The Battle Of The Bulls' Heads

It would be stretching things to suggest that Mallorca has a bit of an Elgin Marbles-style thing going on, but emotions do run high when it comes to ancient artifacts unearthed on the island and taken off to Madrid where they are on permanent display, a long way from their land of provenance.

The "caps de bou" (bulls' heads) of Costitx are a prime example of this state plundering of archaeological treasures. Well, plundering is an exaggeration, though some might consider the sale of the heads to have been so. They have been in the possession of the National Archaeological Museum of Spain since 1895, when a German archaeologist sold them to the state museum for 3,500 pesetas, an amount which seems extraordinarily low even for those times.

In order to understand why that sale figure can appear as meagre as it now does, one has to know the story of the bulls' heads. It is one that goes back to perhaps as long ago in antiquity as the fifth century BC, though its starting-point may be earlier - the second century BC: a definitive date has never been established. Whenever it was, the heads are from the Talaiotic period of Mallorca's history, a time which has as its most obvious manifestations the stones of Talaiotic settlements, one of which is the sanctuary of Son Corró in the village of Costitx. It was here that the three heads were discovered in 1894.

They are referred to as small, medium and large because of their varying sizes, and when they were found, they were in a remarkably good state of preservation. The quality of the "find", therefore, was one reason why they were valuable. Another - and perhaps the most important - was that they are the finest example of icons that worshipped the cult of the bull, which was one of the principal religious practices of the Talaiotic people. More than this, they are made of bronze, and so are evidence of the exchange the Talaiotic people must have had with other cultures: there was no and is no tin on Mallorca, and a bronze alloy would have needed it.

At the time that the sale was being effected, the Llullian Archaeological Society in Mallorca (named after Ramon Llull) attempted to buy the heads by raising money through public subscription. This was to end in failure, though, as sufficient funds could not be raised to match the price that the museum was going to pay, and so the heads went to Madrid, where they still are.

1979 was the first time when a genuine effort was launched to try and have the heads returned to Mallorca. As with subsequent ones, in 1983 and 1986, it came to nothing. In 2008, it appeared as though there was some movement. The national Minister for Culture seemed disposed to agreeing to the return. Yet again, however, the attempt was ultimately fruitless. The Council of Mallorca, meanwhile, and in its role as promoter of Mallorca's culture, had suggested that the heads should be placed on display for six months at an exhibition to mark the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Costitx having been a separate municipality in 2005. Again, the attempt was not successful.

One of the strange aspects of these constant rejections was that there were distinctly political overtones. These weren't of right versus left because both the Partido Popular and PSOE were against the bulls being returned. The reasons why were not totally clear, other than that they appeared to be founded on some form of rejection of images with a clear Mallorcan "nationalist" flavour.

In March last year, the mayor of Costitx, Antoni Salas, who is a member of the regionalist-nationalist El Pi party, called for the heads to be brought to Mallorca this summer and be displayed at the Museum of Mallorca. He seemed to be getting somewhere, even with the PP-dominated regional government and Council of Mallorca, both of which had to be onside in pressing for this temporary arrangement. But nothing has happened since, until now, and Salas is once more asking for the heads to be brought to Costitx, where they have only once ever been on show - this was in 1995, to mark the anniversary of the sale.

The refusals that have emanated from Madrid are in fact consistent with an attitude on behalf of central government and the state museum to not hand back ancient treasures not just to Mallorca and the Balearics but to all the regions of Spain. In one sense this is understandable. The museum is, after all, the museum for Spain's history, but then the bulls' heads are representative of a distinctive culture that Mallorca and the Balearics do not share with the rest of Spain; they are part of the island's own culture. Should they be on display here? Of course they should be.

Photo of the bulls' heads from Sencelles town hall - www.ajsencelles.net

Ancient Secrets: Mallorca's archaeology

European Cultural Routes Transfer Experiences Share Solutions. A very long title that is abbreviated to CERTESS and which refers to "an inter-regional project prepared by twelve regional partners of ten European countries, financed by the European Regional Development Fund and implemented under the INTERREG IVC programme". God, how the EU loves its meaningless acronyms.

To try and make sense of what this means, it is a project to establish a common framework for developing cultural routes, combining "good and best practices and governance instruments to formulate ten route implementation plans, all targeted to foster sustainable cultural tourism in their reference areas". No, this doesn't really help, does it.

Whatever it all means, the Balearics Tourism Agency is party to it. The agency is one of the partners. And it has dragged the Balearics environment ministry into a sustainable CERTESS project. Yes, there is a new initiative to tackle tourism seasonality while at the same time being environmentally correct and sustainably touristic. It is a pilot plan to create an archaeological tourism route.

What one assumes this doesn't entail is tourists being invited to come to Mallorca, get down on all fours and start rummaging around in archaeological digs. Being a rummager requires more than just an ability to be like a dog digging up a bone. You have to take courses on rummaging. No, what it appears to be is a way of giving what already exists a different name. A route name. Mallorcan and Spanish tourism loves its routes as much as the EU loves its acronyms. Routes for wine, routes for culture, routes for religion, routes no doubt for roots.

There have, however, been rummaging tourists. Son Real near Can Picafort has established something of a trend in this regard. American archaeology students have been invited to volunteer to spend summers at the finca with its ancient burial sites. And they have come, filling a gap of discovery that has lamentably been created by regional governmental indifference to this gem of pre-history and of Mallorca's antiquity.

Indifference or not, the government's tourism agency wishes to further promote Son Real and other archaeological sites on Mallorca and the rest of the Balearics. Which is a laudable enough aim, but one that raises the question as to what the agency and government have been doing to promote all this archaeology up until now. There is a lot of archaeology on Mallorca, a lot of important and ancient sites, but many of them have, for tourism purposes, been largely ignored.

The best known and most developed of the sites is the old Roman city of Pollentia in Alcúdia. It most certainly has been promoted but even it doesn't receive (or hasn't received) the attention which it should do. Not so long ago, I was asked to supply an English translation of the various parts of the site - the Forum, the Theatre and so on. Was this the first time that a detailed explanation had been made available? I wasn't aware of there having been one previously.

Mallorca doesn't have a history that places it in the same league of for example Crete when it comes to ancient Mediterranean culture. The island was not a great cradle of civilisation, but it is nevertheless important in fostering a better understanding of that culture, both pre-Roman and post-Roman. Pollentia reinforces what is very well known of Roman times in general, but it also has secrets yet to be revealed about the period after the Romans left, new surveys casting doubt on the accepted wisdom regarding Pollentia's fate. Specifically, there is a Byzantine-style wall which is reckoned to date from the fifth century. If this is so, then this may change that accepted wisdom, i.e. that the Byzantines didn't appear until the following century and that Pollentia was not abandoned when the Vandals arrived.

But it is the older pre-history which is in many ways more important. There is still plenty of inexactitude which surrounds the origins of the ancient Talayotic sites and only hypotheses as to what existed on Mallorca before these. When was Mallorca genuinely settled by human occupation? It is thought that there would have been people on the island from the fifth or even sixth millennium before Christ, but that they did not settle. They were only transient. But little is understood of this transient population. Of the later established population there is a wide variance in times given to sites, even those which are close together, such as the necropolis at Son Real and the dolmen in Son Bauló, itself only now being shown a certain amount of official respect.

The idea for an archaeology route is a good one. But it is something which needs to be backed up by genuine support for the efforts being made to reveal the island's ancient secrets.

The Dolmen Of Son Bauló

Generally speaking, Mallorca's urban planners have shown sufficient sensitivity towards the presence of the island's archaeological heritage that they have managed to keep it a discrete distance from their urbanising tendencies, albeit that significant amounts of this heritage have either succumbed to nature and have  disappeared and been buried or to the destruction of man in times when they knew no better and to further destruction by man in times when they should have known better. Much has been bulldozed out of existence or built on, never to be seen again.

A good example of this urban separation between ancient and modern is the Pollentia Roman town in Alcúdia. It sits on its own, molested by little more than a road that runs past one side and the proximity of a parking area of such primitiveness that it might have been developed in Roman times. There again, the planners would have had a pretty shrewd idea that the ruins were there even before excavations started. Not that this had stopped previous generations who saw to it that all the secrets of Pollentia will never be revealed.

Some of this heritage is a great deal older than Pollentia and is also a great deal more visible. Mercifully, it hasn't, for the most part, been subjected to the artificial insemination of development, and nor was it in those days when man really couldn't have given a tinker's cuss about some old rocks lying around. Nevertheless, in its contemporary environment this ancient heritage can find itself all but rubbing a rocky shoulder with urbanisation. Ancient does lie close to modern, an example being the Talayotic remains in S'Illot. The best one can say is that at least tourists get to appreciate the existence of this ancient heritage. They can't really avoid it.

But S'Illot is not without its sensitivity, and this is very much more than can be said for the total lack of respect that has been shown to the dolmen of Son Bauló. This ancient burial site is a close neighbour, a far too close neighbour, of Can Picafort's industrial estate. Santa Margalida town hall, which owns the dolmen land, has come up with the idea of affording it a tad greater respect and so granting it some privacy. They're going to put some hedges up as well as some information panels to explain what it is, which should be helpful for those coming and going at the nearby warehouses.

The town hall does of course see this initiative, which will set it back some one hundred grand, as being representative of sustainable tourism, a term which can be used to mean whatever you want it to mean, so long as it is touristically correct. One can but hope that the town hall is right, but the dolmen, not exactly vast, is unlikely to attract great numbers of sustainable tourists, deterred by the otherwise unsustainable existence of factory, workshop and warehouse. Still, hats off to Santa Margalida. Their heritage heart is in the right place. It's just unfortunate that the dolmen heritage happens to be in the heart of an industrial estate.

For all this, the dolmen is important. Assigning it a precise time in the past has proved not to be easy. There are wild fluctuations as to when it is believed that it was created and there is also debate as to whether it can be linked in more or less direct historical terms to the far better known and far more extensive necropolis burial site not so far away at the coastal edge of the Son Real finca. The reporting of the dolmen's provenance is such that it might have been created at any time from the fourth to the second millennium BC. Getting a precise handle on its origins would be useful in furthering understanding of early Mallorcan settlement. It is believed that there was no permanent inhabitation until the third millennium BC, but it is also accepted that there was transient occupation, that of temporary visitors who were probably attracted by the island's wood, before this; perhaps as far back as the sixth millennium BC.

Mallorca has an astonishing amount of prehistoric sites which lend themselves to a greater understanding of Mediterranean culture in the very distant past. Respecting, albeit belatedly, the Son Bauló dolmen is the least that can be done. But how sad is it that so much of the past has been made invisible to contemporary investigation and examination. The more recent past, that of the Romans of Alcúdia's Pollentia, has thus far been revealed through excavation to be less than ten per cent of its former existence.

The chances are that we will never know the true extent of Pollentia, but it is worth trying to find out, just as it is worth trying to find out about even more ancient Mallorcan civilisation. It may be on an industrial estate, but great respect to the dolmen.

* Photo from: http://balearsculturaltour.net

MALLORCA TODAY - Human remains found in Son Real necropolis

Archaeological work on the ancient necropolis in the Son Real finca near Can Picafort has unearthed four tombs and three bodies, one of which is said to be in a good condition. The human remains could date back to around 500BC.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

Buried Treasure: Alcúdia's Roman ports

It's not every day I guess that if you are a bar, shop, restaurant or home owner, you come to realise that beneath you are hugely significant archaeological remains. If you happen to be one of these owners in Puerto Alcúdia, this is exactly the realisation that will have dawned on you. Part of the port area is built slap bang on top of where the Romans once had a harbour.

It was always known that there had to have been a port. Documentary evidence from mediaeval times spoke of a "great gate" to the Roman port, and older documents mentioned the role that Alcúdia played in maritime trade between the mainlands of Spain and Italy. But where was the "great gate"?

The excavations of the Roman town of Pollentia in Alcúdia old town have been ongoing since the start of the 1950s, and they have always focussed on one area in which there are, among other things, remains of the forum and of the Roman theatre. They have never been broadened out, but it is now clear that Pollentia covered a much larger area. As it was one of the chief settlements of the Romans, it isn't altogether surprising that its size was such that it stretched from one bay to another, from Pollensa Bay to Alcúdia Bay.

In 2007 a fortuitous discovery was made; fortuitous, that is, unless you happened to have been the owner of a plot of land in Puerto Alcúdia who was having the plot cleared to make way for a housing development. Work was suspended, and has been ever since, when pottery was found which was in keeping with that from the Pollentia excavations, the outer limit of which was half a kilometre or more away.
This discovery, together with the theories of a French archaeologist, led the Council of Mallorca in 2010 to commission an aerial reconnaissance of the sea. The discovery suggested that the great gate might be located.

The gate itself has not been found, but nevertheless the findings of the radar survey confirm the existence not just of a wall and jetties in the port of Alcúdia but also the smaller port in the area of Barcarés on the bay of Pollensa. They exist but they are covered up by the sea bed.

In Roman times the sea went inland almost as far as where the Roman theatre is, i.e. roughly a kilometre from the contemporary shoreline. (And it might be noted that in the old town there is the Porta des Moll, i.e. port gate.) Hence, the property owners of Puerto Alcúdia know that they are sitting on what was once a mix of sea and the wetlands of Albufera and the walls of the Roman port.

The owners needn't worry. There won't be any demolition to attempt to recover the old port. Apart from anything else, there isn't any money to do so, and the lack of finance is such that detailed underwater study is unlikely to occur either. The Council of Mallorca, enthusiastic under the previous administration, has shown a distinct lack of interest now that it is run by the austere Partido Popular.

While the confirmation of the two ports is highly significant, the chances of it meaning a great deal are limited. The confirmation has led to suggestions of further boosts to tourism as well as enhancements to Mallorca's Roman heritage, but tourism will, I'm afraid, be singularly unimpressed. Tourists like to see something not to simply know that somewhere under the sea are a couple of jetties and a bit of old wall.

But there might yet be more to see and might yet be some underwater activity. It would all rather depend upon getting round the fact that the sea in the two bays is protected waters and upon private interests, both legitimate and less so.

It is reckoned that there was an awful lot of shipping traffic that passed through Alcúdia from Roman times. And this traffic means that there may be other remains hidden in the sea in the two bays - wrecks and buried treasure. Pots of gold and pieces of eight. Dumas, it seems, may have got the wrong island; it wasn't Monte Cristo after all.

Though investigations of what lies beneath the water are unlikely, there is now a real question as to how far the current land excavations might extend and what these might mean for land that is undeveloped. There is bound to be far more for the archaeologists to unearth. Should it be done though? The excavations at Pollentia have been happening for sixty years. Archaeology can take an awfully long time.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going Underground: The ancient Roman port of Pollentia

It is now two and a half years since work on building houses in the centre of Puerto Alcúdia was suspended after remains were found which suggested that a site of archaeological importance had been accidentally unearthed (27 October, 2007: Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect).

The site, on the corner of Coral and Mar i Estany (opposite the Coral de Mar hotel), is believed to be evidence of the spread of the Roman inhabitation of what was then Pollentia. Of greatest significance is the fact that it may well be in the area where once was located the "great gate" of the Roman port. So much interest has been raised by this site, and by other discoveries and theories, that - as reported in "The Diario" yesterday - a survey from the air using sonar-detection equipment is to be commissioned by the heritage department of the Council of Mallorca. This will aim to reveal the nature of the ancient port's structure, beneath both the sea and land.

The main line of thinking appears to be that there was a marine connection that crossed or went to the side of what were then the Albufera wetlands. The old coastline went as far as a kilometre or so inland from where it is today; the Roman theatre was, if you like, an ancient attraction by the sea, as it - more or less - marks the spot where the sea encroached. The name of one of those streets - Mar i Estany - has its own significance. This is still sometimes used as the name for the port area of Alcúdia: sea and lake.

The extent of the Roman city is really only now beginning to be appreciated. While the Roman ruins and excavations in the old town of Alcúdia have been worked on for over half a century and are the most obvious manifestation of the Roman settlement, Pollentia was far bigger than just the site of the ruins. It stretched from the current port area, across the old town and to the bay of Pollensa. There is meant, somewhere, to be a "small gate" which looked across at what is now Puerto Pollensa.

Historical documents reveal that the great gate was referred to in mediaeval times, while other documents delve further back in time to indicate that not only was Pollentia an important maritime stopping-off port between Italy and Spain but also that there was - in all likelihood - a lighthouse during Roman times. The excavations in the old town have now also uncovered the outline of various streets and of an urbanisation that itself had been originally - and unknowingly - opened up as long ago as the 1930s when a trench was dug which had been intended to allow the building of a railway line - yes, the train was meant to have come to Alcúdia that long ago.

The ongoing discoveries, the air survey and the occasionally fortuitous side-effects of construction all do, however, lead to a question as to how much more by way of development Alcúdia can have, if some of the archaeology of Roman times is not to be lost completely. There seems little doubt that underneath the current port area there are all sorts of historical treasures. They're not about to knock anything down, or you would think not, but whether they can risk putting anything up is another matter.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

What About This Overcrowded Land

Further to the “Ultima Hora” piece about the Roman pottery remains in Puerto Alcúdia (27 October: Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect), the paper is now reporting that further sampling has been ordered to ascertain if the site near to the Coral de Mar hotel is indeed that of Pollentia’s port. At present there is an open mind, one possibility also being that the remains could simply be from dumped excavation debris.

Whilst archaeological intervention halts one residential building project, environmental intervention (or rather outcry) has not stopped another. In Cala San Vicente, the demolition of the old Can Colom in the Cala Molins part of the resort has started, much to the disgust of environmental pressure group GOB and others. In its place will be apartments and a swimming-pool that, according to GOB, will lead to the destruction of an important forest area. I don’t know. Instinctively I am on the side of the environmentalists, but the constant opposition is wearisome. There is a sense of here-we-go-again, that perhaps they doth protest too much, that every part of land is important in some way, that wolf is cried when there are bigger beasts to be wary of.

Also on the environment, and back to the plans I referred to on 6 November, I had a chat with an engineer from the power station in Alcúdia, asked him what was with all this stuff about relocating the power station. His reaction - one word, eight letters, begins with “b”. The investment that has already been put into the power station would be a strong argument for doing nothing, and as he also pointed out, it may be that they get a round to relocation in fifty years or so, when they’ll have to because of the rising water level.

Elsewhere, more doom-mongering. “The Bulletin” gives prominence to rising temperatures and drought, the “Diario” also to rising temperatures - an average of 4.83 degrees over the last 100 years in the Balearics - and lower total rainfalls but more torrential outbursts. The Balearic Government minister for the environment says that no-one is any doubt as to climate change, except for one politician, by whom I presumes he means Mariano Rajoy (24 October: It's My Party) who will doubtless be still insisting the Earth is flat while the waters lap around the perimeter of the Alcúdia power station.


QUIZ
Yesterday - New Musik. Today’s title - a line from one of the greatest of all environmental songs.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect

Alcúdia is not to get a Millennium Dome.

Of course it never was going to, but the architect of that unloved folly, Lord Rogers, was one of those on the short-list to redesign the old power station next to the commercial port.

A Pamplona-based firm, Alonso Hernández y Asociados, has won the pitch for the design of the conversion into what will be an arts and science museum. The firm’s proposal, entitled “El claro en el bosque” (the clearing in the forest), envisages the maintenance of most of the existing site, the chimneys included.

Contemporary architectural visions are suffused with the colour of an artist’s brush and a splattering of spiritual enigma. No project is defined in functional Bauhaus or Brutalist terms. The design philosophy for the power station is no different, with its invocation of nature and mystery as though it were a “majestic ruin” one comes across in a forest.

Seemingly, the inspiration for the re-working of the power station was the Tate Modern, formerly the Bankside Power Station, a building originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the consultant for the Battersea Power Station.

Scott was essentially an architect of the modern school tinged with Gothic. Bankside was an example. As a reference point for the Alcúdia redevelopment, there is some sense to use it as a type of model. But, whereas the chimneys of both Bankside and especially Battersea (necessary functional elements) were the results of Scott’s design improvisation, the chimneys of the Alcúdia station can boast no architectural inspiration other than pure functionality. And as for the chimneys, so also for the whole edifice.

The Alcúdia station offers little expression of important industrial architecture, nor does it resonate with an industrial heritage which both the London power stations did and which it has been seen fit to preserve. Chimneys alongside the Thames are memorials to an industrial vigour, however much that may have dwindled over the years.

Stand, say, in Playa de Muro and scan your eyes along the bay of Alcúdia and you see a certain symmetry of low-rise hotel modernity, punctuated as the eyes look towards Alcanada by the towers of the station. For the looker, they are things to make the eyes sore. Yet, in that they break up that symmetry, they might be said to be of consequence. They serve both as landmarks on the landscape and as a visual shock. I am in favour of such shocks; I am also in favour of the preservation of industrial architecture (though I have previously questioned the point of preserving the Alcúdia station). The redesigned site will doubtless look splendid, close-up, but that visual shock on the landscape is not one that most want. The tourist on the beach wants serenity of view. Industrial images are, therefore, an affront. A tourist to London will happily admire such preservation, but in Alcúdia? Context is everything in architecture. A dome, now that might be ok.


From architecture to archaeology. “Ultima Hora” reports that work on a projected new residential development in Puerto Alcúdia is to be suspended for 20 days while an investigation is made into pottery remains found at the site (at the corner of Coral and Mar i Estany close by the Coral de Mar hotel). The investigation will seek to establish if there are grounds for excavation, as it is possible that the site corresponds to the port of the old Roman town. The discovery throws up a theory that, apparently, had not been tested, namely that remains of the Pollentia port could be in this part of Alcúdia.

This makes one wonder why it had not been considered. Furthermore, if these remains prove to be of importance, then one also wonders about other sites in the port area not already built on. Could parts of Puerto Alcúdia become vast excavation sites rather than places to build “thousands of dwellings” on?


QUIZ
Yesterday - Thomas Dolby, “Hyperactive”. Today’s title - a song by one of the best contemporary US bands.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)