Traditional Inaccuracy: Moors and Christians

With the greatest of respect to Sant Elm, Valldemossa (where they only got going on the battle front for the first time last year) and Inca (where they haven't bothered this year), the island's big three Moors and Christians battles are those of Santa Ponsa, Sóller and Pollensa. And of this threesome, Santa Ponsa's scrap is of a different nature to those of Sóller and Pollensa. It was the original 1229 run-in between the invading Christian Catalan forces and the Muslim occupants, while the other two date from the sixteenth century and set-tos involving marauding and piratical fleets of the Ottoman Empire.

Despite its centrality to the cultural narrative of Mallorca - all things Catalan - Santa Ponsa's battle doesn't have quite the same cachet as Sóller and Pollensa. Maybe it has to do with there being a lack of documentary evidence and so not quite the same detail and characterisation. In Pollensa this exists to the extent that they've made some adjustments to today's simulation in order to make it even more like the original. Whatever the reason, when it comes to Mallorca and Moors and Christians, then it is Es Firó in May and La Patrona in August which take pride of place. Of these, Sóller does arguably have the greater international reputation. It also has a wider battleground as it involves the port as well; Pollensa doesn't. Yet, and it may simply have to do with its taking place in high summer, Pollensa has acquired something of a supremacy in the island's Moors and Christians league.

A curiosity of the way in which the town will be packed to its narrow-streeted gunwales today and of the pre-battle electioneering to choose the protagonists is that the popularity of the 2 August battle was attained only relatively recently. Such was a general lack of interest at the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s that the town hall would issue tickets as a means to try and encourage more spectators. But this incentivising was a reflection of the fact that the battle had long been in the doldrums. Reminiscent of so many other aspects of the Mallorcan fiesta, there was a concerted effort at Moors and Christians revivalism, and one has to say that it paid off. It has been suggested that nowadays tickets should be given out to get people to stay away.

1550 was the year when Joan Mas led the people of Pollensa in repelling the Moorish invaders, but it was to be three hundred years before their descendants started re-enacting the events. 1860 is the year cited as being when the battle was first staged, although it may have been earlier. Whatever the actual starting date, Moors and Christians in its nineteenth century guise was not a permanent fixture until the whole day was given a boost in 1882 through the introduction of the "Alborada", the work of a Galician, Nicolás de Castro and later re-worked by the Pollensa composer Miquel Capllonch. This dawn wake-up now starts at 5am.

Into the twentieth century and to the period of the Second Republic just prior to the Civil War and the battle was at the centre of a political battle. The town had two clubs which represented differing sides of the ideological debate in the years immediately before Franco. One was the Club Pollença and the other was the Solteros. The latter took the Republican side and it considered the Moors and Christians to be the stuff of reactionaries. The Solteros would happily have seen the battle consigned to the bin of fiesta history, but it wasn't.

Coming up to the present, and by contrast with Republican thinking of the 1930s, Pollensa has a mayor, Miquel Àngel March, who is of a coalition which has its contemporary republican sympathies. March, though, has been a consistent supporter of the battle and indeed a participant (on the Moors side). Political correctness does not invade debate over the Moors and Christians to any great extent. What does, is the cultural and historical significance for Pollensa and for Mallorca. Hence, you have what you have this year, which are some slight modifications in order to reflect greater historical accuracy.

However, there is one very fundamental flaw in this accuracy and there always has been, and that is that the battle didn't take place on 2 August. Had Pollensa stuck to the true dates of 30 and 31 May, then it is far less likely that the town's version of the Moors and Christians would have assumed top ranking over Sóller. The question has to be asked, though - why is the simulated battle on 2 August and not at the end of May? The answer lies with the celebration of the fiestas for the town's patron - La Patrona, the Mother of God of the Angels. Her day is 2 August, and there is, in the Pollensa Moors and Christians tradition, the central part that she plays, and that is Joan Mas's appeal to her for help: "Mare de Déu dels Àngels, assistiu-mos. Pollencins, aixecau-vos, que els pirates ja són aquí!"