Declaration Of War And Mallorca

The night of 4 August, 1914 would doubtless have been like nights in early August in Mallorca have always been. It would have been sultry. The sounds would have been those of cicadas. Far away from Mallorca it was also a warm night. The windows of the Admiralty in London were thrown open. The sounds were of the singing of "God Save The King" and of the chimes of Big Ben. A telegram went out across the world. As Churchill concluded: "the deed was done".

On that sultry night in August, assuming they were aware of events in London, who among people in Mallorca would have been taking notice? Perhaps everyone. It was war, after all. But it was someone else's war, and confirmation of that came three days later. Spain was neutral. There would have been those who paid greater notice; foreign residents and visitors in El Terreno, for example, and also the Archduke Louis Salvador, perhaps even then preparing to leave. Summoned back to Austria-Hungary, his presence in neutral Mallorca, his love for Mallorca notwithstanding, would have been awkward had he stayed.

Someone else who would have been paying careful attention would have been Joan March, probably resident in his summer palace in Cala Ratjada. What can we imagine of that night of 4 August, 1914? Would there have been a small dinner party at the March palace? Lobster and wines, followed by the men taking themselves to a discrete terrace to discuss affairs of war while they smoked cigars and drank their brandy? Antoni Maura was a summer neighbour of March's in Cala Ratjada. He was not prime minister then, but he was eventually to advocate Spain's siding with the Allies. Perhaps, for the time being though, neutrality was best. There were riches to be made while the world went to war and Spain didn't.

While Maura was the politician, March was the businessman. What might he have been eyeing up? When might it have become opportune for him to be involved with the British secret service? March, as useful to Britain during the Great War as he was to be during the Second World War. Useful, even though British intelligence dubbed him a "scoundrel of the deepest dye". He maintained links with the Germans during the Great War and used those links to give British intelligence information as to German shipping movements. On the night of 4 August, March was probably contemplating having a good war, and he was right to have contemplated this. By 1915, the Italian Government was being informed as to the spy-network activities of Charles Thoroton. Based in Gibraltar, Thoroton's network extended across Spain and into Morocco. The Italian Consulate in Gibraltar reported that all the Spanish coasts were under the surveillance and control of Thoroton, "who is informed of all ship movements ... the English authority is in liaison with a Juan March, a contrabandist with control of over 240 motor ships and monoplanes ... this covers all ship movements from the Balearic Islands ... he gains a lot of money".

There would have been others who were taking special notice on the night of 4 August. They weren't foreigners and they weren't the powerful. They were ordinary Mallorcans who knew people abroad. On that night, would relatives and friends of Jaime and Antonio Oliver in Sóller, of Juan Mora Ferrer, also from Sóller, of Jaime Llabrés Bestard from Establiments and José Niell from Sineu have been concerned about German advances into Belgium? On 20 August, they were shot and killed at the shop in Liège that the Oliver brothers ran, having returned given that the Battle of Liège had finished.

The initial explanation for their deaths was that they had been caught up in an exchange of gunfire. Almost a month later, a businessman from Inca, Sebastian Simonet, had managed to get back to Mallorca. He told a very different story. It was reported in the Mallorcan newspaper "La Almudaina". He said that the Mallorcans had been arrested by drunk German soldiers, handcuffed, taken to grounds at the university and shot by firing squads.

There was outrage, and the outrage was all the greater because the Spanish Government appeared indifferent to what had happened. The matter was nonetheless raised in the Cortes, Jeroni Estades, he of the Sóller train and by then a parliamentary deputy, being one of those who demanded a stronger response. Eventually, the government, via the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, was able to extract compensation for the men's deaths.

But back to more pleasant matters. On the night of 4 August, the people of Binissalem would still have been celebrating events of two days before. On that day, the town's football club was officially founded and the first match played. A hundred years on, and the centenary has been duly honoured. Far away war was starting. In Mallorca they kicked footballs. In peace.