If I were to take you to a flat area of land and ask you to walk in such a way that you marked out a square the size of a hectare, would you be able to? Would you even know what a hectare is? For the record it is 2.47105 acres. Would you know what that is, or even a solitary acre?
Let's make it easier. How about if the puzzle was to mark out 0.247105 of an acre, i.e. 1,000 square metres? Or easier still, what about an are - 100 square metres?
Knowing your hectares and your square metres is useful. Most of the world now uses the hectare. Most of the real-estate world uses the square metre. Land, living space are valued according to their worth per hectare or square metre. It is useful, but even for comparatively small spaces and distances, being able to conceive these accurately is nigh on impossible. Space and distance do not compute. Both are guesswork. Let's go back to that flat area of land. How far is that nearest tree? Around twenty metres? Around, yes, around. Never - it is twenty metres. Without the aid of a measuring device, one simply cannot say for certain.
There are measures with which there is some familiarity, such as those in sport. The one hundred metres of a sprint, for instance. Or the chain of a cricket pitch, better known as 22 yards or 20.12 metres. But even for those of you who have run one hundred metres or played cricket, could you accurately reproduce the distance? Square measures are even more elusive than those in a straight line. Not all football pitches are the same size but a typical measure is 7,140 square metres. We're all familiar with football pitches, but we still wouldn't be able to mark one out in our heads.
The reason for mentioning all this is the diet we are constantly fed when it comes to size. Palma town hall, for instance, has very kindly informed us that its new set of four rubbish containers (mobile variety) occupy eleven square metres. Great, but so what? How does such information translate into the brain? With difficulty. Such enumeration when written is all but meaningless. There may be a rough idea what it constitutes, but for all the value of the information, it may as well just say that it occupies a small space.
But because small, medium, large, very large are more meaningless, a value has to be given, whether we can appreciate it or not. Therefore, we get all of this stuff. Such and such town hall is building a new facility of x square metres. Wonderful. The more square metres the better, is this the idea - to impress us? Not necessarily, because using limited space is virtuous when land is at a premium. It's only x square metres. Even more wonderful, even more impressive.
Fires are something else for which size matters. There was a recent report about how many hectares of forest, scrub and whatever had been affected by fires in 2016. If memory serves, it was something like 101. This was either more or less than the previous year - as you may realise, I didn't digest the information fully - and was therefore either negative or positive. But again, what does it mean? When we learn that a fire has consumed 30 hectares, that sounds like a lot. Doesn't it? Certainly more than if it were 0.3 hectares. In neither instance, though, can we conceive what it represents. If in the case of the 30 hectares, we were told that it roughly equated to 42 football pitches, then maybe. Or maybe not.
The Balearic government has a minister for land, Marc Pons. He is also the energy minister. Two of these portfolios have coincided in respect of plans to eliminate CO2 emissions by 2050. Out will go all fossil fuel energy sources, and in will come photovoltaic energy, which means all manner of plants dedicated to tapping into the sun's energy dotted around the Balearics.
This is a highly laudable plan, but photovoltaic energy, as in supplying more or less all energy needs for the islands, its residents, its businesses and its tourists, does have a land implication. It's not the same as just sticking a solar panel on your roof to get hot water or anything like it. So Pons reliably (one assumes) informed us that these plants will require 1.5% of land. Really? Well, erm, blimey, one point five per cent.
The land surface of the Balearic Islands is 4,997.71 square kilometres. It will therefore require 74.97 square kilometres of land to fit all these plants in. Is that a lot? You tell me. For what it's worth, you could stick them all on Formentera and more or less cover the island. Maybe that's it. A Formentera of photovoltaic. We can all understand that.
Showing posts with label Land. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Land. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Monday, February 13, 2017
This Wounded Land
There is an environmentalist group in Mallorca called Terraferida. The name means wounded land, and the group takes aim at what is sees as wounds inflicted on Mallorca's land. For Terraferida, human intervention is not benign. It responds to population growth, tourism, economic development and speculation. It serves itself at the expense of land, wounding it in the process.
Underpinning the beliefs of groups such as Terraferida is an unstated idyll, a hankering for a time before intervention altered the land. Yet human intervention goes to the heart of the supposedly unwounded land. It goes back to times many centuries ago, which have only recently been honoured by Unesco. The landscaping of the Tramuntana mountains was the product of ingenious intervention which created dry-stone walls, terraces and passages that survive to this day. The mountains are placed on a pedestal for tourism of an alternative variety - cultural, historical, natural - yet the mountains and this alternative tourism owe a great deal if not everything to human intervention. The motivations for intervention were quite different - they essentially boiled down to survival - but it was necessary to shape the land way back when, just as it is nowadays.
The key difference is the aggressive nature of this intervention. And interwoven with this is a connection with the land that can too easily be overlooked or not be appreciated. The connection can also be overstated, but somewhere in the middle there exists a soul in Mallorca that beats because of its land.
Contemporary political and social discourse is littered with references to land, to landscape, to scenery, to natural patrimony. This might be taken to be a consequence of the reassertion of the values of the land that were severely undermined by the process of "Balearisation" which changed coastal Mallorca irretrievably. Although Terraferida and others will point to more current-day evidence of aggressive intervention, it is the collective memory of Balearisation which informs much of this discourse. It hasn't been forgotten, and it hasn't been forgiven.
But if one goes back to times pre-Balearisation, the discourse was much the same. The early twentieth century founders of Mallorca's tourism spoke of little else than land and landscape. They were to be grateful to the publicists - the landscape artists, the writers who introduced this idyll in the Mediterranean to a gradually global audience.
It was landscape and patrimony, both natural and manmade (such as with the Cathedral), that the early movers of Mallorca's tourism promoted. And they did so, at least in part, as a response to crisis. It was one that affected the land - phylloxera.
The damage that was caused to the vineyards of Mallorca served only to reinforce the vulnerability of the island, one surviving mainly on a monoculture economy of agriculture. Tourism, predicated on land, was to provide a solution. Nowadays, the land is looked to as a means of providing a new solution to a different monoculture - that of tourism and principally a tourism of the coasts.
There has been much discussion about how tourist tax revenue is to be spent. Why, it has been asked, should revenue go to agrarian projects. One reason why is in order to recover, maintain or improve the landscape and the natural patrimony. It is too easy perhaps to consider landscape as being the Tramuntana and nothing else, purely because so much is said about the mountains. But this landscape - obviously enough - is everywhere, and it is one that provides, among other things, almond blossom at this time of the year.
The land has been wounded again. Drought and floods have created the wounds, and the land finds itself confronted by another enemy - xylella - which can deepen the wounds further. These are not self-inflicted wounds, like Balearisation was, these are natural and have an impact on the natural patrimony.
But there have been "plagues" before, such as phylloxera. The land recovers, and if human intervention can be shown to be at its most benign by hastening recovery or indeed preventing its need by stopping the destruction of almonds, olives and others, then so much the better. We wish them the very best. They are working with the soul of Mallorca - the land.
Underpinning the beliefs of groups such as Terraferida is an unstated idyll, a hankering for a time before intervention altered the land. Yet human intervention goes to the heart of the supposedly unwounded land. It goes back to times many centuries ago, which have only recently been honoured by Unesco. The landscaping of the Tramuntana mountains was the product of ingenious intervention which created dry-stone walls, terraces and passages that survive to this day. The mountains are placed on a pedestal for tourism of an alternative variety - cultural, historical, natural - yet the mountains and this alternative tourism owe a great deal if not everything to human intervention. The motivations for intervention were quite different - they essentially boiled down to survival - but it was necessary to shape the land way back when, just as it is nowadays.
The key difference is the aggressive nature of this intervention. And interwoven with this is a connection with the land that can too easily be overlooked or not be appreciated. The connection can also be overstated, but somewhere in the middle there exists a soul in Mallorca that beats because of its land.
Contemporary political and social discourse is littered with references to land, to landscape, to scenery, to natural patrimony. This might be taken to be a consequence of the reassertion of the values of the land that were severely undermined by the process of "Balearisation" which changed coastal Mallorca irretrievably. Although Terraferida and others will point to more current-day evidence of aggressive intervention, it is the collective memory of Balearisation which informs much of this discourse. It hasn't been forgotten, and it hasn't been forgiven.
But if one goes back to times pre-Balearisation, the discourse was much the same. The early twentieth century founders of Mallorca's tourism spoke of little else than land and landscape. They were to be grateful to the publicists - the landscape artists, the writers who introduced this idyll in the Mediterranean to a gradually global audience.
It was landscape and patrimony, both natural and manmade (such as with the Cathedral), that the early movers of Mallorca's tourism promoted. And they did so, at least in part, as a response to crisis. It was one that affected the land - phylloxera.
The damage that was caused to the vineyards of Mallorca served only to reinforce the vulnerability of the island, one surviving mainly on a monoculture economy of agriculture. Tourism, predicated on land, was to provide a solution. Nowadays, the land is looked to as a means of providing a new solution to a different monoculture - that of tourism and principally a tourism of the coasts.
There has been much discussion about how tourist tax revenue is to be spent. Why, it has been asked, should revenue go to agrarian projects. One reason why is in order to recover, maintain or improve the landscape and the natural patrimony. It is too easy perhaps to consider landscape as being the Tramuntana and nothing else, purely because so much is said about the mountains. But this landscape - obviously enough - is everywhere, and it is one that provides, among other things, almond blossom at this time of the year.
The land has been wounded again. Drought and floods have created the wounds, and the land finds itself confronted by another enemy - xylella - which can deepen the wounds further. These are not self-inflicted wounds, like Balearisation was, these are natural and have an impact on the natural patrimony.
But there have been "plagues" before, such as phylloxera. The land recovers, and if human intervention can be shown to be at its most benign by hastening recovery or indeed preventing its need by stopping the destruction of almonds, olives and others, then so much the better. We wish them the very best. They are working with the soul of Mallorca - the land.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Not A Good Week
It's not been a great week for tourism. Sure, the forecasts for tourism numbers coming to Mallorca are fine, but current levels of business obscure what's going on behind the scenes. The government's decree - one essentially to do with planning permissions - exposes the naïvité of an administration without a coherent strategy for the island's main industry.
It's been said often enough that the industry should be represented by ministers with some grounding in tourism. In Mallorca this has only truly happened once. The first ever minister, Jaume Cladera, was from the industry. Since then, only Carlos Delgado might be said to have had a real feel for tourism, something cultivated through years as mayor of Calvia. What we now have is a ministry run by someone with no background and for whom dialogue outside the government inner circle is primarily with the likes of GOB, the environmentalists. Of senior officials, there is the director-general, Pilar Carbonell. She is admirable in many ways, but it cannot be ignored that she comes from a restaurant background. She has not always been a great friend of the hoteliers.
Environmental claims cannot and should not be neglected, but to believe Barceló and the government the previous administration had signed a charter for "indiscriminate" building, both that of construction on rural land and of hotel extension. The word "indiscriminate" has been used in despatches with regard to the decree, but it is an exaggeration. The Partido Popular may rightly have been looked upon as cheerleaders for the hoteliers and few others, but its legislation was not a case of "anything goes", which is how the minister for land, Joan Boned, has styled it. Rather, it was legislation that finally, and after previous attempts (such as the 1999 tourism law), sought to effect a modernisation of resorts and of hotel stock, something badly needed in a hyper-competitive global industry.
For all his faults, Delgado adopted an essentially pragmatic approach that was designed to weed out substandard hotels and to raise quality. It is an approach that has brought some success: Mallorca's quality has risen. This pragmatism was also shown by one of the forgotten tourism ministers - Miquel Nadal. He's forgotten because he's in prison, but when not involving himself with corrupt activities, it was Nadal who brought in the decree whereby hotels with illegal places (i.e. those that had been created without planning permission) had to pay to make them legal. The result of this was the vast fund that is commonly and simply referred to as the "bolsa". It has been put to good use - for resort infrastructure improvements and other projects. Nadal was hardly anti-hotelier but he recognised a worthy and beneficial compromise when he saw it.
Little of this now applies. The current administration is an heir to the first Antich, PSOE-led government of 1999 to 2003 in more ways than just the tourist tax. The minister who was responsible for the old eco-tax, Celesti Alomar, was qualified in geography. This qualification is often associated with tourism but in different ways. One of them is a firmly environmentalist perspective, which was Alomar's. Finding the right balance between the competing needs of the environment and tourism is not straightforward, but the balance has been tipped one way or the other according to dominant ideology. Hence, there is constant incoherence, with the current government, one suspects, also listening to geographers at the university who have been expressing their concerns about construction for years.
To come back to charges of indiscriminate building, there was - during Jaime Martínez's time as Barceló's predecessor - one very revealing moment. It was when Martínez was responding to ideas for creating significant theme parks. He said that this would be virtually impossible because of planning restrictions. It is misrepresentation to suggest that the PP was giving carte blanche for wholesale destruction of the countryside and other parts of the environment. Which leads us to the part of the new decree concerning illegal buildings on rural land.
The PP had introduced an amnesty. In a way, it was a similar approach to the one that Nadal had adopted. The buildings can stay (though some might not have) in return for payment, with the idea of funds being used for assisting rural development which didn't automatically mean being destructive. Of these buildings, there are some which will now not form part of agrotourism, a branch of the island's tourism to which the government is showing a peculiar attitude: one would have thought it would be in favour, when it appears not to be.
The government, in justifying its decree, speaks of not allowing speculative development at the heart of which is often corruption. It has an argument in this regard, but if it is corruption that concerns it, then it should institute firm, independent auditing of permissions that are granted by the relevant authorities, typically town halls. And even those projects which are to be spared because they are ongoing might yet fall foul of zealous interpretation of being undertaken in the correct manner.
Barceló's desire for a new economic model is laudable in the sense that he wishes there to be greater diversification of the economy and greater share of the wealth that tourism generates, but this requires operating from a position of strength and not from one that undermines or disincentivises investment. It has not been a good week.
It's been said often enough that the industry should be represented by ministers with some grounding in tourism. In Mallorca this has only truly happened once. The first ever minister, Jaume Cladera, was from the industry. Since then, only Carlos Delgado might be said to have had a real feel for tourism, something cultivated through years as mayor of Calvia. What we now have is a ministry run by someone with no background and for whom dialogue outside the government inner circle is primarily with the likes of GOB, the environmentalists. Of senior officials, there is the director-general, Pilar Carbonell. She is admirable in many ways, but it cannot be ignored that she comes from a restaurant background. She has not always been a great friend of the hoteliers.
Environmental claims cannot and should not be neglected, but to believe Barceló and the government the previous administration had signed a charter for "indiscriminate" building, both that of construction on rural land and of hotel extension. The word "indiscriminate" has been used in despatches with regard to the decree, but it is an exaggeration. The Partido Popular may rightly have been looked upon as cheerleaders for the hoteliers and few others, but its legislation was not a case of "anything goes", which is how the minister for land, Joan Boned, has styled it. Rather, it was legislation that finally, and after previous attempts (such as the 1999 tourism law), sought to effect a modernisation of resorts and of hotel stock, something badly needed in a hyper-competitive global industry.
For all his faults, Delgado adopted an essentially pragmatic approach that was designed to weed out substandard hotels and to raise quality. It is an approach that has brought some success: Mallorca's quality has risen. This pragmatism was also shown by one of the forgotten tourism ministers - Miquel Nadal. He's forgotten because he's in prison, but when not involving himself with corrupt activities, it was Nadal who brought in the decree whereby hotels with illegal places (i.e. those that had been created without planning permission) had to pay to make them legal. The result of this was the vast fund that is commonly and simply referred to as the "bolsa". It has been put to good use - for resort infrastructure improvements and other projects. Nadal was hardly anti-hotelier but he recognised a worthy and beneficial compromise when he saw it.
Little of this now applies. The current administration is an heir to the first Antich, PSOE-led government of 1999 to 2003 in more ways than just the tourist tax. The minister who was responsible for the old eco-tax, Celesti Alomar, was qualified in geography. This qualification is often associated with tourism but in different ways. One of them is a firmly environmentalist perspective, which was Alomar's. Finding the right balance between the competing needs of the environment and tourism is not straightforward, but the balance has been tipped one way or the other according to dominant ideology. Hence, there is constant incoherence, with the current government, one suspects, also listening to geographers at the university who have been expressing their concerns about construction for years.
To come back to charges of indiscriminate building, there was - during Jaime Martínez's time as Barceló's predecessor - one very revealing moment. It was when Martínez was responding to ideas for creating significant theme parks. He said that this would be virtually impossible because of planning restrictions. It is misrepresentation to suggest that the PP was giving carte blanche for wholesale destruction of the countryside and other parts of the environment. Which leads us to the part of the new decree concerning illegal buildings on rural land.
The PP had introduced an amnesty. In a way, it was a similar approach to the one that Nadal had adopted. The buildings can stay (though some might not have) in return for payment, with the idea of funds being used for assisting rural development which didn't automatically mean being destructive. Of these buildings, there are some which will now not form part of agrotourism, a branch of the island's tourism to which the government is showing a peculiar attitude: one would have thought it would be in favour, when it appears not to be.
The government, in justifying its decree, speaks of not allowing speculative development at the heart of which is often corruption. It has an argument in this regard, but if it is corruption that concerns it, then it should institute firm, independent auditing of permissions that are granted by the relevant authorities, typically town halls. And even those projects which are to be spared because they are ongoing might yet fall foul of zealous interpretation of being undertaken in the correct manner.
Barceló's desire for a new economic model is laudable in the sense that he wishes there to be greater diversification of the economy and greater share of the wealth that tourism generates, but this requires operating from a position of strength and not from one that undermines or disincentivises investment. It has not been a good week.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Actions Of A Vindictive Government
You can cut a government so much slack. Or perhaps it's a case of giving it enough rope with which to hang itself. There will be no hanging or lynching, though. There are too many willing to give it all the slack it wants as retaliation for the Partido Popular. Which is understandable, until you begin to appreciate just what this government is up to. This assumes, however, that the government itself knows, because it is giving an excellent impression of not knowing. Instead it glosses its policies with vagueness. There's a new economic model rising. Is there? And what economy might be left to be modelled?
The tourist tax was one thing, but now we have a series of measures that have emerged from the most ominous sounding of the government's raft of legislative devices - the decree. It has decreed. The very term smacks of finality, albeit that parliament needs to apply a compliant rubber stamp. It also has a sense of taking no regard of any alternative interests. For a government whose motto contains the insistent dialogue, it seems to be short on conversation, except with itself. It is pulling a fast one.
The decree of "urgent measures" that the government has announced in suspending or quashing elements of three key bills introduced by the Bauzá administration - farming, land and tourism - has echoes of a similarly urgent decree that the previous PSOE-led government passed. It was one from 2008 which dealt with, among other things, building on land deemed to be wetland. From that decree came all manner of complications, most of which still exist. A major one is the Ses Fontanelles commercial centre development in Playa de Palma. The Bauzá regime was left with the consequence of the decree. If it were to deny construction, there was a massive compensation claim to be paid. There are other examples, such as in Puerto Pollensa. Somewhere along the line, these are issues which will have to be resolved, with the Ses Fontanelles development now seemingly an impossibility.
The 2008 decree created legal uncertainty. The current government is creating the same. It says that it is not, but its certainty can only ever be short-term. If there were to be a change in government in 2019 and a return of the right, then its decree will be overturned. This is tit-for-tat politics, something which Mallorca is highly adept at. The decree oozes vindictiveness directed at Carlos Delgado and Biel Company, the ministers responsible for the three laws in question. In the case of Company and his farming law, the government has succeeded in ostracising one of the very few business associations that operate in harmony with other parts of its industry. Asaja, the agricultural businesses association (of which Company was once president), has long worked from the same script as unions in seeking to improve opportunities.
Asaja has declined an invitation to form part of a committee which will have as one of its briefs the current serious problem of lack of water. It has done so because it objects to the government decree which puts a halt to development of farm land for purposes other than just farming. While it's true that the Company act may have favoured larger landowners, the thinking behind it was sound. There is a vast amount of land devoted to agriculture, and yet the primary sector is responsible for not much more than one per cent of GDP. The law wanted to improve productivity, to create new opportunities and jobs. The decree will do precisely the opposite.
Farming unions like the fact that the government will be dedicating some of the tourist tax to agroforestry in order to "modernise" it. But what does the government mean by this? It talks of modernisation in one regard and turns it back on it in another. Joined-up thinking? Hardly.
While the hoteliers are the usual suspects when it comes to opposing the government, the farming businesses and the builders have not been. Now they are. The builders are warning of a collapse of recovery because of restrictions the decree imposes on redevelopment and some new construction in the tourism sector. The two industries - tourism and construction - go hand in hand in Mallorca. Attack one, and you attack the other. For a government - any government for that matter - looking to boost employment, the decree makes little sense. Except that it does, if you are a vindictive government.
And an aspect of this restriction will limit the room for manoeuvre in transforming mature (obsolete) parts of the resorts. In this regard, the hoteliers are absolutely right in saying that the government lacks an overall strategy for tourism. It can wish to assign some of the tourist tax to resort infrastructure, but then puts a clamp on the means of doing this. Joined-up thinking? It most certainly is not.
The tourist tax was one thing, but now we have a series of measures that have emerged from the most ominous sounding of the government's raft of legislative devices - the decree. It has decreed. The very term smacks of finality, albeit that parliament needs to apply a compliant rubber stamp. It also has a sense of taking no regard of any alternative interests. For a government whose motto contains the insistent dialogue, it seems to be short on conversation, except with itself. It is pulling a fast one.
The decree of "urgent measures" that the government has announced in suspending or quashing elements of three key bills introduced by the Bauzá administration - farming, land and tourism - has echoes of a similarly urgent decree that the previous PSOE-led government passed. It was one from 2008 which dealt with, among other things, building on land deemed to be wetland. From that decree came all manner of complications, most of which still exist. A major one is the Ses Fontanelles commercial centre development in Playa de Palma. The Bauzá regime was left with the consequence of the decree. If it were to deny construction, there was a massive compensation claim to be paid. There are other examples, such as in Puerto Pollensa. Somewhere along the line, these are issues which will have to be resolved, with the Ses Fontanelles development now seemingly an impossibility.
The 2008 decree created legal uncertainty. The current government is creating the same. It says that it is not, but its certainty can only ever be short-term. If there were to be a change in government in 2019 and a return of the right, then its decree will be overturned. This is tit-for-tat politics, something which Mallorca is highly adept at. The decree oozes vindictiveness directed at Carlos Delgado and Biel Company, the ministers responsible for the three laws in question. In the case of Company and his farming law, the government has succeeded in ostracising one of the very few business associations that operate in harmony with other parts of its industry. Asaja, the agricultural businesses association (of which Company was once president), has long worked from the same script as unions in seeking to improve opportunities.
Asaja has declined an invitation to form part of a committee which will have as one of its briefs the current serious problem of lack of water. It has done so because it objects to the government decree which puts a halt to development of farm land for purposes other than just farming. While it's true that the Company act may have favoured larger landowners, the thinking behind it was sound. There is a vast amount of land devoted to agriculture, and yet the primary sector is responsible for not much more than one per cent of GDP. The law wanted to improve productivity, to create new opportunities and jobs. The decree will do precisely the opposite.
Farming unions like the fact that the government will be dedicating some of the tourist tax to agroforestry in order to "modernise" it. But what does the government mean by this? It talks of modernisation in one regard and turns it back on it in another. Joined-up thinking? Hardly.
While the hoteliers are the usual suspects when it comes to opposing the government, the farming businesses and the builders have not been. Now they are. The builders are warning of a collapse of recovery because of restrictions the decree imposes on redevelopment and some new construction in the tourism sector. The two industries - tourism and construction - go hand in hand in Mallorca. Attack one, and you attack the other. For a government - any government for that matter - looking to boost employment, the decree makes little sense. Except that it does, if you are a vindictive government.
And an aspect of this restriction will limit the room for manoeuvre in transforming mature (obsolete) parts of the resorts. In this regard, the hoteliers are absolutely right in saying that the government lacks an overall strategy for tourism. It can wish to assign some of the tourist tax to resort infrastructure, but then puts a clamp on the means of doing this. Joined-up thinking? It most certainly is not.
Sunday, September 06, 2015
The Week Of Spirituality
Spirituality isn't solely about religion. Indeed it may not have anything to do with religion. It is an intangible sense of being which may be divorced from religion but which, nonetheless, has its roots in something that is other worldly.
I have heard much about Mallorcan spirituality in recent months. In assimilating what this means, I conclude that it is a mix of religion, of symbols of religiosity, philosophy and learning, of the land (especially the Tramuntana) and the strong vestiges of the past that remain, and also of a streak of irreverence, of mischievousness, of insularity.
The next few days, starting today, bring much of this together. This is a week which might be said to epitomise Mallorcan spirituality, which combines an essentially religious element with the land, philosophy and mischief-making through celebrations that are, with two out of three examples, specifically Mallorcan.
The one that is broader than Mallorca alone is the day of the Mare de Déu on 8 September. The birthdate of the Virgin Mary, it does, nevertheless, have a direct connection with Mallorca. For the birthdate to have been established in Catholic tradition there had to have been the dogma regarding the conception. This had to have been proved beyond doubt and thus embedded into the liturgy along with its own day. And one of those who was instrumental in this dogma was the Mallorcan Ramon Llull. The Immaculate Conception of 8 December thus gave birth, so to speak, to the birthdate: 8 September.
Llull, among the many other things for which he is noted, wrote the words of the Lament of the Virgin about the suffering of Christ. It is a text that in its musical form features at Lluc monastery in the Tramuntana, the spiritual land of Mallorca. In those mountains, Llull established his place of learning - Miramar in Valldemossa. The philosophy of the Immaculate Conception and events nine months later can be linked to the mountains of Mallorca.
The monastery is the focal point for the culmination for this week of spirituality. 12 September is the day of the Virgin of Lluc, Mallorca's patron saint. The pilgrimage to the monastery will involve some 10,000 people setting off in the early hours. And once at the monastery, the reverence will be for "La Moreneta", the Black Madonna, the image of the Virgin Mary with its legend of discovery by a shepherd boy (Lluc), who was the son of Muslims who had converted to Christianity.
The legend dates back to the thirteenth century, to a time when Llull was active and when Mallorca was learning about what is now its Catalan heritage. This legacy, it is fair to say, resides in the consciousness, the spirituality if you like of the collective Mallorcan experience. It is one of stability that came from conquest, which created a Mallorcan identity that hadn't truly existed previously.
But into this mix enters the less than reverential, the tradition of the island's "most typical procession", this evening's La Beata in Santa Margalida. As with the Virgin of Lluc, La Beata - Santa Catalina Tomàs - is Mallorca's own. The irreverence arose from the nature of the procession and the comedic antics of demons.
I was aware that Rafael Manso, the Bishop of Mallorca in 1849, had sought the banning of the procession on the grounds that it raised "serious disorders and offences against God" and that it provoked much laughter. It has now come to light that there was a ban - of three years before the bishop relented. The fact that there was a ban only serves to confirm that within the island's spirituality there is also an element of fun and of resistance. It's that island thing.
La Beata represented a spiritual extension to a different land of Mallorca, one away from the mountains and into its farming plain. The legend of Santa Catalina, and the narrative for the procession, involves poor farm workers. Agricultural past and heritage collide with saintliness and irreverence in Santa Margalida and create a specific branch line of Mallorcan spirituality.
I have heard much about Mallorcan spirituality in recent months. In assimilating what this means, I conclude that it is a mix of religion, of symbols of religiosity, philosophy and learning, of the land (especially the Tramuntana) and the strong vestiges of the past that remain, and also of a streak of irreverence, of mischievousness, of insularity.
The next few days, starting today, bring much of this together. This is a week which might be said to epitomise Mallorcan spirituality, which combines an essentially religious element with the land, philosophy and mischief-making through celebrations that are, with two out of three examples, specifically Mallorcan.
The one that is broader than Mallorca alone is the day of the Mare de Déu on 8 September. The birthdate of the Virgin Mary, it does, nevertheless, have a direct connection with Mallorca. For the birthdate to have been established in Catholic tradition there had to have been the dogma regarding the conception. This had to have been proved beyond doubt and thus embedded into the liturgy along with its own day. And one of those who was instrumental in this dogma was the Mallorcan Ramon Llull. The Immaculate Conception of 8 December thus gave birth, so to speak, to the birthdate: 8 September.
Llull, among the many other things for which he is noted, wrote the words of the Lament of the Virgin about the suffering of Christ. It is a text that in its musical form features at Lluc monastery in the Tramuntana, the spiritual land of Mallorca. In those mountains, Llull established his place of learning - Miramar in Valldemossa. The philosophy of the Immaculate Conception and events nine months later can be linked to the mountains of Mallorca.
The monastery is the focal point for the culmination for this week of spirituality. 12 September is the day of the Virgin of Lluc, Mallorca's patron saint. The pilgrimage to the monastery will involve some 10,000 people setting off in the early hours. And once at the monastery, the reverence will be for "La Moreneta", the Black Madonna, the image of the Virgin Mary with its legend of discovery by a shepherd boy (Lluc), who was the son of Muslims who had converted to Christianity.
The legend dates back to the thirteenth century, to a time when Llull was active and when Mallorca was learning about what is now its Catalan heritage. This legacy, it is fair to say, resides in the consciousness, the spirituality if you like of the collective Mallorcan experience. It is one of stability that came from conquest, which created a Mallorcan identity that hadn't truly existed previously.
But into this mix enters the less than reverential, the tradition of the island's "most typical procession", this evening's La Beata in Santa Margalida. As with the Virgin of Lluc, La Beata - Santa Catalina Tomàs - is Mallorca's own. The irreverence arose from the nature of the procession and the comedic antics of demons.
I was aware that Rafael Manso, the Bishop of Mallorca in 1849, had sought the banning of the procession on the grounds that it raised "serious disorders and offences against God" and that it provoked much laughter. It has now come to light that there was a ban - of three years before the bishop relented. The fact that there was a ban only serves to confirm that within the island's spirituality there is also an element of fun and of resistance. It's that island thing.
La Beata represented a spiritual extension to a different land of Mallorca, one away from the mountains and into its farming plain. The legend of Santa Catalina, and the narrative for the procession, involves poor farm workers. Agricultural past and heritage collide with saintliness and irreverence in Santa Margalida and create a specific branch line of Mallorcan spirituality.
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