Llorenç Moyà And The People's Fiestas

In Palma last week they took a significant step in the direction of something which should have long been the case. The town hall is to seek the far greater participation of residents in the make-up and organisation of the Sant Sebastià fiestas in January. While town halls, not only Palma's of course, have a key role in staging fiestas, there have been calls for greater involvement of the public. Fiestas are for the people, and the people very often have ideas that can break the monotony of the year-in, year-out routine of fiestas by breathing new life into them. Palma witnessed this last weekend when the Orgull Llonguet association organised the grand battle between the Canamunt and Canavall. Water pistols and water guns were at the ready at the Parc de la Mar and they proved to a great success as part of what are otherwise rather neglected fiestas for the Mare de Déu, the Virgin Mary's birthday.

This said, there is evidence from the villages of Mallorca of how public involvement, a grassroots movement if you like, has already been helping in boosting fiestas. A great deal of it has come from the "quintos" youth groups. They have been responsible for introducing what are an increasing number of "battles" into fiestas - the likes of Petra and Sencelles are only quite recent. And one can go back further in time, to the early years of the post-Franco era, to find how local associations were instrumental in fiesta revivalism and event creation. Sarau Alcudienc, the Alcúdia cultural association, is a prime example of a group which invented what have become certain "traditions", such as the figure of Rei en Jaume (King James I), quite a number of years before Santa Ponsa did so for its fiestas.

While individuals and groups have played their parts in shaping fiestas, they haven't, as a rule, been responsible for creating fiestas, for the whole kit and caboodle as they have become. In Binissalem, however, this was the case.

The town's Vermar grape harvest fiestas and fair started this weekend. A couple of nights of art have been added to what is one of Mallorca's premier fiestas, marked as it is by its own battle - of grapes - its treading contests and its wine fair. But these are fiestas which took hold almost by accident. There was no grand design for them when, in 1965, a writer from the town created a gathering of wine enthusiasts at the Can Gelabert cultural centre. By the following year, the gathering was morphing into a party, and the Vermar fiestas were born.

That writer was Llorenç Moyà. Born in Binissalem on the day of Epiphany, 6 January, 1916, the town hall is to honour him next year. It will be the year of Llorenç Moyà.

Vermar was largely his idea, and though it had an unmistakeable commercial element to it - the promotion of the local grape and bodegas - there was also a strong sense of embracing and reviving Mallorcan rural traditions, customs and indeed costumes. The role of the "vermadora", the fiestas' maid of honour, was invented and she was clad in traditional garb.

While Moyà will, for many, be most associated with the establishment and development of the fiestas, there was much more to him. The year in his honour will also be a celebration of his work as a writer and poet, one of the foremost names in Mallorcan literature, who came to prominence in the 1950s, a member of a new wave that was nonetheless influenced by earlier figures such as Miquel Costa i Llobera, the Pollensa poet, and Joan Alcover, who wrote the poem, "La Balanguera", that was to be set to music and to become Mallorca's hymn.

Moyà holds, therefore, an important position in Mallorca's culture and he is representative of the way in which writers and poets were instrumental in driving forward fiestas and events in their home towns and villages. To Moyà can be added the likes of Miquel Bota Totxo, important in establishing the Pollensa Festival and revitalising the Moors and Christians, and Alexandre Ballester, the man who knew everything about Sa Pobla.

Not everywhere in Mallorca will have an illustrious son (or daughter) with the claims of a Moyà, but most will have someone from the past who was key to the activation or re-activation of fiestas. The people's involvement is in fact something of a tradition. And now it too is being revived.