Sancho's Succession: The Council

Before the Council of Mallorca was the Provincial Deputation and before the Provincial Deputation was the Grand and General Council. Local government has a long history. The Grand and General Council was established by Sanç I (Sancho I), the King of Mallorca, in 1315. Prior to this, there wasn't, post-Catalan invasion, a unitary authority for the island, unless one counts the king. There was instead an advisory council of "jurors", whose remit went little further than what was then the Ciutat de Mallorca, aka Palma.

The Grand and General Council survived for four centuries. The fallout from the War of the Spanish Succession put paid to it. The establishment of the Bourbon dynasty, the main result of the war, led to the repression of Catalan-speaking lands, the dismantling of the Crown of Aragon and also of its institutions - the Council was one of them.

It was to be almost one hundred years before there was again a unitary body. This was the Diputación Provincial de Baleares, the Provincial Deputation. It came about as a consequence of the Liberal Constitution of 1812. Theoretically, this swept away the "ancien régime" as it applied to Spain and in a similar style to the French Revolution. One says theoretically because the practice was to prove to be very different. The absolutist Ferdinand VII sold out the liberals who had supported his restoration and the defeat of Bonaparte, and the resultant mess was to be the clashes that marked much of the rest of the century.

The Provincial Deputation did, nevertheless, remain intact despite all the constant upheaval. In a way its creation might have seemed illiberal in that it was part of a centralist state system. But it was categorised, along with other deputations in Spain, as one of the "liberal deputations", an institution for a brand of political thinking that was to only periodically actually dominate.

The deputation was subject to the whims of the constant chaos that characterised Spain. It also struggled because of the absence of genuinely democratic structures. Nevertheless, it was to play an important role in, for instance, promoting the independence of the municipalities and to advance the likes of urban and educational policies. For a brief time, circa 1873, it looked as though it might disappear under the draft constitution drawn up by the First Republic. There was a charter for a federal state, and the Balearics was to have been a state within a state. The coup which saw the restoration of the Bourbons put paid to any such notion, and so the centralist system of government was maintained.

Invariably short of cash, there was a movement in 1916 towards decentralisation and autonomy for the Balearics, with the deputation driving the idea forward. That didn't get very far either, not least because the all-powerful interests of Joan March made sure that it didn't. When the first dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera, came to power in 1923, the deputation was dissolved and then re-created with hand-picked appointees. Under Franco, it was moribund for some years not because it ceased to be but because the bureaucracy was so great that nothing could get done.

In the immediate aftermath of Franco's death, the deputation clung desperately to Francoist ways, such as by refusing to allow Catalan to be used. In 1979, it finally disappeared.

The Council of Mallorca is really the successor to the original Grand and General Council. It may occupy the building that the Provincial Deputation had, but in spirit it owes more to what was dismantled in the early eighteenth century. The spirit, however, doesn't come into play when it comes to how to revoke a distinction given to Franco by the Provincial Deputation. In 1955, Franco was awarded the gold and diamond medal. Politicians of today, especially Més, want this taken away. The problem is, though, being able to determine the line of succession of institutions.

The deputation was initially replaced by the Consell General Interinsular, the inter-island general council. The individual island councils were to then appear, as did the regional government in 1983. This inter-island council is part of the problem in trying to determine whether or not the Council of Mallorca and the other island councils are the true heirs of the Provincial Deputation. If the Council of Mallorca isn't one, then it cannot by itself revoke the Franco award.

The solution would appear to be for the four island councils to all agree to remove the award, which one would think should be a simple enough procedure. There are those who argue that the issue is ludicrous. The Council of Mallorca is quite obviously the (or a) successor, given that it owns buildings of the old deputation.

They'll doubtless get round to it eventually. Sanç I, all those years ago, couldn't have known what his legacy would be.

Square Names: Spain and Franco

When, do you imagine, will the nationalist (Mallorcan) left in Palma present the motion for a decree to change the name of Plaça Espanya? There wouldn't be anything so mad as altering it officially to Plaza España (which officially it used to be), for clear reasons of politico-linguistic correctness, or Anglicising it as Spain Square (which would be utterly ridiculous). Rather, there would be an entirely different name. Anyone care to offer some alternatives? Perhaps there should be a referendum, otherwise known in Palma-land as a citizens' consultation.

One possibility might be Plaça Més in recognition of all things Mallorcan nationalist. Or how about pre-empting the elevation of the mayor-in-waiting to the rank of mayor next year? Rename it Plaça Antoni Noguera, the deputy mayor who models cities, or one in particular. While they're at it, just rename Palma, but for God's sake leave off the "de Mallorca": Antoni Noguera, the new capital of Mallorca, named in his own image.

Why might they even consider a renaming of the square? The clue, quite clearly, is in the current name. Espanya (aka España): Spain, a concept of nationalism at variance with the one promoted by Més. Think they might not? Well think again. The Més brethren in Sencelles have succeeded in getting the town's Spain square converted to, erm, the Town square, Plaça de la Vila.

Sencelles isn't of course Palma. It is a rural backwater known principally for its wine and for the youth of the municipality haring around the streets on old Mobylettes while being hosed down with water (drought, what drought?) and then rolling two giant bales of hay into the square (Espanya or otherwise) before proceeding to throw the hay at each other. But notwithstanding its comparative inconsequence in the scheme of Mallorcan things (everywhere is inconsequential compared with Palma), Sencelles may act as the spur for Palma to follow the lead of somewhere in the sticks rather than presuming that it must always lead others.

For Palma, for Més and for its republican tendencies, there is an additional justification. Més in Sencelles weren't simply objecting to Spain being the name of the square, there was also the fact that it was "Francoist denomination". And in this regard, Més were absolutely correct. The Spain name was applied following the Civil War, so the renaming is a case of going back to how things were. Few people actually call it Plaça Espanya in any event.

A similar situation applies to Palma's Plaça Espanya. Once upon a time, certainly from the seventeenth century, an area was known as the Plaça de la Porta Pintada in reference to the gate in the mediaeval walls through which it is said that King Jaume I entered in his conquest of 1229. The square was for a time also known as Joanot Colom. He was one of the leaders of the sixteenth-century Germanies uprising that was eventually put down by Carlos V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Colom was beheaded, drawn and quartered, and Porta Pintada was one of the locations for his remains to be put on show. This name endured for a couple of decades before it became Eusebi Estada, who was the chap mainly responsible for building Mallorca's railway. A further couple of decades on, and along came Franco.

In 1990, the Castellano Plaza España was officially dropped in favour of the Catalan. Around the same time, the name Plaça de la Porta Pintada was restored, but it refers only to a part by Olms street.

Going back in time, the historical legacy of the smaller square might suggest that the whole of Plaça Espanya should revert to its seventeenth-century name. Moreover, and apart from direct nationalist sentiments, there is also the fact of the statue of Jaume I and so the link to the days of the conquest and the tale of the Porta Pintada. However, given a desire for historical accuracy, Porta Pintada cannot claim to be the whole square, as it didn't used to occupy the area it now does.

Might there be a change of name? In Sencelles it probably doesn't cause too many issues, but in Palma it would do. Plaça Espanya is very well known and referenced. But as has been seen with the Feixina monument and the intention to demolish it, the current town hall is not averse to seeking to eliminate Francoist symbolism.

There are of course plenty of other Spain squares knocking around. Inca has one, for instance. As it also has a calle Héroes del Baleares, a reference to the same circumstances surrounding the monument. Més have been calling for it to be done away with for years. The street has another name, La Balanguera (the Mallorcan hymn), but the very fact that there are two names creates confusion.

Change the name of Plaça Espanya? Well maybe, but the confusion would be immense.

Reclaiming The Past: Mallorca's War Graves

The reclamation of the disappeared during the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship on the islands. It's something of a mouthful for the name of a law, but the mouthful is worth it. I'm not convinced that I have the translation absolutely right, as I struggle with the Spanish "recuperación" which is the original word (or rather "recuperació" to be linguistically correct in a Catalan style). Recuperation - restore to health - that doesn't seem right. Recovery? Possibly so in as much as what will be recovered. But reclamation seems to possess greater strength and moral correctness: a reclaiming of what was lost. Lives in this instance.

This is what had been proposed as the war graves (my words) act, though even this was stripped back to the titular barest bones (and I really don't mean a pun) of just "pits". The change to the title reflects a rare occurrence. Often cited, too often cited to be genuinely credible, consensus has nonetheless prevailed. And for once it is genuine enough. So it should be. Genuine, that is. One is talking about people who were murdered. That shouldn't be forgotten.

It had been the Partido Popular (and Ciudadanos) who had proposed the changed title. By doing so the law would appear less one solely driven by Republican sentiment. There would be a recognition that there were two sides and that two sides were capable of atrocity. Inclusion of "the Civil War" permits a nuance of the bipartisan: the two parties to the dreadful events of the second half of the 1930s. The insertion of "the Francoist dictatorship" enables the political right to observe its own revulsion. There may still exist - not may, do - Francoists on the political right, but the contemporary right has for the most part come to terms with the need to distance itself. And generally, it does so with sincerity.

The Balearic political parties stated their views. With consensus sought, found and delivered, there was a lack of stridency. The views were conciliatory. Margalida Capellà, the Més parliamentary deputy who was the chief sponsor of the bill, spoke of issues on which you cannot win, only convince. It was a day of celebration but also the saddest day in the parliament's history. Miquel Jerez for the PP said that the law will serve to "reclaim" the forgotten victims, to remind us of humanity and of memory that is life.

It was Maria Antònia Oliver of the association Memòria de Mallorca, which has been pressing the case for the exhumation of mass graves, who expressed things the best. "The approval of the law through the consent of all parties is a sign of democratic normalisation. This is not a political issue but one of humanity." Amen.

Someone of course did have to go and spoil it. Baltasar Picornell of Podemos displayed a Republican flag. Why? Why do that? The Republican sentiment is and was lost on no one. Why resort to symbolism at a moment of reconciliation?

But is this what it is? Reconciliation? Not as such. There has never been such a thing. It's partly why the Civil War still hangs over Mallorca and Spain: a cloud on the past which officialdom attempted to erase through, for example, the amnesty (aka amnesia). No, this was and is a belated recognition. It will be styled as one by the right, but the law's title facilitates a recognition by the left as well. Consensus as opposed to reconciliation. As it is with the insertion into the text of the adjective "possible". Possible crimes against humanity. This replaced the definitive. There had been no possibility, only certainty. One can never, at the distance of some eighty years, always be certain.

We are of course only weeks away from the eightieth anniversary of the start of the Civil War. A law to permit the exhumation of graves, to provide closure for the families of the disappeared, to raise the "possibility" of pursuing crimes against humanity is as close as there will be to any form of celebration. Just as apposite, if not more, is the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Amnesty Law. The UN has been pressing for Spain to meet obligations on crimes against humanity. The Balearics have now done so. There is no statute of limitations under international law.

Yet while the Balearic parliament, with mostly commendable dignity, has been enacting legislation, in Palma we have had the ongoing controversy of the Feixina monument. A dignified solution for this had been made six years ago: a monument to all victims. Now, the stridency of the left (and the right) is in contrast to the considered reflections of parliament.

Symbols like the monument cannot be ignored. It is perhaps too easy to overlook how deep the feelings remain among some: the genuine ones as opposed to the outraged expressions of politicians. It is for this reason that the monument should be debated with greater dignity. The war graves act offers consensus and a form of reconciliation that have come about through empathetic discussion. Baltasar Picornell says that it is a "big step to closing wounds". Quite so. The monument, on the other hand, is re-opening them.

Demolishing The Past: Sa Feixina's monument

Sa Feixina. It is the park in Palma as you turn off the Paseo Marítimo onto the Avenida Argentina and then go right for the Paseo de Mallorca. The origin of its name is uncertain. The Catalan-Valencian-Balearic Dictionary offers various alternatives. The favoured one is to describe a ramp embankment with beams ("feix" is a beam) made from branches and sand bags for the protection of soldiers on the outside of a fort. The land, which has belonged to the town hall since the seventeenth century, was modelled as a park in 1935, and a school was built. During the Civil War the school became a barracks. It wasn't to officially be returned to the town hall until the 1960s, a decade during which the park was used to house a fair dedicated to tourism and artisan crafts. In 1991 the park was given a makeover and so now consists of terraces with gardens, trees and various sculptures, one of which is by Aligi Sassu, he of horse-sculpting fame.

In 1928 construction began on a warship at the El Ferrol naval shipyard in Galicia. It was a giant of a ship, almost 200 metres in length. For various reasons it wasn't to be fully commissioned until 1936 and its first true voyage was in December of that year. Two years later the ship was sunk. At the battle of Cabo de Palos the "Baleares" was torpedoed. Eight hundred crew lost their lives. The "Baleares" had become one of the flagships of Franco's Nationalist navy. The torpedoes were those of the Republican navy.

Some years later, in 1945, a monument was built. Perhaps the apparently militaristic origins of the park's name was the reason for the choice of location or perhaps there was no militaristic connotation. Nevertheless, the monument was in memory of the "Baleares". Among the gardens and sculptures of Sa Feixina, the monument stands tall to this day. But for how much longer?

When José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was prime minister, his PSOE administration introduced the law of historic memory. Under this law symbols of Francoism could be removed. It was not a mandatory law in that decisions were left to local authorities to apply the law as they saw fit. It was also not a law that necessarily required the dismantling of physical manifestations of Francoism. The main principle of the law was that symbols which exalted Franco and the regime should go. 

In 2010 the administration in Palma, then led by PSOE's Aina Calvo, applied the law to the monument. A local decree was issued. This established that a shield and words exalting Franco's regime would be removed. The monument would otherwise stay, and there would be a new plaque. It was to read: "This monument was erected in 1945 in memory of the victims of the sinking of the battleship "Baleares" during the Civil War (1936-1939). Today it is a symbol for the city of the democratic will to never forget the errors of wars and dictatorships".

The text had in fact been agreed some years before the law had been brought in. It, and consideration of the monument under the provisions of the law, were studied by two law professors at the university. With their guidance the town hall adopted the decree, Calvo pointing out that the law did not require the monument's withdrawal and also noting that the law recognised the memory of all victims of the war. The monument was thus officially reinterpreted, and this interpretation was made when one of Calvo's deputy mayors was José Hila, now himself mayor of Palma.

The current administration under Hila, which comprises PSOE, Més and the Palma branch of Podemos, is seemingly going to go ahead in approving the demolition of the monument, which doesn't have any protected status insofar as it is not "catalogued" by the municipality, something that would afford it heritage preservation. As has been pointed out, however, in a new era of consultation and dialogue, there hasn't been any, including requests for reports from the likes of ARCA, the association for the preservation of old centres. It concedes that the monument doesn't necessarily have great artistic merit but it does have historical value, and it - as are others - is reminding the administration of the compromise that Calvo arrived at: one with which Hila was in agreement.

The arguments that are now raging are predictable ones. They include accusations that the leftist administration is representative of a tendency which wishes to continue to fight battles of almost eighty years ago but which should let things be. The reinterpretation of the monument was made, and it was done so to the satisfaction of a majority, but the counter-arguments have it that it remains a symbol of the horrors of Francoism and one, moreover, that took the name of the islands.

Con Ustedes, Los Beatles: 50 years ago

This was the set list. 1. "Twist And Shout". 2. "She's A Woman". 3. "I'm A Loser". 4. "Can't Buy Me Love". 5. "Baby's In Black". 6. "I Wanna Be Your Man". 7. "A Hard Day's Night". 8. "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby". 9. "Rock And Roll Music". 10. "I Feel Fine". 11. "Ticket To Ride". 12. "Long Tall Sally".

When this set list had been played in other European cities, the songs would not have been heard above the screams. This was the set list for the first performance of The Beatles in Spain. The day was 2 July, 1965. The place was the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid. There was to be only one other concert in Spain, the next day at the bullring in Barcelona.

It is said that the atmosphere and the sound were better in Barcelona, but neither concert was like it would have been in cities in countries that were not living under the repressive instincts of the Franco regime. At 10pm on the night of 2 July, the introduction was made - "señoras y señores con ustedes, Los Beatles". "Ustedes" summed it up: the formal form of you. The arena was only half full. Potential attendees had been deterred by concerns of police surveillance and bans by their parents. There was another reason for the low attendance: The Beatles weren't anything like as well known as they were in, say, Germany, France or Sweden. For a kick-off, their records couldn't be openly bought. Radio disc jockeys of the time had to go to London to acquire them.

Before the concerts, it was reckoned that, at most, 3,500 copies of Beatles' albums were owned across Spain. A Beatles' album in the UK would clear one million copies. This was one reason why Brian Epstein was reluctant to have the "boys" play Spain. He couldn't see there was any business advantage. Yet, of those 3,500 copies, some 2,000 were acquired by people who probably didn't even have a record-player; there were only 1,500 registered sales at that time. It was this fact that promoter Francisco Bermúdez used in persuading Epstein. If people would buy records even if they didn't have the means to play them indicated a demand, to which could be added the "underground" of listening to what were meant to have been forbidden foreign radio stations. 

Bermúdez had stuck his neck out in bringing The Beatles to Spain, and the promotion was certainly not plain sailing: not anything like it. A further reason for low sales was that tickets and posters were seized by the authorities which had sought to prevent the concerts going ahead. They were only released a week ahead of the Madrid concert, the regime having had a change of heart and the interior ministry having finally given permission. To have banned the concerts, the regime concluded, could have provoked a diplomatic row with Britain: the members of The Beatles had just been named in The Queen's birthday honours list.

Bermúdez also had to contend with fierce criticism from the Catholic Church and almost all the press. Threats to morality, threats of revolutionary thought, threats of "riots", threats to the regime and to "Spanishness". It is remarkable, given all the background, that the concerts ever went ahead.

John, Paul, George and Ringo arrived at Madrid airport at twenty to six on the afternoon of 1 July. Wild scenes of their arrival at other airports were not replicated, though somehow some 200 fans had managed to congregate to greet them, despite the heavy police presence. They stayed at the Hotel Fénix - now the Gran Mellá Fénix - in suites 123, 223, 323 and 423. There were no parties, no real going out, though it is said that Brian went to the Bourbon club, one of the few with a "gay" ambience. They did receive one notable visitor, though: the bullfighter El Cordobés, who wanted his photo taken with them. There were other photos to pose for. One that seems amazing now was with two officers from the Guardia Civil: John and Paul are saluting them.

The press coverage featured one double-page spread under the headline: "Los Beatles, Inhibición". There is a photo of two or three girls running with a banner which says "love you", another of five or six people dancing, a further one of The Beatles performing, John with the Cordoban hat that he wore throughout the concert. It lasted barely an hour and that was pretty much that, save for moving on to Barcelona for the second performance. It was, except for three concerts during a mini-tour of Germany the next summer, the last time The Beatles performed in Europe.

Last night at the Gran Mellá Fénix a special fiftieth anniversary occasion would have cost up to 1,425 euros. In 1965, the concert cost as little as 75 pesetas.

What Do These People Want?

In a year's time Spain faces a Franco issue. "El Caudillo" died on 20 November, 1975. Does the fortieth anniversary merit some form of honour, if only an acknowledgment? It is doubtful that it will, but there will nevertheless be those who consider the anniversary worthy of more than a footnote to official business.

Franco may be long dead, but his memory lingers. The Amnesty Law which followed his death can be dubbed the amnesia law, as it assisted in creating the collective loss of memory decreed by the newly democratic but unreconciled Spain. But this memory loss didn't extend to the extinguishing of all Francoist sympathies or indeed the evidence of physical manifestations of the regime. It wasn't until the Zapatero administration sought to remove these concrete or symbolic reminders via its law of historic memory that the statues started to be pulled down. The current government reduced the budget for this to zero.

The shadow cast by this lingering memory is such that for some Franco never died. As with Elvis, who followed him a couple of years later, there is doubtless a guy working down the chip shop who swears he's Franco. The years of linger are reminiscent of the months of linger prior to his passing in 1975. These were such that US television news would make repeated reference to Franco still being alive. Chevy Chase on "Saturday Night", the comedy show which was to later become "live", adopted and rephrased this - "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead".

Those months of lingering death and indeed years of failing health represented a period of uncertainty not just to the future but also to the present. Who was in charge and what actually were they in charge of? It was also a period during which a dying regime and its fellow travellers would show their spite and attempt to assert their fading authority, and there were two incidents which occurred forty years ago this month which demonstrate this.

At around about a quarter past midnight on 22 November, 1974 a bomb exploded at the offices of the "Diario de Mallorca". There were no injuries, but it was the third attack of some description on the newspaper in less than a month, the second of which involved the daubing of graffiti that was reproduced elsewhere in Palma. It read: "Tácito. No. Falange". Tácito was a reference to a group of intellectuals, politicians and journalists who, as the death of Franco neared, sought democratic solutions and who took to print in espousing them. The Falange, Franco's one-time Thought Police, didn't take at all kindly to them.

The Falange was very much one of the regime's fellow travellers, but it had been on the death bed a lot longer than Franco. Its power had been diminishing from the early 1960s, but it also lingered. It is a mark, however, of the extent to which the Falange was distanced from the regime that the conservative "ABC" newspaper could openly report the bombing as the work of the Falange. As such, it was indicative of the extent to which the full apparatus of the Franco dictatorship had been undermined and had been crumbling from the 1960s when tourism and pressing economic needs had brought about new thinking. Yet, it was an element associated with the dictatorship which viewed the potential for democracy with horror and so made its desperate final attempts to assert itself.

The other incident concerns Mallorca's greatest folk singer, María del Mar Bonet. On 7 November, 1974 she was arrested in Barcelona, accused of having been spreading subversive propaganda. It was not the first time she had encountered problems. In 1971 she had been arrested after a concert in Zaragoza and had been subjected to, in her words, "an horrific interrogation". She was held overnight and no longer, and nothing was to really come of her detention three years later. But it was a reminder of how the regime, though in its death throes, could still not stomach any criticism. Her main crime was to have put the music to and have sung "Què volem aquesta gent?" (what do these people want?), a song dedicated to Enrique Ruano, a student, anti-Franco militant who had died in police custody in 1969.

But what the regime could stomach even less than the criticism was Bonet's popularity. She was by then nationally and internationally acclaimed. Her arrest in 1974 was proof of its desperation and of final displays of malice, which brought scorn from the international community and increasingly from a Spanish one as well.

Franco believed that Juan Carlos would carry his legacy forward. He was wrong. The spitefulness of the bombing and the arrest, the rise of Tácito were all evidence of a regime and ideology on the point of collapse. There was to be no other way than democracy.

Photo: Maria del Mar Bonet in her younger days.

What Is The Truth?: Francesc de Borja Moll

A publishing house closed last month. It was eighty years old and was one of Mallorca's most important and most famous publishing companies. Its name was, and remains for the time being, Editorial Moll. It had been battling against financial difficulties for some years, had been placed in administration and, despite fundraising efforts, finally lost the battle. As part of the process of liquidation, buyers are likely to be sought for the collection of hundreds of thousands of books at its headquarters. Included among this vast collection is the "Diccionari català-valencià-balear", a work of enormous significance in that it was the first dictionary to bring together different strands of Catalan. It was a work which had been started by Antoni Maria Alcover, who died in 1932, and which was finally completed in 1962 by the person after whom the company was named - Francesc de Borja Moll Casanovas.

The timing of the founding of Editorial Moll in 1934 was both good and bad; good because it was during the period of the Second Republic, bad because of what happened two years later. Under the Republic, Catalan could flourish, and Editorial Moll was a publishing house for Catalan. So, given the bad timing, what happened to the company and to its founder once the Franco regime and the Falange set about their prohibition and persecution of Catalan?

My own knowledge of Borja Moll goes back some years. I came to know about him because he, like Antoni Maria Alcover, is afforded high levels of reverence in Mallorca, especially Alcover. I confess, however, that until now and with an interest sparked off by the closure of Editorial Moll, I had never paid over much attention to his background. And so, it was with more than a little surprise that I found a lengthy article by an historian, Mariano Bendito Saura, that was posted on his blog in 2011 and which was entitled "The historical-linguistic misrepresentations of Francesc de Borja Moll" **.

The company, it would appear, didn't encounter any great difficulties and nor did Borja Moll. And that was because, and Bendito is not the only one to have asserted this, he was a member of the Falange. Bendito says that during the Civil War Borja Moll was in the propaganda department of the Falange and goes on to say that in 1940 he collaborated on a project which was sponsored, among others, by Pilar Primo de Rivera, sister of the founder of the Falange and therefore daughter of the 1920s' dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera. This project was a propaganda exercise to promote the notion of Catalan fascism and a unitary Catalan and language.

Bendito's article, apart from being lengthy, is complex and far from straightforward. It devotes attention to detail of linguistic development and cites innumerable references to this development and to political interference and orders. But at the start of the article, he makes his sentiments clear. "Borja Moll (director of Editorial Moll, ex-Falangist from Palma de Mallorca ...) is an unethical and dishonest person who sold Catalan imperialism and who betrayed and disowned all Balearic historical and linguistic truth." He implies, therefore, that "Catalanisation" of the islands' languages was an invention but was one which re-emerged from 1970 in a very different political and cultural form.

Bendito, who describes himself as being "passionate for historical truth", paints a picture of Borja Moll which is hard to reconcile with what he achieved, e.g. founding the Obra Cultural Balear in 1962 or the grand honour for Catalan "letters" in 1971, and with what Editorial Moll became, a publishing house of great significance which promoted Catalan and which over its eighty years published works by names of cultural and historical importance such as Alcover and the poet Miquel Costa i Llobera. Perhaps Borja Moll had been put under pressure by the Falange. He wouldn't have been the only one. Whatever his involvement, it didn't last, and nor did the strict anti-Catalan dogma that the Franco regime initially pursued with such rigour.

The article does, however, point to complex linguistic arguments which, while somewhat obscure and arcane, inform so much of current-day arguments in Mallorca, those to do with language, culture and education. Bendito is not unique in presenting a version of history which seeks to debunk a Mallorcan link to Catalan (and thus Catalonia) and to the notion of the Catalan Lands. The problem is, and with the greatest of respect to him and to his research, getting at the "truth" is made difficult because of how current-day politics create fertile ground for competing versions of history. His version is firmly in the anti-Catalanist camp.

Editorial Moll folded because of financial difficulties, and one source of these difficulties was the elimination of regional government support for books in Catalan. Borja Moll's son says that this stemmed from "the government's extreme belligerence towards Catalan". Politics, always politics.

** http://historiaregnemallorca.blogspot.com.es/2011/04/tergiversaciones-historico-linguistas.html

Hippie Island: The curious story of Ibiza

An exhibition being held in Malmö, Sweden will be coming to an end this weekend. It is an exhibition devoted to hippies of the Soviet era, entitled "The Psychedelic Underground of 1970s Estonia". The exhibition considers how the hippie movement in Estonia took shape and was able to survive, despite attempts to subvert it by a Soviet regime which viewed it as a genuine political threat.

It seems remarkable that a counter-culture movement based on peace, love, freedom and free-thinking could even have existed in the Soviet Union, but somehow it was able to establish itself, and in Estonia there were ingredients that made it more likely to catch on there than in other parts of the old USSR. Estonia is close to Nordic countries with which it has long had much in common, especially with Finland, as the Estonian language comes from the same Uralic family as Finnish. Since gaining independence, Estonia has moved pretty easily towards a Nordic liberal model, reflecting perhaps an inherent attitude among Estonians that had remained beneath the surface during Soviet times. It was also on the periphery of the Soviet Union, though that didn't mean it was wholly disregarded; its position on the Baltic was, after all, pretty strategic for a paranoid Soviet military and government.

But its location may, nevertheless, be important in understanding how a hippie movement could have sprung up, because there is a certain similarity, in terms of remoteness, to how hippie culture caught hold in Franco's Spain; this was not a culture of mainland Spain but of Ibiza.

It is one of the oddities of the 1960s and 1970s that hippies became associated with islands that were controlled by two fascist regimes. Ibiza was one, the other was the south side of Crete. The hippy trail that didn't venture beyond Europe had two end points; the shorter route was to Ibiza, the longer one was to Crete. The similarity between the two islands was their relative isolation. Franco could effectively ignore the hippies in Ibiza, as the Greek colonels could ignore those in Crete. So long as they caused no trouble, and they never did, then they were left alone.

Ibiza, though, became the epicentre of Spanish and European hippydom. It was cut off from the mainland but it was also a lot easier to get to than to Crete. Because it (and Formentera for that matter) was less developed for tourism than Mallorca (and possibly Menorca), Ibiza had more going for it as the magnet to attract Spain's and Europe's hippies.

It is a matter of interest, though, why hippies would have descended on an island under fascist rule and why, despite the remoteness of the Balearics, they were able to in such great numbers. Free-thinking, free-loving hippies were, as in Estonia, the total antithesis of an authoritarian state which, in Spain's case, was dominated by the straightjacket of Falangist intellectual dogma and strict Catholicism. But it is perhaps an example of how contrary the Franco regime could be, when it suited. Hippies they may have been, but they were still tourists - sort of - and they did add to the local economy.

Seemingly, the greatest concerns that the hippies had involved the Guardia Civil nabbing them when they were cavorting about kit-off. Otherwise, and as a report from the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" of 4 July 1970 revealed, hippies ran up against the forces of the law only when they were being asked to get washed. The report says that hippies were "invited" to wash and clean themselves up for a hippie wedding that was taking place on Ibiza.

It would appear, and this is an additional curiosity, that just prior to Franco's death and immediately afterwards hippies were abandoning Ibiza. It has been suggested that this was to do with external events, such as the end of the Vietnam War, and that the hippie movement had simply run out of steam. But even if there was an exodus then, Ibiza didn't lose its hippie culture or anything like it. What happened was that, in part, it metamorphosised, and music had much to do with this. In 1973, there was a notable arrival on Ibiza. José Padilla. He was to eventually become identified with the Café del Mar and ambient music, which, together with trance and rave, were to no small extent the offspring of psychedelia. The Ibiza clubs, and Pacha and Amnesia both opened in 1973, have of course become the stuff of legend.

The Ibiza hippie culture lives on. And as such, it is a fascinating example of how an imported social movement came to mould an island's very being. In Estonia, I'll bet they wished that they had had better weather.

A Question Of Degree: Tourism morality

I have never been to The Maldives. It is one of those holiday destinations that is a brochure-writer's dream. How many meaningless superlatives for islands set amidst turquoise seas with romantic, palm-lined, velvety white beaches can be contained in a brochure? The entire brochure thesaurus can be thrown at descriptions of The Maldives. But you won't find any descriptions about what it must be like if you are a fifteen-year-old girl who has been raped and who finds herself anticipating receiving a hundred lashes for her crime. Crime? How in Allah's name or any other name, can she have committed a crime?

An online petition that urges a tourism boycott of The Maldives has thus far attracted almost two million names. The islands' tourism minister has said that this damage to the tourism industry must stop. There wouldn't be a campaign in Switzerland to damage Swiss chocolate, he has protested bizarrely. No, there probably wouldn't be, but then the Swiss don't as a rule go around lashing fifteen-year-old rape victims.

If the petition succeeds, then good. If it means the collapse of a miserable government with a miserable tourism minister, then also good. Tourists taking a genuine stand against miserable regimes is long overdue. But will they? Or will tourism life just carry on much as normal, a blind eye being turned to inhumanity and turned instead to the grass sunshades dotted along those velvety white beaches where tourists can relax on sturdy wooden sun loungers listening to the gentle lapping of the turquoise sea and the screams of a girl being given a far from gentle thrashing?

Tourism and morality are often mutually exclusive. Defining tourist morality or immorality is a question of the degree of the possible immorality. Is it immoral for a tourist to come to Mallorca, stay in an all-inclusive and as a result primarily fill the coffers of a foreign tour operator? Whether it is or it isn't, no one is getting hurt. Not physically at any rate. No one is lending support to the main industry of a miserable regime that came into power by overthrowing a democratically elected president.

However, cast your minds back a few decades. Europe wasn't short of miserable regimes. Their level of miserableness was also a question of degree. For a time, the Greeks could boast one of the most miserable. It was that miserable that when I crossed the border by train from Yugoslavia, a young Yugoslav was dragged off the train and beaten up on the platform in full view of everyone on the train. Moments later, the corridors were full of Greek hostesses, beaming brightly and welcoming everyone to Greece. But then again, Tito's Yugoslavia wasn't necessarily a shining example of tolerance. And nor was Franco's Spain and so nor was Mallorca. Spain's fascism may by then have become a comedy, sunglassed villain of fascism but it was still fascism.

One of the less considered aspects of Mallorca's rise to tourism domination in the sixties is the moral one. The argument in favour of foreign tourism to Mallorca was that tourism would help ordinary people. That it would also help the regime was indisputable, but the regime being helped would mean an improved economy and greater wealth. And, as things were to turn out, the argument was a correct one. The moral issue was one that exercised British politicians more than it did tourists. The British Government, certainly in the 1950s, had no time for Franco, and this was why it did all it could to prevent British businesspeople getting involved with Mallorca's nascent tourism industry. Not that it deterred these businesspeople. And once it became clear that the Americans didn't give a damn about fascism (or rather, gave a very big damn about communism) and were willing to pump vast amounts of dollars into Spain, then the British changed their tune.

There were attempts to boycott tourism to Mallorca. The British Communist Party proposed one in the early 1960s but dropped it on the advice of their Spanish comrades. The National Union of Mineworkers urged members not to go to Mallorca and Spain in 1969. Amnesty International put up posters in airports in 1970 that were designed to dissuade tourists.

The fact is that tourists took very little notice, if any. Were they morally wrong therefore? Perhaps it was a question of degree in a different sense; that of the level of awareness that was much lower then and is much higher today. Will this awareness have an impact on The Maldives? Maybe it will or maybe it won't. Tourism and morality are not the same thing.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

An American In Pollensa: Temple Fielding

In Puerto Pollensa there is a street that connects the coast road to the Calle Juan XXIII just by the petrol station. To one side of this street is La Gola, the wetland and so-called "green heart" of the resort. La Gola is not the point of this story, though perhaps it could be. What might a travel-writer have made of La Gola as it was or of the view as you came to the end of what is now this street and had looked out over the bay of Pollensa?

The name of this street is Calle Temple Fielding. How many people nowadays remember Temple Fielding? He did after all die 30 years ago. Will there be, on 18 May this year, an appropriate tribute paid to him? A tribute by Pollensa town hall, by the Balearics regional government or even the Spanish national government?

Street names reveal all manner of history and any number of personalities from the past. And one of these personalities is Temple Fielding, an adopted son of Pollensa. For many years, he lived with his wife Nancy in a fourteen-room villa in Formentor. He rented an office in Puerto Pollensa. Temple Fielding was American, an American travel-writer. He published the Fielding's Travel Guides, one of which was to Mallorca.

Temple Hornaday Fielding was 69 when he died. By then, he and his wife had moved to a penthouse in Palma, as the villa had become too much for them to look after. He was, nevertheless, buried in Pollensa, on 20 May 1983.

Fielding began his guide-publishing business after the Second World War. It was he, more than perhaps anyone, who revealed Europe to American tourists. He started writing about Spain at a time when the country was still, so one would think, very much in the darker days of Francoism. However, in 1952, Fielding observed that, despite the reputation that Spain might have had, political matters would never cross the path of the vacationer. That vacationer could go where he wished to and do what he wanted. There were no shadows to frighten him as there were in the Soviet states, Yugoslavia or, intriguingly, Vienna.

Spain's tourism boom of the sixties was partly the product of a desire on behalf of the Franco regime to attract foreign exchange, but it is wrong to suggest that this benefit was was only appreciated at the end of the 1950s. The regime had been well aware of it several years before; it had been brought home to it by important players bringing American tourists to Spain - American Express, TWA and Conrad Hilton.

Into this American mix came Temple Fielding. Though fiercely anti-Communist, Fielding was initially guarded about Franco. Nevertheless, he was so taken with Spain that he chose to make it his base and home. In 1951, he set up that home in Mallorca. Two years later, he had shed any misgivings in making the case for the strategic importance of Spain to the USA. He offered, to what he considered to be American Communist-dupe anti-Francoites, a defence of Franco. The regime had  had "to wrest the land from the Communists" and it had built "a firmer and better-balanced nation than some others into which we (American governments) have poured millions - without five cents of outside help".

The Franco regime could scarcely believe its luck. Fielding had already become an established name and now he was acting as an apologist for the regime and as a promoter of tourism - by wealthy, currency-exchange-strong Americans. He was given a chauffeur and afforded every courtesy as he travelled around Spain researching his guide.

Though his style was sometimes criticised, Fielding was enormously influential. And in his style and in what he believed, I find some echoes of my own thoughts. In articles, I use the word "tourist" because it is convenient to do so, but I don't really care for it. Fielding never referred to tourists, only to vacationers, voyagers or travellers. He also wondered how much these travellers cared for culture. They paid lip service to it, giving far greater priority to their hotels and their comforts.

Today, there is not a great amount of American tourism - sorry, vacationing - to Mallorca. There are some Americans who live on the island, a few of whom are in Pollensa. Thirty years on from his death, and coinciding with the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Mallorcan missionary to California, Fray Juniper Serra, should there be a concerted effort to boost this American tourism and influence? This will be the year of Juniper Serra, but, important though Serra was, Fielding was arguably as important. Serra took Christianity to a part of America, Fielding brought Americans to Mallorca.

* Fielding featured on the cover of "Time Magazine", June 1969: http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19690606,00.html


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Los Kinks: Mallorca and sixties pop

Francesc Vicens can't be accused of not being eclectic in his musical interests. Two years ago, the views of this Mallorcan musicologist were being widely sought when the Sibil·la chant was placed on UNESCO's list of practices which add to the "intangible cultural heritage of humanity". He has now produced a book on a subject far removed from the folk and religious heritage of the Sibil·la. Entitled "Paradise of Love", it deals with pop music and culture in the Mallorca of the sixties.

The book's subtitle is "L'Illa imaginada". From this, I take it that the book is in Catalan. It sounds as if consideration should be given to publishing it in English as well. Sixties pop groups from Mallorca would be unfamiliar to almost anyone who wasn't Mallorcan, but the groups themselves are only as important as the cultural context of the growth of tourism, the influence of pop culture from the UK and the US and the social climate of Mallorca under Franco. As such, it appears to be as much a social history as it is a musical one. Its story deserves to be told more widely.

Spanish pop music in the sixties, as far as a British audience was concerned, was of little consequence. There may have been others but the only hit song that comes to mind is Los Bravos' "Black Is Black". Los Bravos weren't completely Spanish in that the singer, Michael Kogel, was German, but Los Bravos had a connection with Mallorca. It was at the Jaima nightclub in Cala Mayor that Kogel met members of a group called Los Sonor from Madrid. They joined forces and eventually changed their name to Los Bravos.

Otherwise, Spanish popular music meant that from Latin America and the US. "Guantanamera" was a hit in 1966 for the American group The Sandpipers whose version retained some Spanish lyrics from a song that was originally Cuban; the song's title means, by the way, woman from Guantánamo, a place that has since acquired an altogether different reputation. There was Herb Alpert, who was American, and his "Spanish Flea" and very little else.

Mallorcan pop groups of the time that Vicens has chronicled will mean very little, but the names of the groups of that era certainly reflected the era: Los Bohemios; Los Millionarios, who apparently had a big hit with "Jardín de Rosas", a cover of Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden"; Los Geminis who did their own take on Tommy James & The Shondells' "Mony, Mony"; Los Telstars who were part of Beatlemania in a Mallorcan style, though they dared to venture into Troggs territory by recording "A Girl Like You". There was also a duo, Juan and Junior; Juan was from Palma and Junior was from The Philippines and they were about as big as it got in Mallorca in those days. They were for a time part of Los Brincos who recorded a song called "El Pasaporte" which was apparently critical of Franco.

I've listened to a not terribly good quality recording of "El Pasaporte" (its English version) and it wasn't bad, though it's difficult to make the lyrics out, and I have to thank, as I also do for names of artists listed above, a remarkable resource at http://66spanishgarage.blogspot.com.es for making it available. I urge you to visit this website as it is full of absolute gems.

Being critical of Franco wasn't the best career move a pop group or anyone could make in the 1960s, but the fact that there may have been some criticism, albeit almost subliminal, does indicate the way in which the sixties brought about social change in Mallorca, and especially in Mallorca and the Costas because of tourism. Allied to nudges from the US for more liberalism in return for all the aid that was coming Franco's way, tourism plus pop culture began to erode Francoism. Yet, as Vicens appears to point out in his book, protest wasn't a facet of this new pop culture. It may not have been openly expressed in the music, but it surely played its part in altering society, given that protest had moved into the pop mainstream and away from its folk roots of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and others.

Occasionally, you stumble across an item in the local press that pulls you up and makes you think: "now that's really interesting". So it was with the piece about Vicens' book in "Ultima Hora", replete with a poster for The Kinks (and not Los Kinks) at Palma's bullring on 17 July 1966. The combination of the sixties (with all the baggage the sixties imply), tourism, a society in change, music and pop culture is a heady and vibrant mix. I do hope a way is found to publish this book in English.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Cleaning Hands: Garzón and the Duke

There are times when news reports make you sit up and pay particular attention. They do so because something crops up that you hadn't expected or makes you wonder what it has to do with otherwise repetitious news.

So it was with a news item related to the Duke of Palma affair. This is all terribly repetitious as it is a constant diet of evidence being made public that appears to drop the Duke ever deeper into it. But this particular news item referred to an organisation that I hadn't been aware of playing a part in the affair.

It was the headline that caught my eye. It referred to a "denuncia" against Iñaki Urdangarin (the Duke) by Manos Limpias. It was Manos Limpias that I had not expected. What did it have to do with the case against the Duke?

You might well ask what Manos Limpias is. Its full name is Colectivo de Funcionarios Públicos Manos Limpias, a union of public-sector workers that has only a few thousand members. Why should a union be involving itself with Urdangarin?

The denuncia was raised in Valencia and has to do with accusations of fraud against the Duke and his institute and accusations against representatives of the Valencia Generalitat. The court in Palma which is overseeing the case against the Duke has yet to be decide if the Manos Limpias denuncia will be incorporated into its own proceedings.

In the sense that the public authority in Valencia has been implicated, one can see why a public-sector union might become involved. But Manos Limpias is more than a union. Its name means "clean hands", and it works against corruption of different types, hence its name, and devotes a great deal of energy in pursuing cases of corruption and also in issuing denuncias.

On the face of it, this seems all perfectly laudable, but Manos Limpias operates with a very specific agenda, one that is well to the right of the political spectrum. Its founder was a leading light in the National Front, a party that was wound up in the first half of the 1990s and whose politics were as you might expect given its name. The founder, Miguel Bernard Remón, has been honoured by the Francisco Franco National Foundation; yes, that Franco.

Of other of its denuncias, perhaps the most celebrated is that against the judge Baltasar Garzón. The case against Garzón for exceeding his powers and going against the post-Franco amnesty in seeking to order exhumation of graves and to pursue crimes against humanity related to the Civil War and afterwards has largely been the doing of Manos Limpias and the current-day Falange.

Manos Limpias has not, though, issued just one denuncia against Garzón. There have been nineteen since the 1990s. The union says it doesn't have anything against Garzón, but the frequency with which it has denounced him does rather suggest otherwise.

The case against Garzón related to the Franco-era investigation, which is to come to court this month, is political, pure and simple. State prosecutors had rejected charges against Garzón, so the court case, as also with one to do with the so-called caso Gürtel, under which Garzón was pursuing Partido Popular politicians for corruption, is in effect a private prosecution.

The Garzón affair is frankly an embarrassment to Spain. He may have got carried away with his own celebrity and power, but the hounding of Garzón throws up unpleasant questions about the forces of the right and far right within the country and about the lingering legacy of Franco which Garzón sought the opportunity to investigate and which others denied him.

But what of the Duke of Palma? There is no direct link with Garzón, but there is now a common theme of Manos Limpias. The allegations against the Duke are another embarrassment - to the Royal Family - and his wife, Princess Cristina, is being dragged into the affair more and more, Manos Limpias having also called for a tax-office inspection into her links with the Duke's businesses.

There is a real fear that the Royal Family will be discredited as a consequence of what the Duke may or may not have done. And at the head of the Royal Family is King Juan Carlos, the man who rejected Francoism and the man who put a stop to the attempted coup in 1981.

In Spain there is a law of historic memory that is designed to remove the symbols of the Franco period. In Spain, however, there is also a long memory of Franco. Garzón didn't want to let it go, and nor do others want to let it go.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Here Come Da Judge: The Garzón affair

In a café - Spanish - the other afternoon, the television was on. Nothing unusual in this. What was, was what was on. There was a platform of serious-looking speakers. Sounds dull? A party conference maybe? No. It transfixed me. This was an event in support of a judge. It is difficult to imagine a conference either taking place, let alone being televised, in support of "m'lud" in England. But this is Spain.

The event was organised by two of the main unions. Those from the world of the arts and culture were on hand as well to show support for Baltasar Garzón, the most celebrated of Spain's investigating judges.

Back in October 2008, Garzón announced that he was ordering an investigation into crimes committed by the Franco regime. As part of this investigation, graves were due to be dug up. The Spanish attorney-general opposed the investigation, and ultimately Garzón was ordered to call it off. But it didn't stop there. He is now being investigated by the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (supreme court) in Madrid, accused of "prevaricación" (that word again), manipulating the course of justice and even of some financial wrongdoing. Under the terms of the amnesty of 1977, it is argued (with justification), that Garzón had no right to go around digging up the past.

That he may have exceeded his powers, for which a formal slap on the wrist might have been thought sufficient, has not stopped a process of bringing him to book, one inspired mainly by the far-right in Spain, including the Falange. Didn't know that the Falange still existed? Well they do. The leader of the centre-right Partido Popular, Mariano Rajoy, called the conference in support of Garzón "anti-democratic". The actions of the supreme court have been described, by the left, as "fascist". Forces across the political spectrum are adopting their positions in respect of a judge who, in theory at any rate, acts independently of politics.

For some, Garzón is getting his rightful comeuppance. Others will be revelling in the schadenfreude of a judge with such international celebrity being investigated. Yet more will see the case as an attack on judges' independence. Garzón has not exactly been reticent in courting his celebrity, which, in itself, may be a problem with the system of investigating judges. His attempt to extradite Pinochet was, and remains, his best-known moment in the international spotlight, and international is apt as he seems wedded to the notion of international jurisdiction, something that the Spanish Government has acted to limit.

There is a line of argument that Garzón, in seeking to investigate Franco's crimes, was acting in accordance with law on human rights. The amnesty of 1977 not only heralded a period of collective national amnesia it also undermined any attempt at indicting those who had committed atrocities. This may have suited the immediate post-Franco Spain, but it can also be argued that it left a festering sore, one that has been opened - politically - by the current administration's law on historic memory. An amnesty, so one view has it, cannot rule out a requirement to investigate when the issue of human rights is at stake.

But more than anything, and notwithstanding the accusations against Garzón that he exceeds his powers and is over-zealous, the current case against him highlights the hold that the Franco period still has over Spain. Additionally, one can set the Garzón affair within the context of the spate of corruption allegations. Despite claims that these have been politically motivated, independent investigators are crucial to the exercise of Spanish democracy. If politicians, by their indiscretions, cannot adequately support that democracy, then the judges have to do it for them. A curb on their powers, and this is how one can assess the Garzón affair, might be welcomed in certain quarters, but those powers have never been more important than at present in rooting out the malaise that weakens democratic institutions.

Garzón did go too far. That is the problem. Perhaps he felt emboldened by a political atmosphere, one created by the law on historic memory and not averse to rummaging through the Francoist past. This would have been his first mistake, as it would have politicised, albeit indirectly, his investigation. It may sound unpalatable to those who seek to right the wrongs of the Franco period, but his second mistake was in choosing the wrong investigation and in lining himself up against some still powerful, one might even say dark, forces. And for this, he may end up stripped of his powers. A question will be, will others?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Handshakes All Round: Masons in Mallorca

It is doubtful that many of you will have been aware of a meeting that has just taken place in Palma - it was the 29th annual assembly of the Gran Logia de España. The grand lodge. Freemasons. A new grand master has been elected. Despite the secrecy that surrounds masonry, both the assembly and the election have been given some prominence in the Spanish press, and "brothers" have been quite willing to talk.

This has been the first occasion that the lodge has gathered in Palma, which probably explains the publicity that the assembly has attracted. But there are other reasons for the column inches, most notably the history of masonry in Spain during much of the last century. At a time when symbols of Franco's era are being dismantled - under terms of the law of historic memory - the masons are also symbolic of that era, in that they were persecuted and murdered. Franco had any number of elements of society in his sights, but none more so than masons. The generalísimo may not have shared Hitler's extreme anti-Semitism, but this didn't stop him perceiving a Jewish-masonic conspiracy alongside the communism of Republicanism. In the same way as Jews were once offered the chance to convert to Catholicism as a way of avoiding the Inquisition, so masons among Franco's supporters at the time of the Civil War were given the option to renounce the brotherhood. Some chose not to and went into exile; others were not so fortunate.

The relative openness of current-day masonry in Spain and Mallorca is indicative of societal changes since Franco's time. Yet it is questionable as to how well it sits with this "new" Spain. The exclusion of women is one aspect of this. Elements within the arch-conservative Catholic right have portrayed the country as now being under the control of socialists, communists and masons. From both ends of the spectrum - liberal and reactionary - the masons continue to be controversial. Masonic influence, real or imagined, is not difficult to understand. Secret societies in Spain have wielded influence. One other, Opus Dei, was virtually a Francoist think-tank of technocrats that moulded economic transformation. The Spanish grand lodge, on its website, does though insist that it is not a secret society.

In the Balearics, there are eleven masonic lodges, five of which use English as their language. One other uses German. Roughly a half of Balearic masons are in fact British or German. This does rather hint at an essentially social-club style of island masonry. In one of the press articles about the grand lodge - from "The Diario" - it has been revealed that there are some 400 members of these eleven lodges and that the average age of a "brother" is between 35 and 40. The age may suggest that masonry is in relatively good health in the Balearics, but 400 members hardly represent a mass movement, so the chances of encountering a funny handshake are probably remote.


Eurovision
As I know you do of course like all this stuff, you will want to know about the Spanish entry for this year's Eurovision. And continuing to bring you some musical item, here it is. Inspiring. Nul points beckon - if there's any justice. (And what is that girl doing with the rocking horse at 1.28?) Daniel Diges, "Algo Pequeñito":




QUIZ:
Yesterday - Pat Benatar, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjY_uSSncQw.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Farmer Was The Last Of His Kind

The former mayor of Muro, Jaume Perelló, explained in a valedictory interview that the golf course in Muro represented a further diversification of the local economy away from just farming. The other day I mentioned the renovations that are due to occur at the ethnology museum in the town, the one devoted to life as it was before tourism. As if to emphasise the one-time overriding significance of agriculture to the town, reinforcing Perelló's point, a local archivist, Sebastià Riutort, has conducted a major project to collect, clean and restore, and classify documents related to the farming co-operative of Muro. In total, the documents occupy 19 metres of shelf space. It is an extraordinary example of diligent historical record-keeping and an important collection of primary source material for study by historians and others with an interest in not only Muro's but the island's past.

"The Diario" reports on this archive, one that charts the founding and history of the "Cooperativa Agricola Murense". In historical terms, the co-operative is of relatively recent origin, but this makes it even more powerful a subject for historical record and scrutiny as, until the 1970s, Muro, a town with no port or seafront as such up to that time, was wholly an agrarian economy and as the actual year of the founding was 1937. The co-operative was a thing, therefore, of the Civil War and of the Franco era and administrative philosophy; in the same year a similar co-operative was established in neighbouring Sa Pobla. Neither event was insignificant in terms of the post-Civil War economy of Spain and in terms of how work was organised under Franco. To appreciate this significance, it is necessary to understand that the Spanish economy for 20 years after the end of the Civil War was an autarky, in other words a self-sufficient economy that substituted imports with everything produced internally, regardless of cost or productivity. It was not until the Stabilisation Plan of 1959, largely crafted by technocrats from Opus Dei, that Spain moved towards something of a functioning capitalist economy. The Muro co-operative was but one element of that autarky, and the archive contains records of the relationship with organisations such as that which centrally regulated the potato and sweet potato business in the Balearics. Just how closely the co-operative was associated with Franco can be recognised in one of its statutes, which refers to farmers making Spain "one, great and free", and in the documentation of a meeting in 1940 when the assembly rose and offered cries of "Franco, Franco, Franco".

Together with the ethnology museum development, this archive suggests that, in Muro at any rate, history is, if not alive exactly then very real and well. Thoroughly laudable and outstanding examples of preserving local culture and history.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The connection was The Marx Brothers and so - "Animal Crackers", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdKC7jOGAyQ. Today's title - this comes from something of a protest song by someone rocking in the free world.

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

Brothers, Sisters, Where Are You Now?

Does Mallorca never get snow? To see some of the reports the past couple of days, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is a once-in-a-generation event. Except it isn't. It is an at least once if not several times a winter event. But no, somehow space is there to be filled, so let's do so with some photos of those grey peaks, looking slightly less than grey and fairly white. Big deal.

It's also not as though it has hit really low temperatures or as though it has snowed at sea level. I have known it to be minus one and to be snowing (after a fashion) in Alcúdia and Playa de Muro. It was something of an apology for "snowing" - squalls of big sleet, if there is such a thing as big sleet. We have yet to experience anything comparable with that, but one thing that can be said, though, is that it does seem to have been a colder and wetter winter than normal. Even the locals are saying this, so it must be the case, I suppose.


Elsewhere, and rather less trivial than the nature of the weather and a few shots of some snowy mountains, there is news that the crusading judge - Balatasar Garzón - is stirring up the Francoist pot once more. This is the same judge who had wanted graves to be dug up as part of a campaign against former members of the Franco regime and era who might have committed crimes against humanity. A stop was put to that, so now it would appear that Judge Garzón has turned his attention to children of Republicans who were taken away from their parents. Perhaps you were unaware that this was another of the rather unpleasant aspects of the Franco period. They couldn't have the poor children of Spain growing up, tainted by left-wing thinking. Oh no, so they handed them over to the Falange and the Church, that double-header of liberal-minded orthodoxy, in order to get them thinking in the right ways. And of course many of the children and parents have never been and were never re-united.

Something you might also have been unaware of, until this was all reported yesterday in "The Times", was that there was a fair amount of racial purification knocking around in the post-Civil War era. Rather like the Nazis, there was even a manual devoted to the "eugenics of Hispanicity" and to the "regeneration of the race". So there you go, a thoroughly unpleasant bunch they truly were. I wonder, though, back then, if they were aware just how much Jewish and Muslim DNA lingers in contemporary Spaniards (and indeed Mallorcans). No, they almost certainly weren't.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Tremeloes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVz0-tD5d44). Today's title - from a political song in a different context to that of Spain and the "stolen children".

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My Ever Changing Moods

Serenity. October can have this feeling, if, that is, the weather is as benign as it is at present. Sitting on the terrace a couple of afternoons ago, there was a certain stillness; that of the season closing, but closing gracefully with a warm but hazy sun. Even the radiator effect in October by which the heat stokes up the heavy dews and causes a kind of dopiness like a wasp drunk on fermenting apples felt softer than usual. And there was an order. After the blistering sun, and the bustle and franticness of summer, there has been time for growth and a regularisation. The grass has grown and recaptured its greenness but has been cut to shape for the first time in weeks. Autumn is the mellow season, but here this chill-out is observed not so much through the colours of leaves and the disappearing sun but by the onset of a tranquility, the gradual acceptance by the sun that it should slowly retreat and the shifting colour tones of sky and sea. Driving back along the coast road from Puerto Pollensa to Alcúdia yesterday morning, the seascape was calmness, the haze creating a mercury pool of barely rippling water, the hills of Manresa and the sky above them a kaleidoscope of grey and silver tones. Rather than the russets and golds of an English October, you see a Mallorcan autumn as a pastel black and white image, a refraction in negative of the now-being-forgotten vibrancy of blues and yellows of summer. But no less uplifting.


And then the serenity is shattered. You never know quite what to expect. This is the time of year for the payments of some taxes, car tax for example. I collect the mail, and there is one more advice from the town hall than there should be. It is for a car I have no knowledge of, yet there it all is: name, address, personal identity number, all correct. I call the town hall and they say they will pass the information to Trafico. Seems ok, then I think, well no it's not ok, and how long might it take them to inform Trafico. What if this vehicle, to which my name is attached, has an accident, and, moreover, how the hell has my name become attached to it.? So I go to the branch municipal office in Playa de Muro. The ever super-helpful Cati rings the same office as I did, adding some pressure, then I go and see the just as super-helpful Guardia Civil. The lady there gets Trafico central to run a check. Turns out it is ok. The vehicle doesn't seem to exist. No need to worry. Seems it's a town hall cock-up.

Coming back, I think this is a pretty decent system; not the cock-up with this payment advice, but the centralisation of services into one building. At the Playa de Muro office, there is the town hall, tourist office, local police and Guardia. All there under one roof. Life is made pretty easy in what can otherwise be a bureaucratic labyrinth of pass the parcel that generally exists in local public administration. Talk to town hall, town hall talks to Guardia, Guardia talks to Trafico - panic over, and only took a few minutes. I commend the arrangement.

And maybe serenity returns, but then I wait at the red light of one of those entrances from the side road onto the Playa de Muro carretera. The lights flash orange. I start to go. I know to look left. Not everyone would. Two ladies on bicycles riding past me, blissfully unaware of the red light it seems. I gesture with open hands at one of them, and she smiles, not a sarcastic smile but one that suggests she has seen someone who has been kind enough to let her pass and that also suggests that isn't this a lovely day for a bike ride. Exasperation. From serenity to exasperation. It only takes a moment. And that, in an autumn nutshell, a conker of conflicting moods, just about says all you need to know about life in Mallorca.


THE JUDGE DIGGING UP THE PAST
Despite the Spanish attorney-general's opposition, Judge Baltasar Garzón has ordered an investigation - in the context of crimes against humanity - into the actions of Franco and others during the Civil War and into the early '50s. The judge, someone with a history of investigating repressive regimes (Pinochet's, for example), has also ordered the digging up of graves, including that of poet Federico Garcia Lorca, one of over 100,000 people believed to have been killed by the Franco regime.

Why is he doing this? It may bring closure for relatives, but otherwise how necessary is it? The investigation is most unlikely to turn up any surviving perpetrators to be brought to book; it will rake over, literally, the ground of the trauma of the war and its aftermath before Spain began to emerge from its self-imposed dark age around 1953. Does anyone doubt that Franco committed crimes against humanity, other perhaps than hardcore supporters?

The Spanish have never been made to really confront the awfulness of, in particular, the early Franco regime. An amnesty was declared in 1977, though there was never anything like a truth and reconciliation process of the sort that worked with reasonable effect in post-apartheid South Africa; instead, everyone just sort of agreed to forget about it all. But now the Spanish are being made to remember, through the law of "historic memory", the removal of Francoist symbols and now the Garzón investigation. Perhaps they should be made to confront the past, but an investigation which can result in only posthumous convictions is largely hollow in merely confirming what anyone, save the more insane elements of the far-right, will understand to have been the situation. It can only bring back the trauma.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Pointer Sisters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBw1rgHeRkM). Today's title - the cappuccino kid's second band.

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I've Changed My Name

Who remembers that old TV film "The Knowledge"? It highlighted the lengths that London cabbies have to go to in order to learn the street names and routes of the capital. I knew some cabbies when I lived in London. They did indeed have to endure a test of that "knowledge". It was the case that if you took a mini-cab, rather than a London taxi, you might well have ended up telling the driver how to get to A or B. Very rarely would a cabbie not know.

London is very much bigger than Palma, but spare a thought for the Palma taxi driver. There is due to be a change to no less than 141 street names in the city. This is the consequence of linguistics, place-name usage and the law of "historic memory", for which, read Franco. Under this law, all symbols of the Franco era are to be dismantled. And that includes street names.

Now just think about this. Suppose you lived in a city in the UK of similar size to Palma, say Bristol, and one morning woke up to find that, following some political or politically correct decision, you now lived in Gordon Brown Way or Archbishop Tutu Close. Don't expect the postman to necessarily deliver to you that morning. Changing a street name here or there is not that problematic, but to do it wholesale ... Maps, post-office records, land-registry records, one's own registration with the town halls, business addresses, advertising and of course the poor old cabby.

A few days ago, I mentioned that Muro town hall is being pressed to change names of roads associated with Franco. I daresay this applies to other municipalities locally. I really wouldn't know. Presumably, local Mallorcan people do know; possibly. And if they do know, perhaps some take exception, or perhaps they don't. The linguistics aspect of street names applies, I would guess, to those in Castilian; Catalan is the PC in a land where PC generally counts for very little.

Palma may be different, simply because of its sheer spread and size, but in small towns, such as Alcúdia or Pollensa, the street name, if not irrelevant, holds very much less significance purely in terms of locating a place. Very few people use street names; very few could tell you the names of streets in their immediate area. Like time is a vague concept here, so too is location from the point of view of street naming. Perhaps it all has to do with the fact that names have changed in the past. Whatever the reason, street names are not often referred to.

The British don't operate in such a vague fashion, until, that is, they have lived here for some time. You will get a new incomer here who fastidiously uses a road name, only to be greeted with a blank expression or a correction. "Pere Mas i Reus." "Oh, you mean the Mile." Alternative names become the norm, even to the point of inaccuracy. In Puerto Pollensa, the pinewalk is often used to describe the whole of the current pedestrian promenade, i.e. from the roundabout along what is the Paseo Anglada Camarasa. This isn't the case; the pinewalk is the Paseo Voramar. But, importantly, no one would ever use either name, so pinewalk it is, however you define it.

Changes to or new street names are nothing new. Competing and changing political parties have seen to this, with their preferences for Castilian or Catalan. But there are names that suffer from almost complete lack of recognition, despite their being attached to relatively important bits of road. The Carretera Artà, which runs from the port of Alcúdia to Can Picafort and beyond (to Artà rather obviously), is, for the whole of its length as far as the forest in Playa de Muro, a series of sub-avenues. Not that many would know this. The avenidas Reina Sofia, Juan Carlos, Albufera and Playas de Muro are the side roads of the carretera, but again, no one refers to them as such, or very few do. Moreover, they don't always appear on maps. And with pressure for de-Francoisation, cartography faces a confused immediate future and no doubt many a confused tourist working from yet-to-be-updated maps. Even one or two isolated street-name changes take time to filter into the public domain of street plans. For a time, a few years back, I could lay claim to having designed the only accurate street map of Can Picafort, and I only found out by walking around one afternoon. On some maps you can still find a Carrer Dunes; you won't if you go looking for it. Then there are street names that confuse as a consequence of recent duplication. In Puerto Pollensa the Carretera Formentor is the road that runs parallel to the front line (of the pinewalk). It was the old road to Formentor, but not any longer since they built the bypass, which is - possibly - the Carretera Formentor.

It all makes you wonder why we bother with street names and indeed why they ever came about in the first place. It's probably all the fault of the Romans, but, apart from names that lead somewhere, as in Carretera Artà, why not just use numbers. Street One, Two, Three. The only problem is that someone would find a Francoist association or they would argue the toss over whether they should be Castilian or Catalan numbers. Just leave them alone.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Strawberry Fields Forever" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywg-PdeGVL0). Today's title - "... but no one wants you when you lose."

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This Is Not A Story, This Is Not A Book

Flags. You get quite a few flags on houses here. By the beach near me is a group of holiday chalets on top of which is a flag. An ancient German tourist once asked me what the flag was. Mallorcan, said I, but it could be the Balearic one; I can never remember the difference. Along the coast there is another flag, a flag that has caused a bit of a kerfuffle, sufficient for the boys in green to be asked to intervene.

By the roundabout as one enters Can Picafort coming from Playa de Muro is a road down to what is known as Ses Casetes des Capellans which is actually in Muro. It is a strange enclave of small holiday homes, some like glorified beach-huts. They surround an area that is used as parking; some disappear along tracks into the forest. There is a feel of Jaywick Sands about Ses Casetes. It is the flag on one of these holiday homes that has caused the problem. And the problem is? Well the flag is the Spanish flag but it features also a pro-Franco symbol. Such symbols are now effectively banned. Neighbours have complained, Muro town hall have said it basically isn't their problem and so the Guardia are now involved.

All this Francoism lingers on. Muro council is also being cajoled into renaming streets that have their origins in the Generalissimo era, which may be fair enough but would add to the confusion that has also come from streets having dual names (Catalan and Castilian) or having been changed from one to the other, and then back again, depending upon the prevailing political mood and complexion of the local council. Street names may not necessarily offend or their connotations be apparent, but a flag is a pretty overt statement of affiliation.

There was something else the other day that acted as a reminder of the days of fascism. It was a weird letter in "Euro Weekly" from some body calling itself the Historian Group Mallorca. The letter was in response to a review of Victoria Hislop's novel "The Return". Let me quote: "She (Hislop) is only concerned with the cowardly socialists." This may give you a flavour. It goes on to say that atrocities were perpetrated by the Republicans and to imply that Spain would, without Franco, have been like Russia. Now no one would deny that both sides were culpable of some dreadful acts during the Civil War, but, as I understand it, Hislop does chronicle this fact, though as she's writing a novel, she's entitled to take whatever angle she wishes; she is not writing a history textbook. Moreover, to say that Spain would have been like Russia has some truth only insofar as the Republican ranks were populated with Communists and received Soviet support (and the Nationalists were bolstered by the Nazis and the Italians). The Republicans were, however, a rather more eclectic mix than only outright Marxist-Leninists. But for any historian to extrapolate that a defeat of Franco would have resulted in a Communist state akin to the old USSR or that it would have lasted for any great time is purely hypothesis. This speculation though is revealing for one thing - the assumption that Spain would have swapped one form of totalitarianism for another; a sympathetic view of the Franco period should not allow the dreamt-up guise of a different tyranny to pardon the Nationalists their sins. One can theorise all one likes. Had the Republicans won, the battle lines of the Second World War would have been different. Hitler, who in any event didn't always see eye to eye with Franco and had indeed once threatened Spain with invasion, would surely have invaded. Or a Spanish front might have invaded occupied France. From there, who knows what would have transpired? We can all speculate, but it isn't history.

I don't know who this group is, but as it is a letter in good English to an English publication, I have to assume that it comprises English speakers, possibly and rather alarmingly expats. Whoever they are, the adoption of a title "Historian Group Mallorca" suggests an intent to speak for Mallorca. I don't think so.


THE WIFI WHITE ELEPHANT
You could have predicted this. The much-hyped WiFi zone on Puerto Alcúdia's beach has to date attracted ... Well how many do you think have bought the cards that allow you to get the connection? Today's "Diario" tells us. 72. How many people do you suppose have been on the beach since the connection was established in June? Until such time as great hordes of laptop users are cyberspacing on the sand, I will continue to believe that this has been nothing more than a vanity project on behalf of the town hall.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Brian Wilson, "Midnight's Another Day". This song is so poignant. Wilson's voice has gone, but you can almost imagine The Beach Boys circa mid-60s singing this. Go to the website and it plays - http://www.brianwilson.com. Today's title - this is a line from a brilliant early 90s song by a female group whose name is Spanish: think flags and Antonio.

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