Fiesta Of Vendetta: Canamunt, Canavall

I recently had a conversation about "mafias" in Mallorca. A point I made was, as I have written in a previous article, that it is a term used widely and pejoratively and almost always inaccurately, though I could concede that there is the old saying about Mallorca that it is "Sicily without the guns". Yes, came a response, that may be true, but then the Cosa Nostra had learned from Mallorca. This may or may not be true, but Mallorca had, historically, circumstances not dissimilar to those which gave rise to the original Sicilian mafia of the nineteenth century and which produced the island-wide warfare that broke out at the end of the sixteenth century and that lasted for much of the following century. This was perhaps Mallorca's most infamous interlude: the Canamunt and the Canavall vendetta.

The background to these two factions was what had happened in the decades before the vendetta started. Following the Germanies civil war 1521 to 1523, there were land confiscations and land grabs by a nobility which was often absent as well as any number of lawsuits and a general absence of interest in Mallorca on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Things didn't improve under his son, Philip II, and so Mallorca was largely left to its own devices and to lawlessness that was never far from the surface and which finally and truly surfaced as a result of the feud between two families - the Anglada and Rossinyol. They and their supporters came to acquire the names Canamunt and Canavall because they lived in the villages of Amunt and Avall in Palma.

Things all kicked off in 1598 and what was to follow was in a sense another civil war but not between the poor and the rich, which was essentially what the Germanies had been about, but between rival nobilities and others who were drawn into the conflict from right across the island. It was time, until things calmed down in the 1660s, of appalling violence, assassination, banditry and protection racketeering. Here were, in essence, two mafias going head to head in a vendetta because honour had supposedly been impugned.

Banditry, not exactly uncommon in the Mediterranean of former times, was to be a principal cause of the rise of the mafia after Sicily had been liberated from a feudal system but also exposed to the desires of land grabbers who could act with freedom because the island was so poorly policed. But well before it emerged, Mallorca was ripe with the trappings of what was to consume the Italian island, and it even included the 1619 assassination of a judge - Jaume Joan de Berga y Salas - who had sought to bring criminals to justice. The vendetta was such that the reasons for it having started were forgotten as gangs and gangsters, who would align themselves with one of the two factions (occasionally swapping sides), created decades-long mayhem. The viciousness was dreadful and certain towns suffered more than others. The Canavall of Pollensa were especially unpleasant. A woman and two daughters were raped because they were suspected of being for the Canamunt; more than 130 people were murdered.

In light of all this, you might well ask why anyone would wish to create a fiesta which takes as its theme the Canamunt and Canavall vendetta. Well, the collective Orgull Llonguet in Palma wants to do precisely this, and it would seem that there is going to be a Canamunt i Canavall fiesta this summer. The provisional date had been 12 July but may now be 1 August. Orgull means pride, and the llonguet is a type of bread. The collective describes itself as being "gastro-festival". In other words, it has been and is engaged in creating different types of fiesta for Palma where there has been discontent with the organisation of January's patron saint celebrations for Sant Sebastià and where there isn't a summer fiesta as such.

What they have in mind for this fiesta heaven only knows, though a promised battle will feature nothing more dangerous than water. It is probably safe to say that it will all be tongue in cheek in the same way as Sant Kanut is, this being the alternative Sant Sebastià fiesta. For Sant Kanut an image of this fake saint is carried in the style of the images of real saints. The name comes from the Catalan "canut" to mean a marijuana joint. Indeed, the association of Canamunt-Ciutat Antiga residents in Palma already have a fiesta in which there is the wacky image of Sant Rescat (Saint Rescue), and the Orgull Llonguet one will complement this in making what is hoped will become a major summer fiesta in the city.

It seems a strange old justification for a fiesta, but then strange things happen in Mallorca. Fortunately, they are not the strange of the seventeenth century.