David, Goliath And The Bigheads Of Mallorca

As with any week of fiestas or indeed fairs, there are strange characters taking to the streets of Mallorca. Today, for instance, these characters will be dancing in Consell, while in Soller they will be part of a procession with the town's bagpiping xeremiers. Tomorrow they'll be joining more pipers in Randa (part of Algaida); in S'Arraco (part of Andratx), they will be parading and dancing with giants - to a piping accompaniment.

These characters are the bigheads - the "caparrots". No fiesta is complete without them. They parade and sometimes dance on their own. Or they appear with the other characters - the giants and, as is the case with some villages and towns, with yet more peculiar creations, such as dragons.

The giants of Mallorca first appeared in Soller in 1630. The then Bishop of Mallorca, Baltasar de Borja, was to take part in the village's procession for Corpus Christi. A cathedral clerk was charged with the arrangements for giants. The first heads for the giants - male and female - cost three of your old Mallorcan pounds. Originally quite simple, by 1645 there was a cost of 48 pounds. Later on in the century, palm fronds were being integrated into the giants' appearance and manufacture.

It had taken some time for the giants to arrive in Majorca. The first documented evidence of them in Catalan culture comes from 1424. Barcelona's Llibre de les Solemnitats (a guide for religious ceremonies, if you like) provided an exhaustive list of all participants in the Corpus Christi procession. One reference is to Lo Rei David ab lo Giguant - King David and the Giant.

The thinking behind the giants was essentially to make the religious occasion more popular. They have been referred to as providing the hors d'oeuvres for solemn ceremonies. Attract an audience with odd characters, and the public will more obediently take part in the true religious part. Further thinking was to introduce ancient elements of paganism and magic. The Catholic tradition is littered with examples of one what might describe as pragmatic appeal to long-ago folklore, even if these were to undergo periods of banishment for being irreligious.

Another strand of thought was that the giants should represent David and Goliath. Hence what was referred to in Barcelona in 1424. A small giant and a large giant; one good, one evil. But over the decades following this first gigantic manifestation in Barcelona, the giants started to move away from a biblical representation. So, the first female giant emerged. The idea of the giants as a pair, a marital couple in some sense, was planted. And it was this that came to Mallorca in 1630.

The original concept of giants as David and Goliath was lost along the way, but this old juxtaposition of the small and large was to eventually return. David and indeed Goliath had been forgotten about, but not the coming-together of characters with strange heads and with different heights and stature. Enter, therefore, the bigheads.

The caparrots are a comparatively recent innovation. In Palma in 1903 the town hall organised two giants for the Corpus Christi procession (the previous giants had been banned in 1780). These were the Catholic Kings - Isabel and Ferdinand - who were rapidly replaced, the following year, by the farmers Tofol and Bet Maria. On both occasions there were also bigheads. The caparrot was a complement to the giants, and that remains the case today.

In fact, there had been caparrots before this, though the actual evidence isn't great. It is known, however, that dwarf-like characters formed part of the island's folk tale tradition, as did giants. They were mythical protectors of the villages, and by the end of the nineteenth century they were being made real.

It wasn't, however, until 1953 that the bigheads took the giant leap forward. Sa Pobla, as is so often the case with Mallorca's traditional culture, included caparrots in the fiestas for Sant Antoni in that year. Nowadays they are all over the island - some satirical, some reflecting that folk tale tradition: oddball characters like the Mad Miller of Alcudia's S'Estol Rei en Jaume bighead troupe.

Tucked away amidst this bighead and giant tradition is another strange character. As far as I'm aware, it is unique to Manacor and one particular part of the town when it celebrates its fiestas for Sant Domingo in May. This is the Alicorn, which can refer to both unicorn and a stupid man. The Alicorn of Manacor is a religious person with a head like a unicorn. He, the Alicorn, is a story for another day. Meanwhile, there are the bigheads to be seen, a weird mix of the story of David and Goliath, local myth and local satire.

*Photo: The Mad Miller of Alcudia.

Selling Weirdness: Giants and tall tales

A tour guide of my acquaintance told me about an American couple he was showing around Palma. By chance the tour coincided with the gathering of giants for the Virgin Mary's birthday fiestas. The Americans were suitably impressed. You don't stumble across giants in the US as a rule. Not when history is as short as it is there.

Back in late June, a German friend, visiting with her partner and small children, asked about a what's-on event she had seen mentioned in a local German newspaper. It was the annual walk from Alcúdia town to the hermitage at La Victoria. Would the giants, who take part in the walk, be something the children would like to see? Why not, I suggested. They did see and they enjoyed.

On Monday they were dragging large boxes out of Alcúdia's council chamber and lugging them on to the steps of the town hall building. There were four boxes, just a sample, as there are other boxes which house the heads of the characters who make up the gang that follows the conquering king of Mallorca, Jaume I of Aragon. S'Estol Rei en Jaume is a motley crew of the historically factual and legendary invented. For the presentation of the annual fair's poster, four of the heads were on display - those of the king himself, that of his Moorish opponent, and then two who are inventions: the mad miller and the girl who tries to be nice but who is in fact utterly gross.

Impressed though the Americans were by the history parading through the streets of Palma, this is history of recent invention. The giants of Mallorca are invariably quite new, but the giants' tradition, and also that of big heads, is long: at least back to the sixteenth century. But something which Mallorca does very well is to make recent creations seem very old, and the giants and big heads are representative of this inventiveness.

These are creations which clearly impress both the young and the older, be it the small German children or the adult Americans, and I can include myself in the latter category. On one particular occasion, I happened to go into the town hall in Muro and was confronted by Toni and Joan, who, as far as I am aware, are the only all-male giants' pairing in Mallorca. There they were, in the reception of the town hall with their bagpipe, drum and whistle. They were shocking, given that I hadn't expected them to be there and because they were and are so enormous and so downright odd.

There is a strain of tourism potential lurking in Mallorca's culture that I'm not sure is entirely appreciated. It is tourism of the weird, and Mallorca has a great deal of weirdness. Odd, peculiar, strange, unusual, however you describe phenomena such as giants, big heads, dragons, demons and all the rest, they all contribute to a collective weirdness and difference. Yes, there are such characters elsewhere, especially Catalonia, but when there is talk of alternative tourism, there seems too little recognition of the fact that staring everyone in the face are manifestations of alternativism.

These are characters who put in appearances at fiestas and fairs and are then more or less forgotten, but it is here where I think a trick is being missed, not just in promotional terms but also in a wider marketing sense to include products and merchandise.

To come back to the Alcúdia figures, these have their own back stories. Characters like the mad miller come from folk tales, yet these stories remain locked in the Catalan language. This isn't a plea for translation but the suggestion of the possibility of making up stories related to these odd creations. S'Estol Rei en Jaume is like a mini-Canterbury Tale. The miller's tale, the gross girl's tale, the tale of the stupid boy who has grown donkey's ears, the water woman who stops children looking down wells and falling into them and drowning. Children's stories and so storybooks or audio books.

As for the figures and characters themselves, has it ever been considered that these might become dolls or figurines? Maybe it has been, but if so, I can't say that I've ever seen any. When it comes to souvenirs, and to a revitalisation of a part of the tourist retail market that has been in the doldrums for some considerable time, then might the characters of fairs and fiestas not provide an opportunity? The point being, of course, that everywhere in Mallorca has them - the giants, the big heads and what have you.

Mallorca, or some involved in tourism promotion, talks a good story about its history, but it ignores the stories themselves. Dates, facts, battles, they're all very interesting, but behind them are the stories, the legends, the oddities. Weird Mallorca - the stories and the souvenirs. They should do it.

Twenty-Five Years After: The Alcúdia Fair

On the fourth and fifth of November 1989, Alcudia held its first annual autumn fair. Or was it the first? The October 1989 edition of the "Badia d'Alcúdia" magazine said that "there will be those who remember when Alcúdia used to have a fair in times gone by". Unfortunately, no one who I have spoken to seems to be able to remember. Not now anyway. Let's just say that there was at some unknown time in the past a different fair, but whether it bore any great resemblance to the one that was inaugurated in 1989, who can tell.

The magazine spoke of the hope that the fair would continue over the following years, which of course it has, and explained that all the major houses of the island's industry - machinery, car sales and hospitality (all the major houses?) - had shown an interest in participating in the fair. It went on to say that it was hoped that the next fair would feature animals other than those in pens (like pigs one presumes) and that the fair would provide a good opportunity to promote tourism, though it added that it was taking place in the season called "baja", i.e. low.

Twenty-five years later, the fair still has its machinery - of the agricultural variety. It still has cars and, as part of a very much wider business element, it still has its hospitality industry. Animals not kept in pens there are, such as horses and dogs. And the more observant among you will realise that the fair now takes place a month earlier than it did in 1989. The start of October is still officially "the season", but it is "low". It's a question of definition but seasonal lowness seems to have crept forward over the years. The first week of November would now be "off", as in all but non-existent. 

Apart from the range of exhibitors, the 1989 fair didn't really offer a great deal more. It was only over the two days as opposed to the three (well, more like two and a half) that there are now, and the entertainment didn't kick off until four in the afternoon on the Saturday when there was a street procession with the local band of drums and cornets. That, apart from some kiddies' entertainment, was it for the Saturday. The Sunday wasn't that much more exciting, though they used then to fire off rockets at nine in the morning, which they now don't. There was another procession, the inevitable arrival of the local dignitaries (a not-to-be-missed occasion at any fair or fiesta) and some folk dance. And that was your lot.

The programme that the magazine listed was, however, peculiar in that when it mentioned the children's party and the processions it didn't make any reference to what are now very established "traditions". In 1988, Alcúdia's new giants - L'amo de Jaume Panxa-roja and Madò Aina - had arrived, thus reviving a tradition of giants in the town that had stretched back to the seventeenth century. Also in 1988, the cultural association Sarau Alcudienc, who performed the folk dance in 1989 and who were also involved with the giants' revival, had conceived the big heads S'Estol del Rei en Jaume (the King James show), a series of characters based on, among others, Jaume I the Conqueror and the mediaeval polymath Ramon Llull. These characters have always been the main attraction of the fair's children's party.

The giants would have been in at least one procession, so would have been the town's pipers, also not mentioned. Yet, there were no specific references to them or to the big heads. It is curious, but there again in 1989 neither the giants nor the big heads were "traditions" as such. Or maybe it was the case that "culture" wasn't made so much of as it now is. But this would also be curious as Sarau Alcudienc had by that time been in existence for over ten years and was to the fore in promoting Alcúdia and Mallorcan culture, as it still is.

Why was the programme silent on what are now icons of the local culture? Maybe it was just a simple case of there not having been space in the magazine to include them. Or maybe in 1989 it was the fair - the exhibitors - which were thought to matter more. They were and are extremely important - there couldn't have been a fair without them - while perhaps in 1989 the fair was not looked upon, as it is now, as an occasion when there is a blurring between the fair as a trade show and the fair as an extension of the fiesta.

* Photo of S'Estol del Rei en Jaume from www.saraualcudienc.cat

The Giants Of Mallorca

Anniversaries are occasions to be celebrated by some advance sprucing-up, some improvements, some restoration. Everything has to be right on the night or the day, including ensuring that a piece of ear that has gone missing is returned to where it should be, next to the face.

On 20 July this year, Sa Pobla will, as is customary, be honouring the feast day of its patron, Santa Margalida. One of the main attractions on the day will be Margalida. Not the saint Margalida, but the giant Margalida. She is one of a male and female gigantic couple. She takes her name, unsurprisingly, from the saint. Her partner, Toni, is named after Sant Antoni, ancient Egyptian monk, hallucinator of devils and inspiration behind the January night of fire.

The Sa Pobla giants first appeared in 1984 at the Santa Margalida fiestas. Thirty years on, they are being given a touch-up, a clean-up and a replacement. The piece of Margalida's missing ear will no longer be missing. Toni and Margalida will be able to perform their "dance", safe in the knowledge that they are once more fully intact, have been lovingly re-glossed with paint and have had bumps and scratches, accumulated over three decades, de-bumped and de-scratched. Local artist Andreu Company will have seen to it that they have been restored to their original painted papier-maché and wooden glory.

The origins of Toni and Margalida were not in Sa Pobla. They weren't made there and nor were giants invented there. They were assembled at a workshop for fiestas in Zaragoza (yes, there really is a workshop for fiestas) and shipped across to Mallorca, a pair of giants to tread a similar path and dance a similar dance to that which giants had performed well before them. The first Mallorcan giant was that of Sóller way back in 1630.

But Sóller cannot claim to have been where giants first turned up at fiesta time. Over two hundred years before, in 1424, Barcelona had arranged for a giant to appear at the celebration of Corpus Christi. Or rather, the church had arranged the giant's participation. It was all a way of providing some additional entertainment and so attracting greater numbers of the faithful. The tradition of the giant was, therefore, linked to Corpus Christi, but the giant wasn't the only entertainment. Other objects appeared as well, one of them having been the eagles of Pollensa. No one is quite sure when that tradition started. It is said to date from mediaeval times, in which case it was centuries before Pollensa first acquired a giant - at the end of the eighteenth century.

Sóller's 1630 Corpus Christi celebration was not confined to the adoption of a giant. The town also introduced "capgrossos" (aka "caparrots" aka big heads). Once Sóller had got in on the giant act, momentum was such that it took a further 23 years before Sineu got one. But, by 1734, Palma could boast four pairs of giants, and in 1763, Sant Llorenç took the revolutionary step of giving a giant a name - Puput (after the bird presumably).

Giants come in different styles. There are five main groups of Mallorcan giant. Perhaps the most traditional is the farmer's husband and wife, and it was Inca which first had a peasant pair - Abdó and María. (Abdó or Abdón is one of the town's patron saints.) Sa Pobla's Toni and Margalida are part of this farming wing of giant traditionalism. Of other groups, there are giants who have been inspired by legend and tales and those who reflect local trades or crafts. Capdepera has a fisherman and a "llatadora", a female worker of palm fronds to make wicker products. A further group is made up of historical figures, such as Calvia's King Jaume I and his wife, Violant d'Hongria (Hungary). The fifth group is a sort of miscellany, examples of which are Manacor's Vicenç, who is a Moorish soldier (he has a farmer's wife as a companion or perhaps she is his wife), and Muro's two pipers, Toni and Joan.

The giants are gigantic enough to stand, in the cases of Sa Pobla's Toni and Margalida, 3.9 metres tall, which is, for those still not entirely up to speed with metric measurements, 12 feet, nine and a half inches. They are, therefore, slightly less tall than if two Steven Finn cricketers were to be joined together. Their measurements appear, as do those of other giants, in their "ficha técnica". They both weigh 50 to 52 kilograms, which seems rather imprecise. Or do they put on weight occasionally?

Still, it is just as well that they don't weigh an awful lot as they do have to get moved around a fair bit, which probably explains why a bit of ear can go missing. They travel over land and sea as well across Mallorca to gather and dance together. The wonderfully weird giants of Mallorca.

* Photo of Margalida and Toni is from http://ladarrerahorageganterademallorca.blogspot.com.es

MALLORCA TODAY - Alcúdia giants defy the bad weather

Funny photo with the link here. The Alcúdia giants had waterproofs on when they took part in yesterday's climb to La Victoria as part of the fiestas of Mare de Déu de la Victoria.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

A Dance To The Music Of Time

There was a "ball de bot" the other evening in Playa de Muro. Well, there was meant to have been, but Thursday's wild weather may have forced its abandonment. Whatever. The ball de bot, a staple of fiestas, is also dragged onto the municipal building forecourt or onto other places, like the Paseo Marítimo in Alcúdia, to act as a piece of Mallorcan authenticity to be enjoyed by local and tourist alike.

The ball de bot is at the heart of Mallorca's folkloric traditions. It can be compared to Morris dancing, but only in the sense that it is a form of folk dance; it doesn't have the weirdness of the Morris dance. And generally it is not performed by men with beards. There is, however, a potential link - the Morris name is widely assumed to be connected with the Moors; the Morris dance is a kind of distant cousin perhaps to the ball de bot.

The survival and omnipresence of the ball de bot at the fiestas are testimony to the strength of the local folk tradition, and, unlike Morris dancing, it doesn't attract piss-taking; it's all quite serious. A while ago, one of the strange attempts at defining Englishness included Morris dancing as an indication thereof. It was wrong-headed as it is not a tradition taken seriously by most people. Only its very oddness and eccentricity could be said to be typical of a strand of Englishness; the dance is almost beside the point when set against the sight of men in peculiar outfits waving hankies. The ball de bot is neither odd nor eccentric; it is typically Mallorcan for the dance alone.

Attend a fiesta or fair locally, and at some point there will be a ball de bot, often performed by the same troupe - Sarau Alcudienc - which gets its fair share of bot gigs throughout the fiesta season and as part of the promenade entertainment for the masses in summer. But it is not the only ever-present. Others are the local bag-pipe players ("xeremiers") and the giants ("gegants"). Each town or village seems to have its own giants. Pop in, for example, to Muro town hall and they are standing there, huge and surreal in the reception area. One time when they were hauled down to Playa de Muro to put in a guest appearance, they were then left lying on their backs in the reception of the municipal building; sleeping it off following the revelries of the local fiesta while tourists, town hall staff and members of the Guardia Civil navigated courses around their prone bodies.

And there is more surrealism in the form of the "caparrot", another type of giant but one with head masks that has come to embrace satire. Typically, local politicians might find the rip being taken out of them by a caparrot, and, let's face it, there is plenty to take the rip out of, though how a head mask can quite convey the sense of money being buried in a garden is open to some wild imagination.

It is a fair question to ask quite why these traditions have held sway. I read the other day about a Mallorca of a childhood perhaps some 40 or 50 years ago. While the fiestas formed a part of that time, the reminiscing was not a million miles away from an English childhood, certainly one in less urban or rural areas. While there weren't the fiestas as in Mallorca, there were the fetes, the fairs, the traditions of Pancake Day, Guy Fawkes and May Day. These survive, but have been corporatised in the case of Bonfire Night, while others are probably regarded as being rather quaint or absurd in a more cynical culture. The obvious difference lies with the religious basis of the fiesta, and yet devout Catholicism holds far less influence than was once the case.

I have suggested previously that perhaps the survival of Mallorcan traditions is a reaction to change; a mass psychology of introspection that seeks reassurance in a past when the present suggests the loss of that past. Or maybe it is simply a case of relativeness in terms of time. Mallorca has only been "industrialised" for some 50 years; an essentially agrarian society half a century ago still maintains the links to the traditions of the small villages and towns. Mallorca became a consumerist society later as well, not just because of the backwardness and isolation of the island until relatively recently but also because of the inhibition of much of the Franco era. And in the fiestas one might even divine a certain post-Franco reaction. Anything regional, especially if it was couched in a Catalan tongue, was something the Generalissimo was ill-disposed towards, and accordingly some of the traditions were repressed.

There is no sense that these traditions are about to be lost. The still closeness of the communities, despite the wealth that has been accrued since the tourist industrialisation, reinforces the traditions. There is also no sense in which the traditions are forced, as in we must at all costs not allow our traditions to die out. They happen because they always happen. The fiestas may be repetitious - year after year they have a distinct sameyness - but there are always the giants and the pipers and the ball de bot. Same every year. And not about to change.

Here is a youtube link for a ball de bot - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0XEXSekpd4


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Splodgenessabounds - "Two Pints Of Lager And ..." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1658Mfhoyw). Today's title - a famous 12-volume series of books by?

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