The Great Spearfishermen Of Mallorca

It is said that there are two sports which are native to Mallorca, not in the sense that they were invented here but because conditions are such that they have long been able to flourish. One of these sports is cycling, which benefits from there being such varied landscapes and topographical features in a comparatively small area. The other sport does not take advantage of the land. It is a sport of the sea, and it is the competitive world of spearfishing.

For three days from Thursday next week, Can Picafort will host the thirty-third national spearfishing championships for the various autonomous communities (or regions, if you prefer) of Spain, and the event will also be a tribute to one of Mallorca's greatest "submarine" fishermen - Juan Ballester.

As with the cyclists that Mallorca started to produce from the early years of the last century, some of whom, like Guillermo Timoner, went on to acquire fame and titles beyond Mallorca, so the island's spearfishermen came to be part of the international elite in a sport which, by comparison with cycling, gets barely any attention. Defined by the CMAS (the World Confederation of Underwater Activities) as the "hunting and capture of fish underwater without the aid of artificial breathing devices, using gear that depends on the physical strength of the competitor", spearfishing as a sport first surfaced (so to speak) in the western Mediterranean in the 1920s. There were attempts to have it included in the Olympic Games but these attempts failed, thus limiting awareness of the sport. It is obscure, but that doesn't mean to say it hasn't flourished or been popular, and Mallorca is one place where it certainly hasn't been and isn't obscure.

Juan Ballester was one of two really great names that Mallorca has produced. The other is José Amengual. Ballester was the older by ten years. He was born in Muro in 1934 and his affinity with the town was such that, after studying to become a doctor on the mainland, he returned to Muro to establish himself as one of the island's leading consultants for internal medicine and to form a bond of which he said that Mallorca was divided into two parts - Muro and the "part forana", i.e. the rest of the island outside Palma.

Despite this closeness to his home town, it was neighbouring Can Picafort where he was to develop the bug for underwater fishing. In the summer of 1952, two well-known specialists of the sport came to what was still then an undeveloped resort. He was invited along and managed to capture more fish than his specialist companions. Though he became licensed in that year, it was to be some time before he really broke through in the sport, a combination of further studies and military service meaning that it wasn't until the early '60s that he developed a reputation strong enough to be in line to take part in the team world championships in Brazil in 1963. As it happened, he was overlooked for selection, but four years later he was captain of the Spanish team which competed at the European championships off the island of Cabrera. His career was such that, by then in his sixties, he was captaining the Spanish team which won two world championships - 1994 in Peru and 1996 in Gijón on the coast of the region of Asturias.

In 1985, Mallorca hosted the world championship, and it was held in Playa de Muro. One of the people who helped to organise the event was Juan Ballester. But it wasn't to be Ballester who took the plaudits that year. It was his friend, José Amengual, who, though a native of Palma, knew the seas off Muro and Can Picafort as well as Ballester. Amengual won the world title, thirteen points ahead of an Italian representative, Milos Iurinchich. This was in fact the third world title that Amengual had secured, the previous two having been in 1973 and 1981. Ballester never won an individual world title, but he took great pleasure from having helped to mentor the sportsman who was to. Amengual is thus the greatest underwater fisherman that Mallorca has produced.

And so, there will be the tribute in Can Picafort this week to Ballester. It might perhaps be more fitting were it to be in Playa de Muro, but the championships aren't being held there. Not to worry, though, Playa de Muro and Can Picafort are in coastal, beach and sea terms joined together, and for Can Picafort the championships represent a furtherance of its new aspirations to be a centre of water sports tourism and mark how far this once tiny place has come. The sea has been the making of Can Picafort. The sea is where Ballester and Amengual developed their skills, but it was sea which, for so long, was ignored. While there is the posthumous tribute to Ballester, there will be those who will also give a thought to someone who died last month: Jaume Mandilego, whose name was and is synonymous with Can Picafort. He was born in 1915 in what then could boast hardly any dwellings but an awful lot of pine trees. Of Mandilego it is said that he was the first child to swim in Can Picafort. 

* For the information about Amengual and Ballester, I acknowledge biographies included in "Mallorquines Irrepetibles" by the doyen of Mallorcan sports journalists, Miquel Vidal.