On The Trail Of The Soapy Pine

You may have noticed that your car, your terrace, your washing have recently been turned the colour of what a paint-maker's swatch might term a dewy green or a breezy lime. I prefer to moniker it Norwich City, but whatever title it might be given there is no escaping the powder that floats on the breezes or is thrown about by a force six or seven hurtling in from a north-westerly direction. The pollen is a peppery pulverulence of the pine and the pellitory - and try saying that as you are in mid-sneeze. Nettles, sticky-weed, these are the worst offenders in allergic terms, but what is tossed hither and thither can include the pollens of cypress, olive and pine trees.

The Mallorcan relationship with the pine is such that researchers once studied the "hate" that the islanders have for it. Emblematic it may be, poetic it has been - as in Costa i Llobera's pine of Formentor - but there's no escaping the fact that pine needles clog up drains and gutters and that the trees harbour the unpleasant processionary caterpillar and can cause respiratory problems, and not just because of the pollen.

Notwithstanding this dislike, the good old pine tree does have its emblematic and symbolic qualities. There is even a political party that has adopted it as its name and its logo, not that El Pi is likely to get very far in the forthcoming elections. I mean, you wouldn't vote for a party whose name is The Pine, would you? Perhaps you would.

But its symbolism is such that when the moment arrives for a tree to be required to be chopped down, replanted in a village square and climbed by the youth of said village, there is only one arboreal candidate. The pine.

Now, many of you will know that in January the good people of Pollensa take themselves off to the finca of Ternelles on not one but two occasions in order to first locate and chop down a pine tree and to later transport it to the town's centre, while at the same time helping themselves to copious amounts of strong alcohol. The bark of the pine of Ternelles is stripped down, the denuded tree is given a good soaping, a cockerel in a bag is tied to its summit and up go members of the youth once the tree has been hauled into place in the old plaça of Pollensa.

The pine that is climbed as part of January's Sant Antoni fiesta is not the only pine to be scaled. Puerto Pollensa has one as well. But this odd tradition is unique to the municipality of Pollensa. Or is it?

As far as Sant Antoni is concerned, it is, but there are other pines that need climbing, having first been lathered up with industrial quantities of Palmolive. The village of Selva gets pine-slippery on the occasion of its Sant Llorenç fiesta in August.

Away from Mallorca, in Torre de l'Espanyol in Catalonia, they have a pine as well, and it is produced for Carnival. Said to be a ritual of pagan origin, the pine is climbed but with certain differences - there is no soap, the bark stays on, as do some stumps of branches, and there is no, in a Pollensa style, cockerel in a bag.

This particular tradition now involves the local "quintos", these being teenagers of the village who have come of age (the name comes from a centuries-old scheme for selecting young army conscripts; every fifth - quinto - male would be called up). The quintos of Mallorca court some controversy. Or they do in Muro, where there have been allegations of cruelty to chickens - fiercely denied. Quintos, generally speaking, are just out for some harmless, high-spirited fun, and quintos are central to a pine-climbing event - featuring a soaped-up tree - that is barely a pine-tossing throw away from Pollensa.

In Campanet, as with several other villages, there is a post-Easter picnic. The folk of the village gather to eat, to dance and to partake healthily of the local grape. Once the more sober formalities of a procession with the image of Christ and mass are dispensed with, the picnic entertainment this coming Tuesday involves a mass rice eat-in, something for the smaller people of the parish and finally, at 6pm, the climbing of the soapy pine by a selection of quintos, the tree having been located and chopped down the day before with the same due ceremony that the people of Pollensa reserve for the Ternelles tree, i.e. plenty to eat and drink.

Why do they do it? Who knows. But what one does know is that, for all the disadvantages of the pine tree, it has one very clear advantage. It can be climbed when soapy. Or not, as the case may be.