It's A Hard Life Being A Demon

You would think that being a demon would be a fairly straightforward affair. On a few occasions a year you put on the appropriate costume and head or face gear, get painted up, grab your trusty trident and head off into the night in order to engage in a spot of local population terrorising and bothering. Once all this is done, it's off to the nearest bar for a welcome caña or several. It's thirsty work being a demon, what with all that fire knocking around.

Alas, the demon's life is not so simple. It can be that he brings it upon himself. (It might be noted that female demons are in short supply, or non-existent when it comes to the "grand" demon.) There is, for example, the political angle, such as the message that the grand demon utters prior to the full-on terrorising. Muro's alluded earlier this year to the elections and to a time after them when the Bourbons would be abdicating. As in previous years, he once more launched into a tirade against corruption, for which souls will burn in hell. Or something like this.

By implication, one can conclude that demons are of the political left and republican by instinct. One can sense this implication strongly in Muro, where the demons and the town hall - of the right and still of the right, despite the elections - haven't seen eye to eye, through the mask, for some years.  So, the demon is not necessarily politically neutral, which is just one way in which he adds complication to his existence.

A further one has to do with demonic organisation. A few years ago - 2010 - the demon world threatened to be torn asunder when a rival association challenged the authority of the Balearic demons' federation. An emergency general meeting of demons in May that year had been called. All was not well, and a demonstration night of fire was put on in Pollensa. It was a show of strength by the rival demons: the souls of the federation would burn in hell. Possibly.

They seem, though, to have patched things up, but this doesn't prevent there being little local demon difficulties. In Son Servera, as an example, there was the business regarding the grand demon and interpretations of demonic activity. He, the demon, appeared to have been flouting tradition. In came some fresh new blood to the organising committee (the obreria), and it was determined to restore the correct ways. While all this was going on, graffiti was being daubed and social media were taking sides.

There are obreria in several towns, and they are most prominent in the affairs of January's Sant Antoni fiestas, when the demons are at their most demonic. In olden times, these were the organisers of church maintenance, but over times they acquired the keys to traditions: demons being among them.

Which brings us to Manacor, to its Patronat (what they call the obreria there nowadays) and to another little local demon spat. The roots of this go back to 1969, which was the year when Father Mateu Galmés was instrumental in reviving the whole Sant Antoni and so demon tradition. It was Father Mateu who also established the Patronat, a specific board of management to ensure that the traditions continued once he had gone. But despite the revivalist enthusiasm of Father Mateu, they ran into a snag. Being a demon was not on the top of the list of things that the locals wanted to do. We are talking quite a few years ago when there wasn't anything like the levels of popularity there now are for demonic matters. In purely social-standing terms, being a demon was looked down upon by many.

These demonic roles were not the ones of the rampaging demons but of the ceremonial demons, the ones which aren't scary. But ceremony or no ceremony, there was reluctance amongst locals to come forward, so the Patronat ended up handing the roles to those who were willing to put their hands up. Moreover, these were posts for life, could be inherited and be paid for.

The president of the federation of residents' associations in Manacor wants this all to change. Not only shouldn't any money be involved, the demons should be elected, just like there are elections each year for, for instance, Pollensa's Joan Mas and Dragut and the Moors and Christians set-to. The Patronat is having none of it. The federation has rejected any idea of boycotting events with demons, but it insists that now may be the time for a touch of modernity to creep in.

So, whenever you encounter demons, be they the wild or less wild variety, just bear in mind that behind every demon there are, variously, republican sympathies, organisational politics, disagreements over demonic activities and arguments regarding birthrights. A demon's life is not a straightforward one.