Alcúdia Versus Pollensa: The day of destruction

Alcúdia is taking Pollensa on today. And they'll be doing so at the Club Pollença. A rivalry there has long been between the two towns, but what is that brings them head to head today? Well, it's nothing physical. It's nothing controversial. Not in current-day terms at any rate. "Alcúdia versus Pollensa" is the title of a session that forms part of the annual series of history courses that Pollensa organises during the winter months, and the clash between the two towns has to do with a specific set of studies devoted to "El día de la destrossa" (the day of destruction).

Of dates in Pollensa's history, none offers greater pride than 30 May 1550. We know that the simulation of the Moors and Christians battle takes place on 2 August each year during the Patrona fiestas, but the actual battle of 1550 had been staged some weeks before. 30 May 1550 is central to the historical and cultural narrative of Pollensa, but it is linked, through family ties and the town's psyche, to events that occurred 28 years previously. 29 October 1522 is known as the day of destruction. It was a day that witnessed scenes of unparalleled barbarity, it was a day that ripped the heart out of Pollensa, killed many of its inhabitants and rendered it meek, impotent and deprived of resistance. 29 October 1522 was the day of quite appalling massacre.

The context was the uprising of the "Germania", the brotherhood. It had broken out in February 1521 and was the response of the peasant and artisan class in Mallorca (the impetus did actually come from a different revolt in Valencia) against grand land owners who, through abusive taxes, blatant exploitation and grinding poverty, had trodden the common people of Mallorca so far down that no other response was possible than that of direct and violent conflict, and it was a conflict which broadened in scope - the revolt was against the Spanish monarch (Carlos I) as well. 

The people of Pollensa would have been aware of what was coming. The revolt in Mallorca was finally met with the might of royal forces. A squadron appeared off the northern coast in mid-October. The viceroy in Mallorca ordered a campaign of blood and fire to stamp out the uprising in different parts of the island. Pollensa was attacked. Women and children took refuge in the church. It was set ablaze: two hundred died. Men who had taken to defend their families and their town were slaughtered, hung and quartered. The streets were littered with bodies. Buildings were ablaze. Those who survived were cowed into meekness. They would not revolt again and they faced retribution: the price of having to pay the royal treasury for their town to be rebuilt. 

How did Alcúdia come to be the opponent in all this? Well, it was Alcúdia where the royal troops landed, and Alcúdia was where supporters of the crown and of the nobility in the "part forana" of Mallorca had been holed up. They had sought refuge behind the town's walls and they had got it. Ten months before the Pollensa massacre, a siege of Alcúdia by the "Germanies" (also known as "agermanats") was ended. The battle of Alcúdia took place on Boxing Day, 1521, and it proved decisive. The Germanies were defeated and so Alcúdia could be prepared as the operations centre to end the revolt across the island.

There were of course other battles. A fierce one took place in Sa Pobla in November 1522, for example. The Germanies were being defeated everywhere, and the uprising was finally and definitively crushed in March 1523. As a mark of the gruesome nature of the conflict, one of the revolt's leaders, Joan Colom, was hung, drawn and quartered. His quarters were placed on pillars in Palma, while his head was mounted on the city's Puerta Pintada. It stayed there until 1820, a reminder to all of the consequences of rising up against the nobility and the crown.

But what of those links between Pollensa's day of destruction and the battle against the Moors in 1550? One link was that this battle marked the recovery of the town's pride that had been shattered in 1522. Another was a very notable family link. Someone who survived the massacre was a young Joan Mas. His father was slaughtered in 1522, but twenty-eight years later, it was Joan who led the people of Pollensa in repelling the Moorish invaders and who is, of course, represented each year in the famous battle simulation.

It took a generation for Pollensa to regain its esteem. The rivalry with Alcúdia has never since been of the style it was in those days of the sixteenth century while nowadays, it is simply a case of who claims bragging rights for tourism infrastructure and other contemporary matters. The day of destruction and its awfulness does live on in the memory, but it is said that there are many people in Pollensa who are unfamiliar with it. They know all about the Moors and the Christians and the glorious victory; far less about the inglorious 29 October 1522. That's why, therefore, there are history courses and why today the memory will certainly be relived.