Grow Your Own Fiestas

The chances are that your summer fiesta-going will be confined to the fiestas local to you. There may be one of the "biggies" that tempt you to venture further afield - Pollensa's Moors and Christians, to give one example - but generally you'll stick close to home. When planning your day or night out at the local fiesta, you may well consult the programmes that the town halls will have produced (assuming they've got them out on time). You will therefore be aware that the fiestas will be kicking off with an opening address (pregón), which may or may not be given at the local church but will, wherever it is delivered, be followed by pipers piping before giving way to an evening of ball de bot folk dance in the main square (other permutations are available). During the fiestas there will be, among other things, children's parties - both those involving water/foam and an entertainment group - an open-air supper, usually for charity, any amount of Zumba, demons charging around like mad things, and various night parties, aka verbena or berbena, featuring various acts and DJs you will never have heard of.

Because you only go to the local fiesta, you will perhaps be unaware that in the next village its fiestas the following week will have a programme that bears a remarkable similarity. Indeed, were the town halls of Mallorca to get together in order to save money, they could produce one "master" programme and just change the cover and alter the dates: the same pipers, with different names; the same folk dance; the same kiddies' parties; the same Zumba; the same night party acts, most of which aren't different, as the same names appear at fiesta after fiesta.

With the exception of the unusual or rare - and Pollensa's Moors and Christians fall into this category - the fiestas adhere to tried and trusted formulae, albeit that tried and trusted might be considered a euphemism for a lack of innovation and imagination. The longevity of specific events can be ascertained by the insistence on placing Roman numerals before them. Hence, if you can remember how Roman numerals work, there will be the ninth eight-kilometre evening race, the fourteen chess tournament, the eighteenth dwarf-tossing contest (I've made this one up, don't worry).

Such fiesta groundhog-ism does have its plusses. Everyone wants a fireworks display. No fiesta should be without demons, their noise and their spitting tridents. Pipers, big heads, giants: absolutely, as they are integral to local culture. But then there are the night parties and some of the other ents that crack off at fiesta time. Why, from village to village, from fiesta to fiesta, do they all seem to feature the same groups? The answer lies of course with the fiestas' industry: the companies that are contracted to put together a good deal of the programmes.

Town halls all have councillors who have responsibility for fiestas, which means there are staff employed at town hall who are involved in their organisation. Clearly, there is organisation to be done, but by and large town hall personnel aren't directly involved in much of what happens. They may offer some thoughts, but it will be the contracted company which makes selections. This is why the line-ups at the parties are as samey as they are.

For the most part of course, no one minds, but it is undeniable that some fiestas have lost something in recent years. Crisis brought about a change, as did issues of noise, mess and behaviour. Pollensa's Patrona fiestas, for example, are not as they once were, and some would argue that they are for the better. The street drinking, the use of the streets as lavatories had got out of hand. Crisis could have acted as the mother of fiesta invention, but in general, the opposite has happened or, where there is invention, it is copied religiously by the next village. Everywhere now has to have a tapas route, for instance.

There are, though, instances of fiestas which have grown from nowhere and that have been organised not by town halls but by local associations. A good example are the Canamunt fiestas in Palma - fiestas marked by somewhat unusual elements and very much driven by local people.

Town halls should of course act as keepers of the fiestas and ensure that they are maintained, but town halls may not be the best when it comes to determining what is required or what could be innovative. They may also not be best in spreading the fiesta fun. There are parts of resorts, for instance, that are divorced from fiestas and have none of their own: I'm thinking, as an example, of Alcudia's tourism centre. So why not create your own. Fiestas, more than anything, should be for the people and by the people, and not just town halls and the companies they contract.