Great "Vilers": Joan Mascaró i Fornés

Santa Margalida, La Vila, has its honoured sons and daughters and those who were once honoured but who have since fallen into disrepute. For the "vilers" of today, the name of Joan March is treated with contempt. Time was when it wouldn't have been. March was a poor boy who did well for himself. Too well. Contrabandist, double agent in both world wars, Franco's financier, he was an all-round rogue.

But he was a rogue who pretty much controlled Mallorca. He became Spain's wealthiest man. Perhaps there is just a touch of jealousy. While Santa Margalida's one-time affluence from agriculture had declined over the years, March was new wealth. Banking, shipping, petrol. He owned the lot, and what he owned survive to this day - Banca March, Trasmediterranea, Campsa.

This coming Tuesday, there is to be a day of culture as part of the La Beata fiestas. It is actually an evening, but no matter. It will take place in the Casal de Cultura Joan Mascaró i Fornés, and Mascaró was a son of Santa Margalida who did nothing to have any honour taken away. He was an unusual and remarkable man. And, perhaps as proof that rogues seek redemption through good works, he was a recipient of Joan March's benevolence.

Mascaró was born in 1897 in a small farmhouse on the finca s’Hort d’en Degollat, the site of the fiestas' haymaking celebrations which take place today. His parents were of humble farming stock, so his background was such that he hadn’t been destined to become the great scholar he became. But at the age of seven, he went to live with an uncle in Palma, where he studied and, at the age of sixteen, he became fascinated in the occult and Oriental spiritualism.

He mastered English to the extent that he was employed in 1916 as a secretary at the British Consulate, and it was his ability in English which brought him to the attention of Joan March. It was March who was to be Mascaró’s patron, and in 1929, having been funded to attend Cambridge University, he emerged with a degree in English Literature and Classical Oriental Languages.

Mascaró was to travel and to work in what was then Ceylon, and in 1935 he completed the first translation into Catalan of the “Bhagavad Gita”, one of the most important scriptures of the Hindu culture and religion. He was eventually to translate this epic into English, and when it was published by Penguin in 1962, he suddenly found himself catapulted into international fame. His work was greeted with great praise by scholars and the non-scholarly, one of the latter having been George Harrison, with whom Mascaró was to conduct a correspondence. He was to also translate other texts from the “Upanishads”, which is the collection of Hindu texts of which “Bhagavad Gita” is one.

Despite his extensive research into Hindu literature and culture, Mascaró never lost sight of his Catalan origins and culture. His translations into Catalan, which had been more or less lost during Franco times, were revived and re-published in the 1980s.

He died at the age of 89 in 1987, his remains being taken from Cambridge, where he had lived, in order to be buried in Santa Margalida. Mascaró is held in a position of reverence in Santa Margalida. For his advocacy of Catalan and for his widely acclaimed translations, he is remembered fondly, whereas his benefactor, Joan March, is not.