa. Someone ought to write a book.