Nights Of Culture: Annual awards

They're having a night of culture in Alcúdia tomorrow. Cut along to the town's auditorium for 9pm, hand over 18 euros, and a cultural extravaganza will be yours to enjoy. And if you are inclined to go along, do be sure to take your Catalan cultural hat with you. This is the Obra Cultural Balear's Night of Culture, one at which the "Premis 31 de desembre" are to be handed out.

It is the time of year for awards to be made, for the great and good to be honoured, for speeches to be made, for photos to be taken. Awards here, awards there, even if, in the case of the OCB's 31 December prizes, they would appear to be being given 19 days too early. There again, on the night of 31 December there are other things to occupy the citizenry of Mallorca; not only New Year's Eve and munching on a dozen grapes but also the memory of 1229. Jaume I the Conqueror upset the New Year's celebrations all those years ago by putting the Muslim occupants to flight or to the sword.

The OCB prizes do have the merit of being named after the last day of the year. Awards should, generally speaking, reflect a year, as in the year gone by. Not all of them do. The Council of Mallorca, for example, has its awards in September. They are the Jaume II prizes, named after Jaume I's lad, and as such they reflect the seemingly eternal difference of opinion as to Mallorcan culture in its historical origins sense. On 12 September 1276, Jaume II was crowned King of Mallorca, a coronation which was also the occasion for issuing what was in effect a bill of rights for the Mallorcan people. Defenders of the true Mallorcan cultural faith, e.g. the OCB, want nothing to do with 12 September. Culture started on 31 December 1229, not 47 years later.

This cultural difference is, it might be said, reflected in the choice of award-winners. The winner of Spain's "Masterchef" 2014, Mallorca's Vicky Pulgarín, received a Jaume II in September. So also did the what's on youth publication, "Youthing". Which is not to say that earnest Mallorcan culture was not also honoured, but the Jaume IIs are a tad frivolous by comparison with a formality of Catalan virtuousness that typifies the 31 December awards. The names of these awards explain much: the Gabriel Alomar prize after the politician and poet who was associated with the Catalan modernist movement; Emili Darder, from the Republican mayor of Palma who was executed by the Nationalists in 1937; Josep Maria Llompart, who was a Catalan poet and essayist and a one-time president of the OCB. Among those who will be receiving an award will be Xïtxeros amb Empenta, a youth association that was founded in Manacor in 2008 and which has as its principal objectives linguistic and cultural recuperation as well as environmental conservation.

The OCB has been dishing out its awards since 1987, and it is interesting to note one or two previous award winners, such as the broadcaster IB3 in 2009. Given all the fuss over linguistic interference by the current government at IB3, one would doubt that it would now be up for an award. Last year, the Gabriel Alomar prize went to the Assemblea de Docents, the teachers' association right to the fore of the anti-trilingual teaching furore, and now a union in its own right. Politics and culture are never too far apart; indeed you could argue that they are one and the same.

Though 27 years old, the OCB awards are not the island's oldest. These are said to be the prizes from the Cope Mallorca radio broadcaster. The 35th edition took place at the end of last month. The Bishop of Mallorca was among the glittering array of attendees. One winner was Pollensa's Olympic canoeist, Sete Benavides; another was Juan José Hidalgo, president of Air Europa and Globalia. The Onda Cero radio station has taken over 30 years to follow Cope's lead, but at its fourth annual awards ceremony, a couple of weeks before Cope's, Rafa Nadal was one of those who was honoured. President Bauzá and Palma's mayor Mateo Isern were both at the Onda event, no doubt giving each other a wide berth, but one would imagine that neither will be in attendance in Alcúdia for the OCB bash.

Bauzá will definitely be at Son Amar on 20 December, as the Partido Popular's own awards - the Larus - will be up for grabs. Will Isern receive one? Doubtful. Will he even go? Whoever does win an award, Bauzá will hope that he doesn't receive the same thinly veiled broadside he got from the PP's ex-president, Gabriel Cañellas, last year, something of which, given allusions to culture regained, even the OCB might have approved.