Sant Antoni: Pigs And The French Connection

This evening in Manacor's parish church they'll be singing the "goigs" of Sant Antoni. The goigs are, roughly speaking, songs of joy or praise. They are sung elsewhere in Mallorca in celebration of the ancient saint, there are even practices for them in other villages, but Manacor specialises in the number of its rehearsals and the sheer emphasis placed on when the good folk of the town eventually gather for the real thing. While the likes of Alcudia and Muro are being bedevilled by demons with fire, Manacor is in the church and having a good old sing song.

Given Antoni's history, you will be unsurprised to learn that the goigs aren't entirely joyous in terms of content. Here was an ascetic saint who did after all live in the desert and was pestered by the devil on a regular basis. Hence, there are references to Lucifer (and the saint's triumph over him) and to the "perverse Demon". But thanks to the saint having not succumbed to the devil, the chorus for Sant Antoni - "glorious Sant Antoni" - calls on him to "guard us from all peril".

There is one possibly confusing reference to be found in the goigs. It is to Sant Antoni himself. We know him as Sant Antoni Abat, but the glorious Sant Antoni is in fact Sant Antoni de Viana. So, have we been getting it wrong with Sant Antoni Abat?

The Abat is a reference to an abbot. Antoni never was an abbot. Nor did he found a monastery or an abbey. It would have been difficult for him to have, given that he spent so much time by himself, living in caves or an abandoned fort in the Egyptian desert. The abbot part of his name would seem to have been given to him several centuries after he died (supposedly in 356 at the age of 105) and in a place a fair old distance from Egypt.

It is said that Antoni's preference was to have been buried in a secret place. As it turned out, the place wasn't so secret. His remains were taken to Alexandria and eventually to Constantinople, but they didn't stay there. In the eleventh century, concerned about what the Arabs were up to, Antoni (what was left of him) was transported to a region of France - Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, as it now is. A grand church was built in order to house him. The place became known as Saint Antoine-l'Abbaye. It was near to a village called Vienne which, to give it its Catalan name, is Viena del Delfinat. In Mallorquí, Viena was transformed into Viana.

Antoni does, depending where he's celebrated, have a number of names - Sant Antoni de Viana, Sant Antoni Abat, Sant Antoni d’Egipte, Sant Antoni l’Ermità, Sant Antoni del Foc, Sant Antoni del Desert, Sant Antoni dels Ases, Sant Antoni del Porquet and Sant Antoni el Gran. He is the patron saint of domestic animals; hence the blessings that take place tomorrow. Two of his names reflect this - ases (donkeys) and porquet (little pig or piglet).

The pig angle does, however, require a little more explanation. In 1095, a monastic order was founded in Sant Antoni's name in Saint Antoine-l'Abbaye. This was by a nobleman who was said to have been healed by the saint's relics. At the time there was a serious illness - ergotism, caused by the ergot fungus on cereals. This order went on to establish hospitals and to treat ergotism. One of them was in Palma.

A point about the pigs was that the monks from the order used pig fat in the treatment of patients - they would be smeared with it. Another point was that the pigs that belonged to the order were very much free range. They went more or less where they liked and were fed by the local people, who also gave food to the monks. This was despite the fact that in 1719 pigs were forbidden from wandering around the streets and squares of old Palma. The monks fought against the prohibition and retained their pig privileges.

The pigs were well looked after until it came to the day of Saint Martin, 11 November, which remains the traditional start to the "matances" season, the slaughter of pigs in order to make products such as sobrassada.

The order was dissolved in the late eighteenth century. It was the one which had in the seventeenth century tried to get the image of Sant Antoni moved from Sa Pobla to Palma. A lawsuit put an end to this, and the victory of Sa Pobla still inspires the cry of "Visca Sant Antoni", which will bellow out of the church this evening at the end of the Compline service. That victory does rather sum up the place of Sant Antoni in Mallorca's culture. He is very much the saint of Mallorca away from Palma, but when it is said that Antoni is the saint of Mallorca's peasant class, it is always Sant Antoni de Viana who is named.

* Re the image, "goigs" also written as "gois".

Telling Fantastic Stories: Mallorca's Folk Tales

They've been holding a week in Manacor, a week dedicated to Antoni Maria Alcover i Sureda. It's the 155th anniversary of his birth. Or if you prefer, the 85th anniversary of his death.

If Rafael Nadal is the epitome of contemporary Manacor and Mallorca - a global name who has amassed fame from a sport largely unknown to the populace of Alcover's era - then Alcover is the figurehead for a Manacor and Mallorca insularity. There are few Mallorcans from history who can hold a candle to Alcover's promotion of deep-rooted and old traditions, ones set in the land of the island's ruralism.

The reverence shown to Alcover could simply have been reserved for his works on linguistics. He was a driving force behind the dictionary of Catalan in its different varieties: its purest form and its derivatives, such as those of the Balearics. Or it may have been for his historical research, as with his study of the times of King Jaume II of Mallorca. It might possibly have been for his place in the religious hierarchy, though one suspects not.

While his linguistic work was sufficient for him to have been placed on the pedestal that he now commands, it was the use of language that means he is unsurpassed in having captured tradition and custom. This was the language of the folk tale.

In 1896, the first volume of "Aplec de Rondaies Mallorquines d'En Jordi d'es Racó" appeared. Jordi d'es Racó was Alcover's pseudonym. His collection of Majorcan folk tales was to stretch to numerous volumes (twenty-four in all). And so many are the tales that it seems fantastic that an island could have provided the number it did. Just as fantastic is the nature of these tales, and it should be noted that in this context "fantastic" means based on fantasy.

Alcover set about collecting these tales in the manner that collectors elsewhere did. An English contemporary of Alcover's was Cecil Sharp. His interest wasn't tales as such but their singing and their performance. Sharp sought to revive the folk songs of English villages and Morris dancing. He did so because he felt that these traditions were all but dying out. Alcover thought exactly the same. If we generally attribute a decline in Mallorcan traditions and culture to the upheavals of the tourism boom and the movement to the coasts, then we do perhaps need to revise our understanding. In the late nineteenth century there was a different type of upheaval, one of emigration forced onto a rural population.

What Alcover and Sharp had in common was the nature of the raw material for the tales and the songs. There was virtually no written documentation. The source of the material was spoken: the oral tradition. In this way, therefore, Alcover combined his work on dialects that was to inform his dictionary (and other scholarly works) with the manifestation of dialect - the handed-down folk tale, which could essentially be the same in different parts of Mallorca but with its own peculiarities in terms both of content and language.

The initial volumes of the "rondalles" included such tales as "L'amo de So Na Moixa" (amo meaning owner). From this tale was developed the bighead character that forms part of Alcudia's S'Estol del Rei en Jaume - King James' group. He is the mad miller who goes around throwing flour over passers-by. This somewhat jovial character does, however, disguise an underlying menace and mean-spiritedness. Alcover's tales are littered with the fantastic - dragons, monsters, crazy people - but these surreal figures have some reality of the times when the tales developed: harshness of the rural way of life; vendettas; superstitions; mistrust; revenge.

The mad miller is just one example of how Alcover's tales have been made physical. Another is the tale of the Muc or Much, a story of giants, treasure and beasties, the setting for which is the "Puig de Reig" near Sineu. The Much has become the theme for its own fiesta, and a weird one at that, which is held each August.

The Mallorcan folk tale has undergone two periods of revival. There was Alcover's own and there is the one that is very much of the present. Storytelling, sometimes musically, is everywhere. And this current-day tradition owes virtually everything to one man: Antoni Maria Alcover. A week of dedication is the least he deserves.

* Photo: L'amo de So Na Moixa, the Mad Miller of S'Estol del Rei en Jaume.

The Joys Of Sant Antoni

Goig. There's an odd word. It is derived from the Latin gaudium, which means joy, pleasure or delight. It means the same thing in Catalan but it is also a verse in praise of the Virgin Mary or saints, and it was from Catalan that the genre came. This genre is described as a poetic composition, popular in character, which is sung collectively to give thanks or as a prayer to ask for the physical and spiritual health of a community.

Back in the fourteenth century, it was Saint Peter who was being sung to. The chronicler Ramon Muntaner noted what is taken to be the first documented evidence of a goig. The Catalan navy, all of its men apparently, called on Saint Peter in an action against Gallipoli. The Catalans and Aragonese set fire to the city in 1307. The chronicle in which Muntaner mentioned the goig came a few years later, but it may well have been this 1307 event that he was referring to.

Anyway, the navy had clearly started something of a trend, so much so that by the end of that century (1399 to be precise) the Red Book of Montserrat made reference to the popularity of goigs and dance in churches. This book contained choreographic notation for dances and also verses for songs that were performed during vigils in the square in front of the church of Montserrat.

While Saint Peter (Sant Pere) was doubtlessly felt to be useful to the Catalan navy because of his seafaring connections, other saints were to prove to be popular when it came to the odd goig or two. The rather obscure Sant Roc (not obscure in Mallorca it must be said) was one of them, as was Palma's patron, Sant Sebastià. These two saints shared something in common - dealing with the plague. Prayers for physical well-being and an end to plagues became a goig speciality.

And there is another saint who was to acquire the goig treatment, more really because of thanks being given to him for being a saint and one embedded in Mallorca's Christian culture. Who else but Sant Antoni?

The town which makes most of its joys of Sant Antoni, more so than Sa Pobla, is Manacor. Six years ago the then mayor of the town, Antoni Pastor, explained that the Sant Antoni fiestas were the most important ones for Manacor and for Mallorca. The emotion of the occasion, for him, was partly because Sant Antoni "is my saint" but also because the singing of the goig by hundreds of residents of the town brought him out in goosebumps.

Manacor doesn't go mad for Sant Antoni to the extent that other towns do. Yes, there are bonfires, but there aren't demons roaring around on Sant Antoni Eve as is the case in the likes of Muro, where they take their Sant Antoni just as seriously. The centrepiece of the occasion is the singing. At the parish church the Compline service is sung, which doesn't happen in the same way elsewhere. And the goigs are very much part of the occasion.

So important are these songs that the good folk of Manacor put in some practice. Not one, not twice, but three times. One of these practice sessions involves a barbecue as well; not that any incentive is needed as the folk turn out in good number and in good voice. The final practice is this evening after mass. The real thing is at half seven on Monday.

And what do they sing about? Well, it's all about glory to the saint and overcoming Lucifer, that sort of thing. It may be recalled that Antoni had the odd brush with the devil while he was enduring his hermitic existence in a desert cave; the brushes, so it is said, were hallucinations. As for the singing itself, so ingrained are the goigs in local culture that many people know the words off by heart. In case anyone doesn't, song sheets are provided, and the result of all this is like some grand beer hall sing-song-cum-football crowd, except in a church.

Different it certainly is. If you thought Sant Antoni was just about demons and setting the place on fire, then Manacor proves that there is another aspect to his celebration. Joyous.

Manacor's Renaissance Man

The Manacor History Museum is one of the best museums outside Palma and it has recently launched an exhibition dedicated to one of the town's illustrious sons but someone who will be largely unknown. Perhaps this isn't surprising, as his most famous work failed to be published.

Joan Binimelis lived from 1539 to 1616. The exhibition refers to him as a "manacorí" (person from Manacor) of the Renaissance. Yet this Renaissance man had to contend with influences that were contrary to new ways, such as the Inquisition. He was, among other things, a doctor, a man of the cloth, a geographer, map maker, astronomer, mathematician and humanist. Such a range of interests and professions should arguably - and long ago - have placed him in the limited pantheon of all-time Mallorcan greats, such as another polymath, Ramon Llull, with whom he shares linguistic achievement that was of a somewhat groundbreaking nature. Llull is widely attributed with having popularised Catalan through his novel, "Blanquerna". Binimelis put together a work that was not in Catalan but in Mallorquín, a language (or dialect if one prefers), of which it is usually said that there was not a written tradition: it was a spoken language and only spoken.

Binimelis, however, destroys that perception. Moreover, what he wrote in Mallorquín was a work of absolute importance. He was the author of the first ever history of Mallorca, its title, "Història General del Regne de Mallorca", the general history of the kingdom of Mallorca.

He commended this work to the justices who governed Mallorca (indeed it was intended to have been his legacy to them), noting that there were two versions: one in Castellano and the other in "nostre llengua mallorquina", our Mallorcan language. The Mallorcan version was in fact finished first, in 1595. However, he was to die in 1616 a bitter man who had been largely discredited and who had not seen any interest in the work actually being published.

These justices were men who formed what was essentially like a town hall today, except that they presided over the whole island. They were important people, but though Binimelis was hopeful of their patronage, something went wrong. And there are different theories as to what. One has to do with the fact that, although the book was a history of Mallorca from the time of Jaume I's invasion of 1229, it referred to things that were distinctly non-Mallorcan, such as the story of Noah and the Ark. This, it has been suggested, led to a conclusion that the Renaissance man wasn't quite as modern as he might have appeared. However, it is also said that allusions to mythology or the Bible weren't entirely uncommon for the time, even if Noah had somehow managed to appear in Mallorca's past.

A more simple explanation is that the justices who were the civil authorities on the island didn't have the money to commit to publication. This may indeed have been the reason, were it not for a third possibility: the Inquisition. It would appear that Binimelis was accused of having been more than merely friendly with a nun. He denied this but eventually confessed: the Inquisition did have a habit (so to speak) of getting their man. The stigma of such an apparent dalliance, it has been argued, was enough to make the justices go cool on any formal agreement with Binimelis.

Whatever the reason, the work lay little known and unpublished until it was to appear in Castellano in 1927. Even then, however, it wasn't known who the original author had been. It was to take a further fifty years, through a study of documents pertaining to the Inquisition, to confirm that it had been Binimelis. Some ten years after this confirmation, he finally received recognition and was named an illustrious son of Manacor.

Despite the occasional odd references to Noah, the Binimelis work was of major importance. It was a history but also encyclopedic in that it chronicled things such as food, produce, animals, fish, even the winds of Mallorca. But on the history itself, here was stuff, for example, about the creation of the new settlements that were established in Mallorca after the Catalan conquest. And there was also a charting of Moorish invasions - the famed ones of Pollensa in 1550 and Soller in 1561 - but others too: Alcudia in 1551 and 1558; Andratx in 1553 and 1578.

The Toy Soldiers Of Manacor

Marta Marrero, better known as Martika, was responsible for a rather good pop song a generation ago. The lyric went: "It wasn't my intention to mislead you. It never should have been this way. It's true, I did extend the invitation. I never knew how long you'd stay". For reasons of inexplicable association, her "Toy Soldiers" came to mind when learning about matters in Manacor. It just popped into my head, as these things do. Maybe it was something to do with the lyric later in the song lurking in the subconscious: "all fall down like toy soldiers".

They're falling down in Manacor: the town hall administration that is. Have they misled anyone? Not necessarily once in office, but perhaps the misleading came when they said they could form a pact and work together. Marching into the new age of politics came the combined might (or not) of Més, PSOE and Volem (inspired by the spirit of Podemos, meaning that they are Podemos with a different name). The toy soldiers of Manacor won the battle and reversed years of right-leaning domination, but they have discovered that the war is not over. There is to be a vote of censure (no confidence, in effect), and the mayor and his friends will be removed. The right - the PP, El Pi and the AIPC independents of Porto Cristo - are having their revenge. The invitation isn't to be extended. It might have been expected that they would have stayed for longer than four months or so. It shouldn't be this way, but it is.

And it's a shame in a way. I had Manacor's administration marked down as one to watch because it appeared to be ever so slightly bats. This was the one that made such an enormous ballyhoo over the virgin coves of the municipality that rather than deterring beachgoers heading to Cala Varques and spoiling it, ever more came, and did so in their droves. It should have been obvious, but wasn't.

Still, you can't blame them for trying to keep beaches nice and clean or at least herding the municipality's tourists onto beaches where the cleaning equipment can gain better access: it's Calas de Mallorca for you, friendly tourist, and not the rustic charm of Cala Varques.

The beach thing is not what is making the toy soldiers fall down: nor really is a programme of righteousness and self-righteousness from the manual of consensual togetherness of Més, PSOE and Podemos. It's because they have failed to get to grips with the urban plan for the municipality and present the initial draft. Does this sound like a reason for no confidence? Maybe not, but the opposition clearly believe that it is, and the toy soldiers, ruling in minority, are finding themselves outgunned: the opposition have already divvied up the posts without even having passed the motion.

If it seems as though being slow with the urban plan is not grounds for giving them the sack, this may be because the urban plan sounds like an incredibly dull subject. It is. Just as it is also important and complicated. And herein may be a reason for the toy soldiers being knocked over. Do they understand the plan? You couldn't really blame them for not, as very few do understand them.

But it's all well and good the toy soldiers marching towards a political new age, throwing social largesse around and attempting to keep tourists away from virgin beaches; they have to do so with a pretty firm appreciation of the tedious, complex stuff of public administration. Sure, there are those who can and do advise, but how many of the newcomers to public office have a real grounding in such matters? Some will, even if they have not held office before. One thinks of Miquel March in Pollensa, mayor of another minority administration of the left. As the former main man (person) of the environmentalists GOB, you can be assured that he knows all these plans off by heart.

Even if they do understand them, is Manacor in fact the manifestation of what was feared? The instability of pacts formed from leftist groupings and their potential for fracture and rupture that leads to their inevitable downfall? It doesn't have to follow that this should or will be so. There are minority administrations of the right as well as the left, and Pollensa was a right-leaning minority before a left one got in. Somehow it managed to survive a whole term, and March's administration may well do so too. But lest it be forgotten, the regional government operates in minority. Podemos support PSOE and Més, but the support can be withdrawn and has been on two occasions now. 

The toy soldiers are falling down, but there's a sour taste. Is this just vengefulness by the opposition? And what might they actually do with or want from the urban plan?

It's A Hard Life Being A Demon

You would think that being a demon would be a fairly straightforward affair. On a few occasions a year you put on the appropriate costume and head or face gear, get painted up, grab your trusty trident and head off into the night in order to engage in a spot of local population terrorising and bothering. Once all this is done, it's off to the nearest bar for a welcome caña or several. It's thirsty work being a demon, what with all that fire knocking around.

Alas, the demon's life is not so simple. It can be that he brings it upon himself. (It might be noted that female demons are in short supply, or non-existent when it comes to the "grand" demon.) There is, for example, the political angle, such as the message that the grand demon utters prior to the full-on terrorising. Muro's alluded earlier this year to the elections and to a time after them when the Bourbons would be abdicating. As in previous years, he once more launched into a tirade against corruption, for which souls will burn in hell. Or something like this.

By implication, one can conclude that demons are of the political left and republican by instinct. One can sense this implication strongly in Muro, where the demons and the town hall - of the right and still of the right, despite the elections - haven't seen eye to eye, through the mask, for some years.  So, the demon is not necessarily politically neutral, which is just one way in which he adds complication to his existence.

A further one has to do with demonic organisation. A few years ago - 2010 - the demon world threatened to be torn asunder when a rival association challenged the authority of the Balearic demons' federation. An emergency general meeting of demons in May that year had been called. All was not well, and a demonstration night of fire was put on in Pollensa. It was a show of strength by the rival demons: the souls of the federation would burn in hell. Possibly.

They seem, though, to have patched things up, but this doesn't prevent there being little local demon difficulties. In Son Servera, as an example, there was the business regarding the grand demon and interpretations of demonic activity. He, the demon, appeared to have been flouting tradition. In came some fresh new blood to the organising committee (the obreria), and it was determined to restore the correct ways. While all this was going on, graffiti was being daubed and social media were taking sides.

There are obreria in several towns, and they are most prominent in the affairs of January's Sant Antoni fiestas, when the demons are at their most demonic. In olden times, these were the organisers of church maintenance, but over times they acquired the keys to traditions: demons being among them.

Which brings us to Manacor, to its Patronat (what they call the obreria there nowadays) and to another little local demon spat. The roots of this go back to 1969, which was the year when Father Mateu Galmés was instrumental in reviving the whole Sant Antoni and so demon tradition. It was Father Mateu who also established the Patronat, a specific board of management to ensure that the traditions continued once he had gone. But despite the revivalist enthusiasm of Father Mateu, they ran into a snag. Being a demon was not on the top of the list of things that the locals wanted to do. We are talking quite a few years ago when there wasn't anything like the levels of popularity there now are for demonic matters. In purely social-standing terms, being a demon was looked down upon by many.

These demonic roles were not the ones of the rampaging demons but of the ceremonial demons, the ones which aren't scary. But ceremony or no ceremony, there was reluctance amongst locals to come forward, so the Patronat ended up handing the roles to those who were willing to put their hands up. Moreover, these were posts for life, could be inherited and be paid for.

The president of the federation of residents' associations in Manacor wants this all to change. Not only shouldn't any money be involved, the demons should be elected, just like there are elections each year for, for instance, Pollensa's Joan Mas and Dragut and the Moors and Christians set-to. The Patronat is having none of it. The federation has rejected any idea of boycotting events with demons, but it insists that now may be the time for a touch of modernity to creep in.

So, whenever you encounter demons, be they the wild or less wild variety, just bear in mind that behind every demon there are, variously, republican sympathies, organisational politics, disagreements over demonic activities and arguments regarding birthrights. A demon's life is not a straightforward one.

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days Of Summer

Do you remember the stereogram? It predated the days of the music centre, a massive sideboard type affair with a record deck stuck inside it and, as the name implied, two speakers built into its wooden frame. We had one of these home-entertainment leviathans. It occupied most of one side of the dining-room, somewhere into which no one ventured except at Christmas. The stereogram's contents were a tribute to times prior to and on the cusp of the invention of modern life, i.e. when The Beatles created the new world. Among the parental record collection was Nat King Cole's "Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer", the cover of which showed a small, rocky cove and a scene of lazy, hazy and crazy that wasn't particularly any of these things save for the haze of brown that dominated the colours. These were also the days before Photoshop, Lightroom and advanced photographic and production techniques.

On some small, rocky cove in Mallorca one would hope that the island's politicians were being lazy if not hazy or crazy. Sadly, they are not. High summer and the living should be easy and everyone can go into soporific meltdown for a time: myself included. These are not though the days circa 1963 when a Mallorcan politician, such as he was (and it would have been he), would have been neither seen nor heard. They were, politically, lazy days. They were crazy admittedly, but the craziness, in a Mallorca style, owed more to the first pilgrims of the jet age. Small, rocky coves were out. Artificial beaches, vast expenses thereof, were in.

Trust politicians to belatedly discover small coves though. Manacor's have. It was all too easily predictable, and I did predict it. Kick up a fuss about a cove - Cala Varques - look to reduce numbers on this unspoiled beach, start banning cars, draw attention to somewhere otherwise not well known, and bingo: more people than ever descend on it. If it's as wonderful as the politicians were intimating, then it's worth discovering. Did they not realise this in Manacor? Clearly not.

High summer and the politicians should all be "tranquilo", but they can't be when they have so much to prove. They are of the new, new world, the one of political accountability and transparency. Far from allowing a silly season to prevail, they are dashing hither and thither in crazed, unlazy fashion, creating an occasional Brian Rix-farce season instead of the merely silly: I offer Manacor as evidence of this.

At the head of this feverish summertime activity is the tourism dynamo, Biel Barceló. Manacor today, Soller tomorrow, Menorca the next. His four-year mission? To seek out new coves, new resorts. To boldly go where no tourism minister has gone before. So, there's no time like the present to begin the mission. Perhaps it's all an attempt to divert attention from the eco-tax and the high farce of the mooted airport collection scheme.

Beaches Becoming No-Go Areas

Manacor isn't promoting its coves. The town hall's latest guide for tourists has removed the coves, they are non-beaches. The belief is that by not mentioning the coves, "massification" can be avoided. The unspoiled nature of the coves will be conserved, their ecologies will be sustained. Manacor is on a mission for "tourism of greater quality". Instead of the coves, this tourism, via the guide, will be directed to the beaches where there is massification - those of the town's resorts, none of which are, compared with others on Mallorca, that big, but they are big enough to qualify for the massification tag.

There is some sensible but at the same time curious and questionable thinking behind all this. The sense comes in not wanting the coves to be swamped. The curious aspect is that the horribly described "quality tourism" consists in part of precisely the type of tourism that would prefer a cove to a resort beach. The questionable part arises because whatever Manacor does by way of not promoting the coves will not make a scrap of difference. Is the town hall unaware that there is a great big world out there? One on the world wide web.

Making a song and dance, which the town hall is, about Cala Varques in particular is going to have precisely the opposite effect to what the council intends. No one had heard of it before. They know it now. Yes, there are new restrictions on parking that are designed to avoid "massification", but the town hall is thus providing promotion for this cove when non-inclusion in the guide is supposed to do otherwise. The fact is that parking has long been an issue. Trip Advisor can tell you that. Just as Trip Advisor, and other web sources, can tell you how "precioso" the cove is.

And will the town hall be passing on its message to its tourist offices and indeed tourist offices elsewhere. If you have ever spent time observing what is asked at tourist offices, you'll be aware that one of the top questions has to do with the "precioso" cove. Out come maps, and the information office personnel only too happily point it out. Or will it be notifying the tourism ministry with its extensive guide to beaches? Go to this and there is a seemingly endless list of Cala here, Cala there, some of which are the large calas that are beach resorts, but mostly they are the small ones: Cala Varques for example.

This guide does actually advise you to access the cove by sea. Not because it wishes to deter you from driving but because it points out that there is a bit of a trek to get to it. Access by boat is as much an issue for Manacor as by car: they want to clamp down on that as well.

For years, Mallorca has made much of the fact that it isn't an island that only has large resort beaches. The ministry's website, in describing Cala Varques, refers to the quiet and paradise nature of the coastline from Porto Cristo. The vastly overused "paradise" has consistently been adopted to promote the coves, the alternatives to the resort beaches: tourism of greater quality, one might suggest.

Now, however, Manacor wants to put an end to all of this. Which other town halls might follow suit? Are certain beaches around Mallorca to become virtual no-go areas because town halls say so, thus flouting a fundamental principle that the coasts of Mallorca (and Spain) are in the public domain and free to the public to enjoy?

Despite this, one can understand the town hall's position. But it is one that has been forced onto it by success, by promotion through means other than those of the town hall and by sheer weight of numbers: tourists adding to the residents who make a beeline for beaches at weekends and will be doing so during the weeks of August when many are on holiday. Simply put, are Mallorca's beaches being overwhelmed? And is the infrastructure, especially parking, incapable of coping? The answer to the latter question is yes. As examples there has been the chaos in Sa Rapita (for access to Es Trenc) because the unofficial car park was closed. There is the mayhem in Playa de Muro with people wanting to get to Es Comú beach. Neither beach is small. Both are vast, yet the infrastructure can't cope with the demand.

Something, you feel, has to give. Either more parking is made available (though goodness knows where in many instances) or there will be more cases of drivers being turned away by police, as can happen in Sa Rapita, or of passes for residents being issued, which is what has happened by Es Comú. The beaches, the coves are products of their own success and, despite what Manacor might wish, of promotion.

The Neglect Of Calas de Mallorca

Calas de Mallorca is a resort that has for years suffered from neglect. Partly this has been because of its origins as an essentially private development which still creates issues for the town hall in Manacor in terms of services. Nevertheless, last year the town hall was stung into taking action when examples of neglect began to appear in the media. So, it showed some initiative, the lack of which has been the focus of criticism of regimes at the town hall over several years when it has come to tourism infrastructure (and not just Calas de Mallorca). It is a resort which has also become a dumping ground for all-inclusive. In this regard it is not unique, but the almost total economy nature of its some 6,000 or so hotel places has bred a form of all-inclusive that reflects the hotel stock and a level of all-inclusive which is said to represent anywhere between 80% and 90% of those places.

The quoting of such figures is always something in which holes can be picked. Data from the Balearic tourism ministry (such as they are) and information from studies give varying percentages as to the level of all-inclusive. A typical figure has been around 33% for the whole of Mallorca, which might just be believable when one takes account of the island's entire hotel stock but is most definitely not believable at the micro level of individual resorts, of which Calas de Mallorca is a good example.

With a new regime at the town hall, the issue of all-inclusive, as it is in other municipalities, has come to the top of the agenda. But like other municipalities, Calvia for example where the mayor has spoken of regulation, Manacor cannot effect any municipal legislation that limits or bars all-inclusive. It can introduce bylaws that might influence aspects of the all-inclusive offer but it can do no more: it is otherwise a matter for regional government.

If the volume of all-inclusive is as it is quoted, there should be a fundamental question being asked: what is the point of Calas de Mallorca as a resort? If general economic welfare is so limited as a consequence of one particular type of accommodation board, then its purpose as a resort is diminished. It is not sustainable, and in the mantra of the current day, it therefore runs counter to the notions of sustainable (aka responsible) tourism that tour operators and some hoteliers make a big issue of, yet singularly fail to practise.

The new regional administration, with its twin policy items of the eco-tax and all-inclusive regulation (yet to be defined), may well have an underlying strategy aimed at reducing tourist numbers. It is a strategy littered with risks, but if these policies, allied to tactics such as the declaration of far more "mature zones" in tourist resorts, were to result in a decline in the number of places in a resort like Calas de Mallorca but the removal of a great deal of that 80 or 90%, then the cost-benefit equation would in all likelihood weigh heavily in favour of general economic benefit for the local economy.

The mature zones, a mechanism for liberalising and incentivising redevelopment but also forcing it, should be applied widely across Mallorca, but it is a tactic which might itself run up against government antagonism towards in-resort investment. What we are not seeing at present is a clear vision of what Biel Barceló, the tourism minister, wants. When he speaks of tourism re-investment facilitated by the eco-tax, how much of this would be directed at the resorts? Even if it were to be, mature zones rely massively on private investment for the tactic to succeed or be given the chance to succeed, and neither Més (certain members of the party at any rate) nor Podemos are currently endearing themselves to the principal sources of such investment - the hoteliers and their backers.

There is a great deal of muddled thinking at present. While reducing tourist numbers, limiting all-inclusive but raising general standards in terms of the type of tourism that Mallorca has are not in themselves bad policies, another side of the coin is that of employment. And into this equation comes the issue of wages, employment conditions and contracts. A report this week that reveals that increased employment levels in the Balearics are predominantly due to short-term, seasonal tourism contracts will come as absolutely no surprise. Podemos, in attacking the hoteliers for a lack of job security, has to accept certain realities of the tourism industry. Firstly, it is seasonal and secondly, there is a very good reason why wages are as they are - low. Podemos (and the government) wants there to be higher quality employment in the industry, implying higher wages, full contracts and so on. But then what is this employment? For the most part, it is unskilled or low-skilled. This shouldn't be an excuse for worker exploitation, but tourism jobs are like they are in Mallorca the world over: that's the reality.

To return to the theme of all-inclusive regulation, it is not one that is only exercising the minds of councillors in Manacor and Calvia and Balearic government ministers. In Benidorm, a commission is being set up to analyse the impact of all-inclusive. The conclusions of its findings will be sent to the regional government (Valencia in this instance). What is significant about this commission is the fact that it involves all interested parties, including the Benidorm hoteliers. Absent from its membership, however, are any tour operators, and as we all know it is they who hold the key, not the hoteliers, many of whom would rather not have to offer all-inclusive (a sentiment which exists in Mallorca as well).

But with the Canaries also setting all-inclusives in their sights, there is a discernible shift in political and business perspective. Finally, after a good couple of decades of all-inclusive there is some momentum and desire to address its impact, and it is a momentum being felt in different parts of Spain. Ultimately, however, the tour operators need to be included, as it is they who wield much of the power. But might they finally wake up to the responsibilities they claim in the marketing-speak of their responsible/sustainable tourism mission statements? Don't hold your breath.

From Valencia To Mallorca: Jewel races

One of the more peculiar occurrences at a Mallorcan summer fiesta is the insistence by some to indulge in physical exertion of a sort that the meteorological office and the health authorities advise against, especially during the great heat of the day. There is any amount of this activity going on and foremost among it is the fiesta race or races: they come in various guises.

An example of this madness occurred at the start of this month. It was the race to La Victoria in Alcúdia. Anyone with a bit of local knowledge will know that La Victoria is up the side of a mountain. It involves a steep and tortuous climb, and that's just by car. There is a less demanding alternative than running, i.e. the whistle while you walk (itself slightly mad), but neither method is recommended for anyone whose definition of exercise is the stroll to the motor in order to drive to the newsagents.

In Sa Pobla they've come up with a new twist on this summertime torture. It's called "Brutal Running", and the brutality is due to take place this coming Saturday. At a distance of four kilometres, the title seems somewhat exaggerated, but there are always the obstacles, ones for which it is recommended that participants wear clothing of "little value" on account of the potential for said clothing to "deteriorate", which is probably a euphemism for being ripped to shreds. Brutal or not, the only sensible aspect of it is that it doesn't start until six in the evening, when it is likely to have cooled down to 32 degrees: Sa Pobla is typically one of the hottest places on Mallorca.

Such races might be said to have a common fiesta lineage, and it is one that came from across the sea in Valencia and which didn't involve racing on foot but on horseback. Take a look at many a fiesta programme schedule and you will find, assuming the schedule has been translated into English, which it probably won't have been, something known as "jewel races": in Catalan, these are "corregudes de joies".

These jewel races date back to the eighteenth century, and they were typically contests between farmworkers who would challenge each other to see whose horse could go the fastest. The prizes for the victors were jewels, hence the name, though these prizes were subsequently changed - a silk scarf became popular instead, for example. The village of Pinedo can boast having kept this tradition going virtually uninterrupted since the 1700s. Indeed, it is the only village to be able to make this boast. Nowadays, the races, over a distance of 800 metres, take place on the beach and involve some serious sprinting by the horses.

These horse jewel races made their way to Mallorca. There isn't a great deal of historical evidence regarding them, but one town where they were certainly popular until the Civil War was Manacor. The races were both on horseback and on foot, and there is a photo from an unknown year which shows that a large crowd had gathered to watch them. The races used to be staged during the town's celebrations for Sant Jaume, whose day it is this coming Saturday. These fiestas in Manacor were, once upon a time, one of the largest events in Mallorca and had been since the time of King Jaume II (as opposed to the saint), who had established a residence in the town in the early fourteenth century. So popular were they in fact that they have been described as having once been one of the three great fiestas of the Mediterranean: which was all quite a long time ago.

The jewel races that are listed in fiesta programmes are races for which the name has survived rather than the prize. Winners can today expect all sorts of rewards - sweets, typically, for children - and runners, be they young or old, are often egged on by demons or big heads, as is the case in Campos, from where there is a photo from the 1950s which shows the adult male winner of the race homing in on his jewel, which was a hen. They are races which crop up at many a fiesta, and tomorrow in Santa Maria del Camí, just as an example, the town's Santa Margalida fiestas have their jewel races. And at what time? Midday. Yes, midday. Fortunately, the races are only short.

The Pantomime Mule Of Manacor

The mule has its own place in Mallorca's story. Along with the donkey, it was a prime source of energy for mills and wells. Blindfolded, in order to prevent sickness, the mule or the donkey would be harnessed and walk in a circle to extract water or grind wheat - mills were even used to grind salt and clay. The mule was not the only source of power. Man was as well: slaves. When the slave trade came to an end, the mule reassumed greater duties, unless there was sufficient wind to do its job for it. The mills driven by mules, donkeys and humans were known as "molinos de sangre": mills of blood.

In 1891 the town hall in Palma was approached with a request to create the city's first public transport system. On 20 September of that year, this system was inaugurated. It went to Porto Pi and was 4.4 kilometres long. It was a tram, but more specifically a "tram of blood": it was driven by mules.

The first mule trams were known as ripers, rippers, riperts or ripperts. They existed in other cities - Barcelona and Madrid, for example - and the inconsistency in spelling may be purely down to local usage. They all had a common root, though, and that was one Monsieur Ripert, a carriage-maker from Marseille. He came up with the design, others stole it but used his name, and so emerged the riperts (or whatever they were called). In truth, they weren't really trams at all but a forerunner of the bus, but they were around for a good number of years after the first journey in 1891: the proper, electrified tram line to Porto Pi wasn't to start until 1916. Nevertheless, there were mule-drawn riperts heading out to what were still suburbs in the 1920s, such as El Terreno.

Elsewhere on the island, the mule was being affected by the arrival of technology. While much of Mallorca remained stuck in the nineteenth century, the first bicycle had appeared in the 1860s, the train had arrived by the final quarter of the 1800s and then the car and real buses came along in the first quarter of the 1900s. The Sóller train, went it opened in 1912, was to cut the journey time from Palma from four hours to one hour: it was also a lot more comfortable and a lot less hairy (the journey, that is, as opposed to the mule).

Eventually of course, the mule was to lose its transport source of employment, though for the mule population there were still the mills, the wells and the hard labour of the countryside. Nowadays, it would be hard to place a figure on how many mules there are in Mallorca; it is easier to place a price on the mule, if adverts on the internet are anything to go by. There is one available for 600 euros; three others for 250 euros each - urgent sales on account of the owner having to move away. 

In its different ways, therefore, the mule has its place in the Mallorcan story, one that is both urban and rural, but it is the countryside, or at least more rural areas, where the mule remains more honoured today. This said, Manacor is a fairly large urban area and long a centre of industry. Manacor has, however, acquired a mule. Not a real one but a pretend one. The "mulassa" of Manacor, which is basically like a pantomime horse with one playing the front, another playing the back, was revealed in front of 200 or so expectant citizens of Manacor last week. It danced, it cavorted, the folk musicians made music. The mulassa had arrived and its first big performance will come at this year's Sant Jaume fiestas.

Mallorca has its range of odd characters that take to the streets at fiesta time: the giants, the big heads, the dragons, the cavallets. And the Manacor mulassa, it might be said, falls into the general category of the latter: figures with a horsey theme. The artist Sebastià Riera Pocovi has been responsible for the mulassa, and the significance of the mule is that there was, in times gone by, a tradition of there being a raffle to win a mule on Sant Jaume day.

But there is more to the mulassa than this local tradition. The figure of a mule goes back centuries in Catalan fiesta tradition. La Mulassa de Barcelona, for example, can trace its history to 1601. It seemingly disappeared from the festivities' scene around 1812 but was revived in the late 1980s. It goes on tour, and it has appeared in Mancor de la Vall, while the Mulassa de Falset (in Catalonia) has turned up in Santa Maria del Cami. Now Manacor has one, maybe it will go on tour as well, though it's more likely that every town and village will want one.

Tales Of The Llevant: Blurred lines

Of the various pioneers of Mallorca's tourism, some became great names and created great dynasties, others did not become great names but their names nonetheless reside in the history of the pioneering tourism years. In a small coastal part of Manacor there was one such pioneer. You will find him referred to as a one-time goalkeeper with Barcelona. He was, but he only played two games. Before joining Barcelona, he was with Real Mallorca, and he was to end his career with Mallorca in 1963. While he was still playing, he opened a hotel in a small coastal part of Manacor where there was no hotel. This was S'Illot. The pioneer, the one-time Barça goalie, was Pere Caldentey Bauzá. He lived to enjoy the fruits of his pioneering, but he didn't live long. He died at the age of 46 in 1975.

There is an error in the preceding paragraph. Though S'Illot is in Manacor, it is also in Sant Llorenç. Pere was born in Sant Llorenç. He built what was originally a pension right by the border between the two municipalities, this border being formed by the torrent of Can Amer. Though Manacor might have claimed the pension as being its, Pere's pension was most definitely in Sant Llorenç. And it still is. The hotel Peymar, nowadays a three-star, was not just the first hotel in S'Illot, it was the first coastal hotel in Sant Llorenç. The Playa del Moro in Cala Millor might have claimed bragging rights where being the first was concerned (1964), but it wasn't, albeit that it, like the Peymar, was only just in Sant Llorenç. Walk five streets up from the current Playa del Moro, and you are in Son Servera.

The Peymar took its name from Pere and his wife Margalida: Pe y Mar. Legend has it that it opened in the 1950s, though there is an alternative version which says that it was 1961. As with the somewhat blurred border lines between municipalities, there are also blurred facts from those pioneering days of tourism. The blurring gets even more out of focus when you factor in that S'Illot is also called Cala Moreia. Things can get even more confusing if you consider the case of the Caves of Hams, not far from S'Illot. Look the caves up and you will find that a "tourism pioneer" was involved in the caves discovery. He was? Pere Caldentey. But not the same Pere Caldentey. He was Pere Caldentey i Santandreu, and he died in 1950, so at a time when the other Pere Caldentey was keeping goal for Real Mallorca.

There was a good deal of rivalry between municipalities when it came to where the real pioneering occurred or didn't. The Manacor wing of S'Illot was hard at it in a 1971 magazine, stating clearly that it was their part which was the pioneering zone. That the Peymar was the wrong side of the stream couldn't obscure the fact that in the 1930s, the Manacor part was where there had been a plan for a coastal urbanisation drawn up.

This pioneering has to be put into some context. There were no houses of any description in S'Illot until 1929. By 1934, there were all of ten dwellings, and by the time that tourism was really looking as though it might become something for the pioneer to get his teeth into, i.e. 1960, there was a grand total of 95 dwellings, almost all of them summer holiday homes. Something that these summer vacationers, and Pere Caldentey come to that, had to contend with was the lack of utilities. Undeveloped coastal areas simply didn't have them. There is the story of the summer holiday homeowners of Magalluf, all half a dozen of them, who chipped in so that they could get some electricity connected. (The electricity company, GESA presumably, saw no point in its putting its own money in as in the mid-1950s it saw no future for Magalluf.) In S'Illot, in 1963, an electricity supply was installed, and this supply does rather draw into question one of the great yarns of tourism pioneering. Enter into the story, Jaume de Juan Pons.

In 1963, so the story goes, he turned up in S'Ilot, took a shovel out of his Seat 600 and started digging. He was to become one of the great names of tourism (the Playa Moreia hotel), but when he first appeared in S'Illot, he said there was no electricity. Well, that's debatable, though it would appear that the electricity was not switched on for the first time until the August fiestas, so the story does all rather depend on when in 1963 the digging commenced. There again, as it is said that the Playa Moreia opened in 1963, when did the digging really start?

Blurred? Just a bit.

From Naviform To Nadal: Manacor

Manacor, Mallorca's third largest town, the commercial centre for the eastern Llevant region of the island, birthplace of the most famous Mallorcan ever, Rafael Nadal, but a town known less, by tourists at any rate, than its coastal resorts - Porto Cristo, S'Illot, Calas de Mallorca - and its caves, those of Drach and of Hams. It is a town, rather like Inca, which can tend to be overlooked and dismissed on account of its industrial/commercial nature. Yet there is, as with any town in Mallorca, a great deal to commend it and a great deal that is of interest to be discovered and learned.

One of the first times that Manacor loomed onto my radar was when I found the story of the ghost of the neighbourhood of Fartàritx. It turned out, or so it would seem, that this ghost was a simpleton by the name of Pere-Joan. When he died in 1820, the appearances of the ghost stopped. The ghost story is one of the more unusual ones that goes into the making of the history of Manacor, a history which is on display at the town's museum.

There have been other famous people from Manacor. Two of them also brought the town firmly into my consciousness. One of them was Antoni Maria Alcover, one of the most important literary figures that Mallorca has ever produced. Linguist, folklorist, story-teller, Alcover is something of a current-day hero for the Catalanist tradition. In terms of literature and linguistics he is on the same sort of cultural pedestal as that old mystic Ramon Llull, but he did something which Llull didn't; he co-compiled the "Diccionari català-valencià-balear". He has become known as the "apostle of the language": the Catalan language.

A very different historical figure was Simón Ballester (aka Simó Tort). In the middle of the fifteenth century, Ballester led an uprising against the governor of Mallorca. He and his men made at least three attempts to attack Palma and to get rid of the governor. The revolt failed, he fled to Menorca, was captured, returned to Mallorca and executed.

The point about Ballester, Alcover, Pere-Joan and even Rafa Nadal is that they all contribute in their very different ways to the story of Manacor and they are all representative of the richness of the past (and the present) that resides in the town and in other Mallorcan towns. Manacor may be known more for what exists on the coast but there is a great deal away from the coast that is also worth knowing and some of it is to be found in its museum.

This building is in itself part of the town's story. It is located in a manor house, Torre dels Enagistes, which dates back to the thirteenth century. The museum has exhibitions which relate to different eras, starting with prehistory and so with the Talayotic period and what indeed came before it: the Naviform era, so-called because of the way that dwellings were built in the shape of upside-down ships. The museum is remarkably good in identifying time frames. The Naviform people, who provided the first evidence of proper settlement in Manacor, were around from 1700BC. The Talayotic period came some six hundred years later, and there is plenty of evidence of Talayotic settlements dotted around Manacor, and the Talayotic people were later, from the seventh century BC, engaged in trade with the Ebusitano, merchants from Ebussus, aka Ibiza.

But moving much nearer to the present day and to Manacor's reputation as an industrial and commercial centre, the museum is staging a special exhibition dedicated to trades and crafts which have, for the most part, disappeared. The point is made that, though these were trades that were to be found in Manacor, they were ones that would have existed across Mallorca. They were trades which were commonplace, going back centuries, such as to the dairy which was certainly established in the mid-eighteenth century, and which numbered roughly forty in total - anything from healers and water diviners to makers of noodles and to those engaged in trades which survive; bookbinders, for instance.

These traditional trades and crafts didn't necessarily fall by the wayside on account of the industrial revolution of tourism. Though it is said that Mallorca was industrially underdeveloped before the arrival of tourism, this is accurate only up to a point. Manacor is an example of a town which disputes this argument. It transformed itself from the start of the last century thanks to artificial pearls and furniture.

The traditional trades serve as a reminder of times that will not return and of Manacor as it once was, but remembering their passing serves to emphasise the fact that Manacor grew to be the town it now is not because of traditional trades but because of the pre-modern ones that arrived before tourism.

* Photo of Manacor Museum from: http://www.balearsculturaltour.net

The Famous Five Go Consorting

It must be consortium week. There we were, waiting an age for a consortium to turn up, and two of them appear on successive days; yesterday the consortium for building tourism things and knocking others down and today a consortium for a group of towns. This consortium is the first such consortium in Mallorca, and what it involves is five town halls getting together in order to make cost savings and to try and avoid losing responsibilities envisaged under national reform of local government. The famous for now five are Artà, Manacor, Sant Llorenç, Santa Margalida and Son Servera; famous for now in being the first such consortium, but there could be more consortiums while the five could grow its number. 

While cost savings and rationalisation of resources and services are the efficiencies to be gained from this consortium, there is also an element of municipal self-interest. The five towns together will constitute an entity of some 80,000 inhabitants. Under the government's reforms, towns with fewer than 20,000 people will lose some of its responsibilities. They will be assumed by a higher authority: the Council of Mallorca in Mallorca's case. But, and one presumes this to be so, lump towns together and their combined populations take them well over the responsibility-losing threshold.

Four of the towns in this consortium would face this prospect, but one, Manacor, wouldn't. It is by far the largest of the five towns, representing over half that 80,000. Which begs a question as to what benefit it might derive from the arrangement and a further one as to whether it might not just dominate the other four. Manacor may be able to extract some savings of its own, but when one analyses these five towns, there are some political similarities. One is that none of them are run by the Partido Popular. Manacor was before its mayor Antoni Pastor had his big falling-out with President Bauzá, but it is now a town hall of a coalition, independents, liberals and what have you.

Manacor has become one of the island's awkward-squad town halls. Another is Santa Margalida. It and Manacor share one thing very much in common: a dislike of Bauzá. Of the three other towns, they also share a thing in common: the train that won't now be running between Manacor and Artà because the PP regional government won't facilitate its funding. So politically as well as geographically, there is some connection between the five.

This, though, raises a further question. There may exist some political harmony between the towns at present, but what about the future? There is a fair bit of the unknown about this consortium venture, not just because political complexions could change in any of the towns at the next elections in 2015 but also because the number of councillors will be radically reduced at those elections (another aspect of the local government reforms).

While responsibilities might be shared, the towns would still have their own mayors and whatever number of councillors they will be permitted to have from 2015. The potential for disagreements would seem to be great, and there must be the possibility that Manacor, because it is so much bigger than the others, pushes the other towns around. To make this consortium work is going to demand considerable diplomacy and probable compromise, neither of which is usually to be found in great abundance in Mallorcan local government and especially not at town levels where inter-town rivalries, the old-boys and family networks and pure parochialism create obstacles to harmonious relationships. Town halls can descend into dysfunctional chaos as it is because no one can get on with each other (one only has to think of Pollensa); put them together in the form of a consortium and God knows what trouble might be in store.

Of course, it might work but it might also become like the European Union - adding ever more members until it becomes unworkable. This particular consortium will surely attract the interest of Capdepera at some stage. It would in fact be interesting to know why it isn't in from the outset, given that it is hemmed in by two of the towns and that it also isn't PP-run. And if Capdepera, which other towns? Petra? Maria de la Salut? Muro? Felanitx?

Ultimately, won't such a consortium need to have one body to run it? Would this not be a logical outcome and so bring about an actual merger of towns? There certainly are unknowns about this venture, but it might just represent the beginning of a process of truly radical reform of Mallorcan local government.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

A Mallorcan Christmas Ghost Story

The year is 1817. It is two days before Christmas. There is a full moon in a clear, starry night sky. Two young men are walking home from an inn in the area of Fartàritx in Manacor. They are startled by an apparition standing by a street corner. Is it flesh and blood? What is it? The young men, though afraid, edge towards the apparition. They call out. "Who are you?" The apparition doesn't speak. It makes no sound at all, even as it suddenly disappears from view. Where has it gone? The young men, bolder now, race to the spot at the corner of the street. They look left, they look right. The apparition is nowhere to be seen.

The young men chuckle. It must have been a friend wearing a sheet who was trying to spook them. They laugh at their stupidity, slap each other on the back and say their good nights as they head to their homes. They think they have been fooled, but the next day they are forced to think again.

The Christmas Eve market is thronged, but the local people are huddling together, some are holding onto each other. The two young men had not been the only ones to see a strange apparition. There is fear and the people speak of only one thing: the ghost. The mayor comes among the people. He calls for the men of the neighbourhood to join with him. That night they will hunt for the apparition. The priest, though, warns the people. Tells them not to speak of it. "If this thing is or of the devil, to even name it is to give succour to forces of darkness. I forbid you to utter its name."

"Father," one man speaks out, "this thing is spreading fear. My wife saw it. From our yard. She said it was a terrible sight. It will bring ruin if we do not find it." The two young men speak as well. "We saw it too, Father. It was a fearful thing. And ... And it can just disappear. We saw how it can."

The mayor then announces. "We will find it, but we will honour the advice of the Father, and not speak of it. We will gather at six this evening. Bring scythes or forks and, Miquel, please bring your gun."

As the sun goes down, the men of the neighbourhood congregate. They form three groups and they scour the streets for several hours, despite this being Christmas Eve. But they see nothing. Indeed, seeing anything is made more difficult as on this night the moon is no longer full and a Tramuntana wind has brought in cloud. Eventually, they head to the church, their fruitless hunt over.

Had the ghost been no more than a practical joke? Some thought so. Others were less sure. One theory was that it was indeed a ghost, the ghost of a Jewish woman who had died at the hands of the Inquisition. That the ghost did not reappear again on Christmas Eve led many to believe that it would not be seen again, but they were to be wrong, just as they had been wrong to search when the moon wasn't full.

The apparition did reappear. It reappeared unerringly when two events coincided, a full moon and the proximity of a religious celebration. Over the following three years, it was spotted several times, always briefly, never speaking and always disappearing without sound. However, there were still those who were unconvinced that it was really a ghost. Suspicion fell on a simpleton called Pere-Joan, and when he died in 1820, the suspicions seemed as though they may have been right. Or were they?

The neighbourhood of Fartàritx ceased to suffer this strange visitation, but it began to appear elsewhere. In the S'Antigor area, for instance, then Barracar and Sa Moladora. The ghost continued to materialise, even into the last century, and so whenever there was a full moon and a religious fiesta, the people of Manacor were in a state of anxiety, though on one occasion they discovered that the ghost was indeed a hoax, a young woman being forced at gunpoint to remove a sheet; she had been hoping to scare her boyfriend.

The young woman was not the ghost of Manacor, but the story of the ghost is a true one. The events of Christmas 1817 may not have happened quite as I have suggested, but it is possible that they might have done. But one thing makes my version inaccurate, and that is the fact that the ghost had started appearing much earlier. In the eighteenth century. Was the ghost a prank or was it not?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Culture Nights, Culture Years: The OCB

It may not have been 31 December on Friday, but this didn't stop there being an awards ceremony in honour of 31 December. And why would there be an awards ceremony to honour this date? Because 31 December, unofficially, is Mallorca day (note the lower-case "d" as a result of it being unofficial).

As anyone with a smattering of Mallorcan history can tell you, 31 December was the day in 1229 when King Jaume I invaded (didn't re-conquer; invaded and then occupied). The Jaume invasion introduced Catalan to the island of course, and the rest has been history; one very complicated history ever since.

733 years after Jaume invaded, on 31 December 1962, an organisation was formed. Oddly perhaps, given the times they lived in then, this was the Obra Cultural Balear, arch-defenders in Mallorca of all things Catalan. It is the OCB which was dishing out the awards on Friday. It does so every year, but this, being its 50th anniversary, meant there was more to make a song and dance about (a dance that was probably in good, traditional Mallorcan "ball de bot" style).

In fact, the 50th anniversary has been given special meaning, as 2012 has been a very good year for the OCB. Because there has been so much anti-Catalan stuff flying around, it has been able to assume new purpose, kicking up a fuss left, right and centre (mainly left though), the devil of the Partido Popular attempting to play havoc with the demons of tradition and the language and culture of the island.

For its ceremony, the OCB chose Manacor. And why Manacor? Ostensibly, because 2012 is also the 150th anniversary of the birth of a famous son of the town, Antoni Maria Alcover, man of words and ideas, man of story-telling (mostly in Catalan). The choice of Manacor was fortuitous, however, as the town is the centre of opposition to the PP that has come from within the PP, or rather from those now no longer members of the PP, as they have been expelled. And they include Manacor's mayor, Antoni Pastor.

The ceremony, also known as the night of culture, was, as the OCB spelled out, an occasion that demonstrated a "clamour for the rights and linguistic identities of Mallorcans". On 6 January, the whole thing will be broadcast by Catalonia Television, thus extending fraternal Catalan cultural greetings across the water to the mainland and reinforcing, the OCB would believe, as it believes also in the rights of the mythical Catalan Lands, the fraternity of Catalan culture. The gala was offered to the Mallorcan channel IB3, but it seems that the offer was turned down. From what I understand, groups like the OCB and its environmental chums, GOB, are pretty much verboten by IB3 (all to do with impartial editorial direction, determined by a PP plant).

But what of this grand gala, this night of culture? Who got the awards? Well, if I were to reel them off, you wouldn't have a clue who I was referring to, and to be honest, I hadn't heard of most of them myself. One whose name is familiar, and is familiar to this blog, was Francesc Vicens. You might recall that he is the musicologist who has written, among other things, a book about pop music in Mallorca. The book's title is "Paradise of Love", and I wrote about this recently (http://alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/los-kinks-mallorca-and-sixties-pop.html).

As for the others, there were groups who defend Catalan in education, one of which helped to organise a day of protest recently, an actor called Antoni Gomila (from Manacor) who referred to the theatre as being the "backbone" for the expression and consolidation of Catalan language and culture, and a band from Valencia called Obrint Pas that mixes punk, ska and rock, all with a clear Catalan flavour.

So, there you are. What an evening of culture it must have been. And onlooking was Pastor, there with other former PP members of the town hall who await any further childish reprisals from the PP for having had the temerity to disagree with the party line. The auditorium in Manacor was packed. Whether one can read much into the attendance is hard to say, but the night of culture, it could be argued, demonstrates the serious divisions in Mallorcan society, ones created by the assault on Catalan. But how serious really are they? It suits the OCB to emphasise them, but then the OCB has its belief in the Catalan Lands and so therefore, and ultimately, some sort of independent Greater Catalonia. This is not something that has wide support in Mallorca. Indeed, it has very little popular support, and among politicians formerly of the "popular" party, I very much doubt that Pastor supports the idea either.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Nine hectares affected in fire near Caves of Drach

On a day when there were more fires on Mallorca, the most serious was one in forest off the road between Manacor and the Caves of Drach in Porto Cristo. Under control by mid-afternoon, the fire has resulted in almost nine hectares of primarily pine woods being affected or lost.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

MALLORCA TODAY - Manacor loses all its blue flags

While Pollensa has attracted most of the publicity regarding the loss of blue flags for its beaches, spare a thought for Manacor. In 2009, the town had a total of ten blue flags (way more than Pollensa has ever had or could have), but now it hasn't got any.

There has been a case of low water quality and other cases of a lack of services, but there is also the fact that demands made on some really quite small beaches are considered to be ridiculous by the town hall.

And one has to agree. The whole blue flag system has got completely out of hand. People should ignore it and maybe it might go away and take its self-important bureaucratic insistence with it.

See more: Diario de Mallorca

Towns And Cities: Confusing places

Mallorca, like the rest of Spain, has any number of definitions as to places. And being Mallorca, it has these definitions in more than one language. Like Britain, there can be villages, towns or cities, but understanding why a place is one or the other in Mallorca isn't straightforward.

Manacor celebrates on Monday its one-hundredth anniversary of having been named (by royal decree) as a "ciudad". The problem with a ciudad is that it can mean either town or city. In Manacor's case, I am pretty sure it doesn't mean city. There are, or appear to be, similar criteria for a place to be a city in Spain as in Britain, e.g. a cathedral. However, this doesn't prevent Madrid, the capital of Spain that has a damn great cathedral apparently not being a city, or a ciudad. It is in fact a "villa": not somewhere you stay when on holiday with a nice pool and a terrace barbecue, but a town - at least I think it's a town. Madrid can, though, claim to be a villa with a capital V, which other villas can't claim, unless they're from Aston.

Barcelona, on the other hand, is a ciudad, as in a city (possibly). A distinction between a villa and ciudad is that a ciudad enjoys greater privileges than a villa. Which is odd. I mean, how many privileges does Madrid need to acquire to have more than Barcelona; it's the bloody capital after all. And on this basis, Manacor has more privileges than Madrid. Maybe.

Confused? You're not the only one. In Mallorca, its best known city (and probably its only one), Palma, has in the past been known simply as "Ciudad"; it still is among some. City seems reasonable enough in Palma's case. Massive cathedral, university, centre of administration, loads of people; they all fit a city template. Manacor can't claim the same. Yet it is a ciudad, whereas somewhere like Santa Margalida is a villa, or more commonly a "vila", as in the Catalan. Santa Margalida is indeed commonly referred to as vila, though a vila can also, in Catalan, be a village. So maybe Santa Margalida is actually a village. But it, like Madrid, manages to get itself a capital V. Vila. How did that happen?

Ah but, there is another type of village, which is the "pueblo". This is a place with all manner of pretensions as a pueblo is not just a village, it is also the entire state of Spain and/or its people. The pueblo is how one might refer to, for example, Alcúdia town, though a working definition for a ciudad, in its broadest sense through population size, would make it a ciudad. It isn't a village, not with close to 20,000 people it isn't, but this is the population of the whole municipality, and officially this is what Alcúdia is, as is Manacor, which is also, in official terms, a ciudad.

In Mallorca, there is also the "pobla", as in Sa Pobla. What's this? It isn't a Catalan "pueblo", as this would be "poble". A pobla is a population, a place with people if you like. Sa Pobla is sometimes known by a Spanish variant, La Puebla, though it could also be La Población. Pobla, Puebla, Población, it's a municipality nevertheless.

We could also consider the "aldea" or the "lugar", but by now I imagine you've lost the will to live, so we won't. Instead, let's go back a hundred years and to the time when Manacor became a town, or a city; a ciudad at any rate.

It became so because a Mallorcan parliamentary deputy wanted it to be. Alexandre Rosselló petitioned the king of the time, the later-to-be treacherous Alfonso XIII, and he said yes, you shall have your ciudad. And what qualified Manacor for this status? Knowing this might actually help us to understand what makes a ciudad and what doesn't, though you shouldn't bank on it. It all had to do with Majorica Pearls. The company was booming, as also was the local timber trade. Added to this was the fact that Manacor was a town (or city) committed to supporting the crown and had a population - a población, so maybe a pobla or puebla as well - of over 15,000 people.

So there we are. This is how Manacor became a ciudad. But is it a city or a town? I'm going town, but then a town is a villa, but a villa could also be a village, or is this only in Catalan, and a village is a pueblo, but that's also the whole country and its capital is a villa and not a ciudad. A town and not a city. Possibly.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

MALLORCA TODAY - Rafael Nadal tennis centre gets the go-ahead

The Rafael Nadal tennis centre in Manacor, which has been on and off for some time, has now received official approval from the regional government (it was necessary to establish the correct urban planning measures). The centre, to be built with private money, will not happen quickly; it will take five years in all to create.

See more: Diario de Mallorca