Paying Homage: 85 years on

They were paying homage yesterday. In towns and villages across the island, they remembered the victims, though the date is more of a celebration. Eighty-five years ago on 14 April, the Second Republic came into being. It was to herald a period of chaos, extraordinary even for a nation that had endured decades of chaos and violence. It was the culmination of all that had been unleashed at least since the time of the Napoleonic War and the drafting of the 1812 Liberal Constitution (some one hundred years earlier, in truth). It ushered in the years of the great dictator - great in the sense that Franco was far more important in dictatorial terms than Primo de Rivera (who had preceded the Republic) had been. Franco can never be considered in isolation. His regime had an inevitability about it: one created by political, religious, monarchical and military disasters. To quote Bismarck: "I am firmly convinced that Spain is the strongest country in the world. Century after century trying to destroy herself and still no success."

Some villages suffered more than most. Pollensa was one of them. Some 26 Republicans were executed. They, and the around 150 people who were imprisoned, were remembered in the town's Seglars square yesterday evening. The executions and imprisonments were often just politically motivated. Being a Republican was a sufficient enough crime. Others who were victims of the Nationalists were so because of motives of revenge. Vendettas, only partly related to the division that fostered the Civil War, were an excuse for payback. Charges were often spurious and weak. I learned recently about a gardener from Pollensa who was imprisoned merely because he had been employed by a Republican.

Pollensa town hall recently expressed its support for the regional government's law on war graves and for the Argentinian legal initiative in respect of violations under Franco. There was almost unanimous backing. The one Partido Popular councillor abstained, out of step with former PP colleagues, including the ex-mayor, who formed a rival group prior to last year's election. For the most part, even the right sympathise with pro-Republican sentiment in Pollensa. Or is this better expressed as anti-Francoist sentiment? There is a difference.

In Palma the homage paid was on a grander scale. Well, there was a DJ as well. It was held in the town hall square - Plaça de Cort. "Visca la República!" said the poster. The gathering had the support of the town hall, Podemos, Més, unions, feminists, a Palestinian group, a Greco-Mallorcan solidarity group and others, one of which was the Fundació Emili Darder. He was the Republican mayor of Palma, shot in 1937. Pollensa's Republican mayor, Pere Josep Cànaves, was shot in 1938.

Why some of these groups were lending their support was not totally clear. But if they wished to, then that was up to them. There was, though, a question about the support shown by the town hall. The PP and the C's questioned it. The town halls' official social media accounts were used to promote the event; Ajuntament de Palma appeared on the poster. The administration, argued the PP/C's, should not be involving itself in something of an ideological and partisan nature.

Absent from the political parties named as supporters was PSOE. By implication, though, it was a supporter. The mayor is a PSOE man, after all. The mayor, José Hila, has appeared to be easily swayed by Republican initiatives. Whereas he once agreed that the Feixina monument should become a monument to the victims of war and so lose its Francoist symbolism, he now heads an administration which has formally announced the specification for the monument's demolition on the Official Bulletin. Hila bends to the will of his political partners, one can't help but feeling. Previous PSOE mayors - all previous and surviving mayors of the democratic era in fact - are opposed to the demolition.

The monument has been allowed to become a cause célèbre, a case of whipping up a storm unnecessarily in the pursuit of ideological righteousness. By some, that is. Does Hila truly subscribe to it? Maybe he does. In the process, division has been created. It may have existed previously but it has been allowed to become more visible, while there are those without strong sympathies either way who have no wish to see the monument go.

One can understand that passions of 80 or more years ago still burn. Heaven knows, it will be 80 years on 17 July when the Civil War broke out with the military uprising in Morocco. There are bound to be events. The past cannot and should not be forgotten. For family descendants, the war graves act might allow them to get that now clichéd word "closure". Remembering and remembrance are appropriate. Ideological posturing is quite a different matter.

The Great Unknown: Llorenç Moya

Freddie Frinton, some of you may be aware, is big news in Germany on New Year's Eve. The 1963 recording of "Dinner For One" in which he plays the manservant James to May Warden's Miss Sophie is broadcast every New Year's Eve and has not missed a year since 1972. It spawned a catchphrase that is familiar to most Germans: "The same procedure as every year."

In Mallorca, there is something not totally dissimilar. The procedure is not entirely the same every year, the performance is not a television theatrical production and it it is staged on 6 January rather than New Year's Eve, but it has nonetheless acquired the status of an annual tradition every bit as strong as "Dinner For One". It is called "L'Adoració dels Tres Reis d'Orient" (the adoration of the Three Kings) and it has now been presented since 1985.

The author of this was the Binissalem-born writer, Llorenç Moya. This year is to be his year. He was born one hundred years ago. His name, for those of you who are regular readers of this column, may be familiar, but probably for a reason other than his literary achievements. Moya was crucial to the founding of what became the late September Vermar grape harvest wine fair and fiesta in his home town. Above all, though, he was one of the towering names of Mallorca's literature of the twentieth century.

The performance on 6 January takes place in the open air in Ses Voltes park in Palma, its first ever performance having been in the town hall square thirty-one years ago. The theatre company which stages it is called Taula Rodona, but its actors are certainly not just professionals. This year's interpretation, in which the Three Kings were in fact queens, featured the president of the Balearic parliament, Xelo Huertas, as Balthazar. (Her portrayal was panned by the critics.)

Essentially, Moya's work is a farce that combines satire and is thus littered with current-day references to political matters: the recent national election offered fertile sources for the satire. But it isn't the only annual production for which he was originally responsible. The same Taula Rodona has been following much the same procedure as every year on Good Friday, also since 1985. Moya's "Via Crucis" is an  altogether more serious performance that depicts the crucifixion and resurrection and does so on the steps of the Cathedral. Emotional and somewhat surreal, it is something which, like the 6 January production, is known about but which attracts, or seems to, comparatively little promotional attention.

Yet, here are two tributes that are played out each year to this great of the island's literary traditions, one who, it's probably fair to say, will be unknown to the vast majority of Mallorca's visitors and to a sizable number of the island's residents as well.

Miquel Àngel Vidal is a writer who, in 2012, presented a doctoral thesis directed by a professor at the University of the Balearic Islands into the life and works of Moya. It is vast, over one thousand pages of description, analysis, reproductions of his texts and of original manuscripts plus a set of photos that detailed Moya's life. If for these photos alone, where a non-academic or non-Catalan speaker is concerned, it is an utterly extraordinary document, as they show Moya and his family from the time soon after his birth through to his later life, often shown with other leading figures from Mallorca's literary past, such as Llorenç Villalonga and Llorenç Riber. They also show of course the passing of time, via the Franco years and to just before he died in 1981.

As such of course, hardly anyone will see it. Which is a great shame. It can't be expected for those who don't speak Catalan or even some who do to get overly interested in his works, but there is much to be said for revealing to a wider audience the life and times and so the changes in Mallorca and its society through what he had to say and also the photographic evidence. But Moya, as with other Mallorcan writers, is a mystery because there is no attempt to make him less so. In his case, though, he was more of a mystery even to the aficionado, and one of these was Miquel Àngel Vidal. When Moya died, he was nineteen, but the writer was a "great unknown". It seems that he was a humble man who didn't indulge in self-promotion. It was said that he had no literary rivals, although Riber was said to have despised him. Why? Well, it may have been due to his physical being: short, unattractive. It was also rumoured that he was gay.

However much he might have been a great unknown, he no longer is. Two of his works are subject to the same or similar procedure every year. And this year is his year.

The Reluctant Anniversary: 1715 and all that

There was a demo in Palma on Saturday evening. Not far from the yacht club, the royal one that is, they were protesting against the occupation. It has lasted three hundred years. In all this time there have also been three hundred years of resistance, said the poster. The fight continues, the poster added, these same announcements adorning the banner held by those leading the protest. For the most part they seemed like earnest young men with beards and glasses. Their number was not great. The local police looked on. By-passers sauntered by. Oh, it'll be another demo, these uninterested observers might have thought, while wending their way to the bars of La Llonja and Santa Catalina, possibly having taken advantage of Black Friday bargains. Of the protesters, there weren't sufficient to match the 300 years of both occupation and resistance.

This occupation, in case you are wondering, is that of the Bourbons and the Spanish army. Three hundred years ago, Felipe V, the first of the Bourbons, issued a decree as one of the series of Nueva Planta, aimed at dealing with what he saw as the sedition of the Catalans and their allies in the Crown of Aragon, of which Mallorca was one. On 28 November, 1715, this particular decree established the post of the Captain General, representative of the king, who enforced military rule of the island. Three hundred years later, resistance, such as it is, is to this very decree.

While the resistance was marching, the occupying force was holding a guard of honour. A Catalan press headline read: "The Spanish army occupies the centre of Palma and fills it with Spanish flags to celebrate the Nueva Planta decree." An accompanying photograph usefully revealed these flags that were lining the street of the Palau Reial, the palace itself being the current residence of the Council of Mallorca.

On the 300 years of occupation, 300 years of resistance Facebook page, there are posts that highlighted the guard of honour and also announced the march. It had 326 likes (as of Sunday) and had shown zero per cent upward like movement since last week. It also announced the commemorative act that was to follow the march. At 7pm on Saturday, they gathered at the headquarters of the Council. Among their number was its president, Miquel Ensenyat, who said that this was "a day of solemnity, which we remember and not celebrate".

The sponsors of the protest, organisations whose names appeared on the poster that is, included Arran, the left-wing Catalan independence youth movement, the successor to the Maulets, an organisation that tended to have more of a revolutionary fervour. Arran, as of two years ago, could count on no more than 700 or so members spread across Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearics.

The Catalonian drive towards independence has its historical roots in the same series of decrees that established the Captain General, but it is this history where similarity ends. Enthusiasm for independence in Catalonia is not matched in Mallorca. Here, it barely exists.

The protest march received little attention in the media. The commemorative act, on the other hand, received some. But then events involving presidents, be they the Council's or the regional government's, will tend to, regardless of the event. The guard of honour, meanwhile - a beefed-up changing of the guard of honour which takes place on the final Saturday of most months - merited some more attention. But not a great deal. The army might have been keen, but there appears not to have been general enthusiasm. On balance, it was perhaps wise to let the occasion pass without too much fuss. There were around 300 people; more than took part in the protest.

In a way, such an important date in the island's history deserved far greater coverage. But while there have been any number of events at local town and village level which have considered what happened three hundred years ago, 28 November, 1715 has been allowed to come and go with barely a murmur: they were far more concerned about the last bargains for Black Friday in Palma. Ensenyat was right in suggesting that there wasn't anything to celebrate, and this could be said for both "sides", such as they are. If you are representatives of the state, then you are hardly going to want to go around appearing triumphalist for something which occurred three hundred years ago. Mark the anniversary, let a band play here or there, and leave it at that.

That Saturday marked a 300th anniversary should say a lot. It was a long time ago. As such, its relevance is mostly as a matter of historical record. There are those who would wish to make more of it, those who continue the resistance and the fight. Their numbers, though, are minimal. History is not forgotten, it may not be totally forgiven, but this is not 1715.

Ramon Llull, The Cartoon Version

My suspicion would be that, despite the numerous occasions on which I have written about the old boy, there will still be goodly numbers among you who have never heard of Ramon Llull. I'll put this down to the fact that you happened to miss those previous occasions.

I am not suggesting that I have been acting as an unofficial and therefore unpaid one-man PR operation for this Mallorcan ancient, as there are many others who do this, some of whom do actually receive remuneration: they're known as employees of tourism/cultural promotion authorities. But for the most part, the Llull PR machinery exists within the isolated bubble of Catalan and of Catalanism. Efforts to promote him to wider audiences have, generally speaking, not worked. Largely because, one also suspects, they've never been coherently undertaken outside of the Catalan bubble.

That Llull was a Catalan speaker and writer does help to explain this limited knowledge dissemination, but he deserves to have greater fame, just as he should be central to a whole Mallorcan culture-as-tourism initiative. Why? Well, his list of achievements was phenomenal. There was, among others, his rudimentary computer - the "Ars Magna" (and please, no sniggering at that title) - designed to reveal fundamental truths (as they were understood in the thirteenth century). This kaleidoscopic series of wheels - the Llullian circles - was like a mediaeval punch-card system. Had they thought about it back then, Llull could have made a fortune from having invented the first random lottery system.

Of course, Llull did have a politico-religious thing going on. His system of logic was to prove Christian truths and to thus dispute Islam. Llull was to become a Catholic fundamentalist - he wasn't especially religious until a revelation in his late twenties led him to walk out on the wife and kids - but this didn't mean that he was ill disposed to Islam: just that he wanted to prove that one religion was mightier than another. And his intelligence led him to learn Arabic - still partially surviving in any event in the Mallorca of the thirteenth century (Llull was born three years after the Catalan conquest). If Islam was to be engaged in debate, then it was important to do so in the appropriate language. His mission to prove Christian logic was a key reason for his having persuaded King Jaume II of Mallorca to found Miramar in Valldemossa. The learning of Arabic was part of the curriculum.

Llull should have greater status. He was a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus and an equal in terms of religious philosophy of the High Middle Ages. Llull's logic, and that of his peers, was to be as crucial to the founding of modern philosophy as that of Aristotle and the very much more ancients. This status, unattained, places him at number one in the list of admittedly few genuinely famous Mallorcans from history.

There is debate as to when Llull died. The commonly cited date is 29 June, 1315, but the room that exists for questioning this partly explains why the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of his death haven't yet started. They will do later this year and continue in 2016: an alternative version of his death is that he passed away in 1316.

But once they start, what will they be? Dull but worthy, one imagines. There again, for many this is exactly what Llull was. Theology, philosophy, mediaeval Catalan literature: all terribly well and good but also extremely old and not things to get the pulses racing. In order to try and make Llull more accessible, there are ways, and one fancies that, as the maker of that primitive computer, the old chap would probably heartily approve of new technologies. And with these in mind, there is meant to be some sort of Ramon animation, a cartoon Ramon. Techies at the university have been working on it, but the end result appears to be lost somewhere in the corridors of the Council of Mallorca.

If it emerges, and it probably will, one does rather fear for the worst. Will it be multi-lingual? It damn well ought to be because Llull was a multi-linguist. Will it be, like much of the subject matter, dull but worthy? Hard to say without seeing it, but quite possibly yes.

Opportunities present themselves only rarely. The collision between the 700th anniversary and the availability of advanced animation technologies provides the perfect context for something meaningful to propel Llull into the wider orbit of awareness. But, and always aware of respect for his ancientness, dare one say that an animated Ramon, with suitable PR and promotion, could attain much wider awareness were he to appear elsewhere. In the US in September, the 27th season of "The Simpsons" will start. Ramon meets Homer. They should do it.

109 Surrealist Years: Salvador Dalí

A year from tomorrow, I guess we can anticipate there being something of an anniversary celebration. One hundred and ten isn't a particularly notable anniversary but it is more so than one hundred and nine.

On 11 May 1904, Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domenech was born. The people of the town of Figueres in Catalonia would have had no idea what this birth was to mean. The world didn't know what it was in for.

I try to imagine what the reaction to Dalí's "The Persistence of Memory" in 1932 would have been. Art critics were probably divided between those who loved it and those who hated it. The ordinary man in the street, had he even been aware of it, would surely not have known what to have made of it. But then experimental and surrealist art has never really been the stuff of the common man. Think Damien Hirst, for example.

But Dalí forged a place in the world of the common man. For students of the sixties and seventies, a Dalí poster (usually "Metamorphosis of Narcissus") was as de rigueur as one of Che Guevara or Jim Morrison. For mostly everyone else, Dalí was a total nutter, an eccentric of quite industrial proportions. He was, as he once insisted when being harangued by the rest of the surrealist movement, the only real "surrealist". His whole being was surreal, though to what extent it was all simply a front designed to attract publicity, fame and wealth is hard to say. It's difficult to believe that anyone could truly be as batty as Dalí was without some of it having been stage-managed.

Dalí, along with Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, formed a troika of Spanish painters who, in many respects, dominated the whole world of twentieth-century art. Though they were connected in their earlier years - Picasso was admired by Dalí, while Miró had recommended Dalí to Picasso - they went their separate ways. And Dalí went a separate way that was nothing like the quiet life that Miró found for himself in Mallorca.

What each of them achieved, with their varying and distinctive styles, was an opening of the mind. Though Miró was critical of the excesses of the surrealists, they, and Dalí in particular, exposed an alternative perception, one that was to later appeal to those who sought perception-altering experiences through LSD or magic mushrooms. Dalí claimed never to have taken mind-altering drugs. If he didn't, the mind boggles at how he came up with what he did and how he managed a painting like "The Hallucinogenic Toreador" in 1970 at a time when psychedelia and hippy culture were still very much in vogue. 

Dalí's work was fantastic, an adjective that can be taken in different ways: superb or bizarre. But it is a shame that his globe-trotting self-promotion and all-round lunacy got in the way of what he achieved. He is remembered almost exclusively for what he produced in the 1930s, yet even at a time when he was cropping up on the American "What's My Line" (look it up on YouTube), he was creating a piece as magnificent as the giant "The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus" in 1959. I look at this now and begin to understand where the KLF got the idea for their video for the "America" version of "What Time Is Love". And where pop/dance acts are concerned, few have ever been as batty as the KLF.

It was his obsession with his image and his own publicity that let Dalí down. To an extent, Picasso was also undermined by his ego as well as by his affairs, but he did continue to concentrate on his art, while Dalí concentrated on being bonkers. Of the great Spanish threesome, Picasso and Miró just kept getting better. The legacy of both these artists is vastly superior to that of Dalí's as a result, and while Picasso had those who criticised his desire for wealth and women, as a person he didn't come to be as divisive a figure as Dalí; George Orwell said of him that he was "a disgusting human being".

In part, this was because Dalí was generally supportive of Franco. Picasso most certainly wasn't, while Miró tried to avoid the subject (he had been a Republican sympathiser). So, as people, both Picasso and Miró left stronger legacies as well.

Whatever was thought of Dalí as a person, he was a remarkable artist. It is his 109th anniversary. Far from not being notable, Dalí would probably have approved of an eccentric number being chosen to commemorate him.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Puerto Pollensa military base 75th anniversary

A commemorative plaque was laid by mayor Tomeu Cifre yesterday as part of the act of celebration of the 75th anniversary of the military base in Puerto Pollensa, work on which was started in November 1936 under the direction of Franco's brother, Ramón Franco.