It is Santa Anna's day today. Though it was once claimed that she was capable of conception by the Holy Spirit, a claim condemned in 1677 as an "error", Anna didn't really engage in traditional saintly pastimes. It is perhaps for this reason that, although she will be granted respectful celebration today, she doesn't generally register on the fiestas' roll call of honour: well, not in Mallorca anyway, with one notable exception - the small village of Moscari.
This is a village within a village, the larger one of Selva. It is a village whose name provokes argument, something not uncommon when it comes to deciding how Mallorcan place names came to be as they are. The three favoured origins are from Latin words for moss, fly or musk. On balance, if you come from Moscari, you would probably opt for the latter. (Fly, you would almost certainly prefer to dismiss.)
Hibiscus, of which there is a good deal in Mallorca, is of a flowering plant order that gives off a musky fragrance, and the hibiscus as well as other flowers play a fairly important part in one of the best-kept fiesta secrets in Mallorca. As maybe befits a somewhat obscure village within a village that has bucked the trend for far more widely celebrated saints and opted instead for Jesus's grandmother when it comes to a spot of fiesta-ing, Moscari has one of the least well-known fiesta traditions of all. Least well-known but arguably one of the most charming of the lot. That's because today, in addition to being Santa Anna's day, is the day of the "Fadrí".
Despite her somewhat questionable credentials for saintliness, Santa Anna nonetheless acquired a collection of causes for which she is the sponsor. One of these entails her being the patron of unmarried women. Not unmarried mothers, because that really wouldn't do, but women not yet married - bachelor girls. It is said, somewhat mistakenly, that she is also patron of bachelor boys, but the list of saintly responsibilities assigns this task to Saint Christopher, he also of the traveller, as opposed to Saint Cliff. But this misinterpretation notwithstanding, Anna's day is, in Moscari, the day of bachelor boys and bachelor girls - "fadrins" and "fadrines": the day of the "Fadrí".
No one seems to know why this day is as it is. Whatever its origins, they have been wiped from the collective hard disc memory of the admittedly small population of Moscari and indeed there wouldn't be the "Fadrí" day if it hadn't been for one Margalida Martorell. A resident of the village, she could recall there having been this day many years in the past, and her memories were such that in 1982 Moscari revived the fiesta, not that Margalida was seemingly able to shed any light on why there had ever been a fiesta.
This morning at nine o'clock, the village will have been woken up by the screeching of the local pipers and then, around ten o'clock, the "Fadrí Major" will appear: the chief bachelor boy. He will carry a reed adorned with ribbons and flowers and will then be joined by "fadrins" and "fadrines", some of them in traditional dress, and by children of the village, either dressed normally or in a traditional farming style. The girls will carry bouquets. Others will carry reeds. There will be a carpet of flowers, an innovation last year. The balconies, doorways and streets will have flowers and ribbons, and among the flowers will be hibiscus with its musky fragrance. The parade ends at the church and there are more flowers - the typical floral offer to the patron saint - and that will pretty much be that.
Why they do it is lost in the mists of time, but they do do it, and it is, in its sheer simplicity, a striking contrast to the raucousness of much of the summer fiesta. Charming is an overused word and too often a cliché, but in Moscari it is entirely appropriate.
No comments:
Post a Comment