Boots And Shoes: Lloseta

The First World War brought certain benefits to Mallorca. Because of Spain's neutrality and of desires to escape war, the island became home to those who sought refuge, and within this atmosphere of calm, the island's culture was able to flourish, assisted by, for example, the painters of the Pollensa School. Business also benefited: the war years saw, for instance, the founding of the Trasmediterranea shipping line. Ships, other than those for passengers and trade, were built in Mallorca. They were destined for war support. Guns were manufactured. Uniforms made. The ordinary people of Mallorca might not have seen much evidence of the benefits of the war industry, but the less ordinary did: Mallorca's businesses, by and large, had a good war.

There was another product that the island exported at that time. Armies do not march on their stomachs, they march on their boots. Mallorca's footwear industry enjoyed a period of growth: the French army was the beneficiary of the island's boot making.

This industry was already important before the war. In 1900, almost 14% of Mallorca's manufacturing industry had been that of footwear and leather products. This sector had grown in the second half of the nineteenth century by over five per cent, and it was to later grow so significantly that by the 1970s it was responsible for a third of all Mallorca's manufacturing.

At the time of the war, the main centre for production was Palma, but demand for footwear - from the mainland and the Spanish colonies as well as for war needs - was to see production diversify geographically. And the area of Mallorca where this diversification chiefly occurred is the one that today is most associated with footwear: the Raiguer region.

But well before the war, and despite Palma's domination of production, the Raiguer region had started to become a centre of its own production, and this owed a great deal to one man - Antonio Fluxá. In 1877, already an expert in shoemaking, he went to England to learn about new methods of manufacture. When he returned to Mallorca, he shared what he had discovered with others involved in the leather industry in Inca. It was to be almost a hundred years later (1975) that Camper was truly established, but one of its marks does state "Camper, Boots & Shoes, 1877".

So Antonio Fluxá, whose descendants were to also found Lottusse and Iberostar, can be rightly identified as the main inspiration for the footwear industry's geographical diversification, and while Inca was and still is the town most recognised for its leather products and so therefore boots and shoes, it was not the only town to reap the dividends. One other was Lloseta.

The footwear industry in Lloseta began rather humbly at the end of the nineteenth century, but by the 1930s it was the town's principal industry. So significant was Lloseta (and its industries - also mining in the early years following the Civil War and cement from the 1960s) that between 1900 and 1970 it had the fourth highest population growth of all towns in Mallorca. Indeed, in terms of population density, by 1970 only Palma had more residents per square kilometre than Lloseta.

But not everything went smoothly. The success of the industry brought with it industrial conflict in the 1930s, something that was to be stamped out by the Civil War and Francoism, and the regime was to prove to be - as it was for other industries - highly detrimental. Lloseta's footwear business was set back by a total lack of investment. Products were being made by hand. Antonio Fluxá's vision of more modern production several decades earlier was on hold. Inca, nevertheless, could count on twelve of its footwear workshops (out of 49) being mechanised in 1950. Lloseta, on the other hand, had none.

Mechanisation, or rather its absence, did have an advantage for one part of the workforce - the female one. But when machinery did finally arrive, jobs became more the domain of men, though there were to be more opportunities for women as Lloseta's by then traditional footwear industry was leaking male workers to the construction and tourism boom of the 1960s.

Among the firms involved in the industry, none was more important than Calzados Ordinas, founded in 1890 by Antonio Ordinas Escalas. There were to be other companies, and one of the best known is Bestard. It was founded in 1940, so it is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Bestard is known for its excellent range of mountain boots.

And Bestard is one of the exhibitors at the Lloseta Shoe Fair, which is taking place this weekend. It is the sixteenth such fair, one that celebrates a town's industry which, by comparison with Inca's, is less known but which, historically, is just as long.