The Pantomime Mule Of Manacor

The mule has its own place in Mallorca's story. Along with the donkey, it was a prime source of energy for mills and wells. Blindfolded, in order to prevent sickness, the mule or the donkey would be harnessed and walk in a circle to extract water or grind wheat - mills were even used to grind salt and clay. The mule was not the only source of power. Man was as well: slaves. When the slave trade came to an end, the mule reassumed greater duties, unless there was sufficient wind to do its job for it. The mills driven by mules, donkeys and humans were known as "molinos de sangre": mills of blood.

In 1891 the town hall in Palma was approached with a request to create the city's first public transport system. On 20 September of that year, this system was inaugurated. It went to Porto Pi and was 4.4 kilometres long. It was a tram, but more specifically a "tram of blood": it was driven by mules.

The first mule trams were known as ripers, rippers, riperts or ripperts. They existed in other cities - Barcelona and Madrid, for example - and the inconsistency in spelling may be purely down to local usage. They all had a common root, though, and that was one Monsieur Ripert, a carriage-maker from Marseille. He came up with the design, others stole it but used his name, and so emerged the riperts (or whatever they were called). In truth, they weren't really trams at all but a forerunner of the bus, but they were around for a good number of years after the first journey in 1891: the proper, electrified tram line to Porto Pi wasn't to start until 1916. Nevertheless, there were mule-drawn riperts heading out to what were still suburbs in the 1920s, such as El Terreno.

Elsewhere on the island, the mule was being affected by the arrival of technology. While much of Mallorca remained stuck in the nineteenth century, the first bicycle had appeared in the 1860s, the train had arrived by the final quarter of the 1800s and then the car and real buses came along in the first quarter of the 1900s. The Sóller train, went it opened in 1912, was to cut the journey time from Palma from four hours to one hour: it was also a lot more comfortable and a lot less hairy (the journey, that is, as opposed to the mule).

Eventually of course, the mule was to lose its transport source of employment, though for the mule population there were still the mills, the wells and the hard labour of the countryside. Nowadays, it would be hard to place a figure on how many mules there are in Mallorca; it is easier to place a price on the mule, if adverts on the internet are anything to go by. There is one available for 600 euros; three others for 250 euros each - urgent sales on account of the owner having to move away. 

In its different ways, therefore, the mule has its place in the Mallorcan story, one that is both urban and rural, but it is the countryside, or at least more rural areas, where the mule remains more honoured today. This said, Manacor is a fairly large urban area and long a centre of industry. Manacor has, however, acquired a mule. Not a real one but a pretend one. The "mulassa" of Manacor, which is basically like a pantomime horse with one playing the front, another playing the back, was revealed in front of 200 or so expectant citizens of Manacor last week. It danced, it cavorted, the folk musicians made music. The mulassa had arrived and its first big performance will come at this year's Sant Jaume fiestas.

Mallorca has its range of odd characters that take to the streets at fiesta time: the giants, the big heads, the dragons, the cavallets. And the Manacor mulassa, it might be said, falls into the general category of the latter: figures with a horsey theme. The artist Sebastià Riera Pocovi has been responsible for the mulassa, and the significance of the mule is that there was, in times gone by, a tradition of there being a raffle to win a mule on Sant Jaume day.

But there is more to the mulassa than this local tradition. The figure of a mule goes back centuries in Catalan fiesta tradition. La Mulassa de Barcelona, for example, can trace its history to 1601. It seemingly disappeared from the festivities' scene around 1812 but was revived in the late 1980s. It goes on tour, and it has appeared in Mancor de la Vall, while the Mulassa de Falset (in Catalonia) has turned up in Santa Maria del Cami. Now Manacor has one, maybe it will go on tour as well, though it's more likely that every town and village will want one.