Fiestas In The Cultural Interest

The outgoing vice-president for culture and patrimony at the Council of Mallorca, Joan Rotger, has announced that the island's commission for patrimonial history has recommended that a series of fiestas should be declared as being officially in the "cultural interest". These would need to be ratified by the incoming administration but it would be highly unlikely that it would veto them: culture and patrimony are right up the street of Més most certainly and neither PSOE nor Podemos would take issue. The fiestas in question are Sant Antoni in Sa Pobla, Sóller's Es Firó, Sant Joan Pelós and the "cavallets" of Felanitx and the cossier dancers of Alaró and Manacor: it is perhaps more accurate to refer to fiesta traditions where the latter are concerned.

What do these declarations entail? On the face of it not a lot. Being in the cultural interest places obligations on relevant authorities - town halls principally - to ensure the maintenance of the fiestas in their traditional forms and also to promote them. They are declarations of a protective type akin to protection of historic buildings, but protecting a building is easier or at least more obvious, given that it is something tangible; fiestas aren't. Nevertheless, the thinking is that there shouldn't be tampering with these traditions, so that they remain as they always have been. But as is sometimes the case in Mallorca, tradition can be a movable feast. There are traditions which simply aren't that long.

Sant Antoni in Sa Pobla is a case in point. The fiestas themselves have been around for centuries - since the fourteenth century in fact - but certain aspects are very much more recent. Demons have been present at Sant Antoni for a very long time, but the fire-spitting, trident-whirling, running demons of the present day are an invention of the final quarter of the twentieth century. Moreover, they are fire-running demons whose spectacular was developed not in Sa Pobla but in Catalonia.

Of course, it will be argued that this has been a modern-day adaptation of the long tradition of fire rituals at Sant Antoni, and the argument is perfectly valid. But were fire-running demons to suddenly be banned (and unnecessary alarm was caused by the European directive on pyrotechnics a few years ago, which suggested they might have been), would this represent a breach of the cultural interest? It all depends upon how tradition is defined and how old something has to be in order to qualify as a tradition.

There is, one guesses, a sort of politics of fiesta behind these declarations. They reaffirm the Council's role as protector of the island's culture and so also reaffirm one of the purposes for its existence. Yet are these declarations needed?

Again, if one takes Sant Antoni as an example, here are fiestas which have long had higher interests bestowed upon them. Even back in the days before the fire-running demons appeared and when the Franco regime was often ambivalent towards fiestas, Sant Antoni was, in 1966, declared as being in the national tourist interest. It was a declaration that amounted to very little as tourists have never attended them in great number, but it was nevertheless an indication of the cultural importance attached to them.

But at the direct local level, there have - also for centuries - been organisations that have sought to guarantee the continuance of fiestas and their traditional elements. Sa Pobla has one (as do many other towns and villages) and it is the Obreria of Sant Antoni. Originally established to ensure the upkeep of the church, its role has broadened over the years. It is the arbiter of what goes on at Sant Antoni: demons, big-heads and what have you, they are all subject to the Obreria's supervisory role.

There has also been a movement in mostly all towns and villages to establish local cultural associations. These have become their own definers of tradition and its policing. Sarau Alcudienc in Alcúdia is a good example, and this definition of tradition includes elements that are comparatively novel. S'Estol Rei en Jaume, the parade of historical figures, was one of the main reasons for Sarau Alcudienc coming into existence at the end of the 1970s. The parade would now qualify as a "tradition" despite its relative youth.

Back in Sa Pobla, there is the Albopàs association (Albopàs being Sa Pobla backwards). It has a wider role than Sarau Alcudienc, as demons, pipers and other aspects of Sant Antoni and the town's fiestas are all part of this one association. It is a keeper of the tradition.

These are associations which play a highly significant role in their towns and they are not ones, having recovered tradition or developed it in certain ways, which are about to allow it to be corrupted. Why is a cultural interest declaration needed therefore? Well, there is always the promotion.