They're celebrating one of those mysterious saints again this week. This one is Saint Tecla (or Techla): Santa Tecla, as she is known locally, because she is a she. Or rather was.
Tecla was supposedly from Iconium (now Konya) in Turkey, was born in 30AD and was a follower of Paul the Apostle. Supposedly is correct in that her story is best known from the Acts of Paul and Tecla, a second century work that is lumped in with other Apocrypha of the New Testament, i.e. works and stories of dubious and doubtful origins (apocryphal) not considered to form part of the Bible.
Real or unreal, she led a highly charmed life. Having been influenced by Paul and his musings on the nature of virginity, she survived, among other things, being burnt at the stake, attempted rape (on more than one occasion) and being eaten by wild beasts. She spent 72 years in a cave in what is now Silifke in Turkey. Or more likely didn't.
Anyway, by the fourth and fifth centuries Tecla's status was such that she commanded almost equal status with the apostles. She was an exemplary virgin martyr who apparently inspired others. Subsequently, and this is the case today, she became patron saint of Tarragona, where her worship had existed in times before the Muslim occupation of Spain. They will therefore be having a fair old fiesta for her in that Catalonian city. Her day is today, 23 September.
Techla/Tecla doesn't feature prominently in the saintly fiesta scheme of things in Mallorca with the exception of the village of Biniamar, which is part of the larger village of Selva. How, therefore, did she end up with the role of patron of this little village of some 350 people when the rest of Mallorca pretty much ignored her patronly potential?
It owes absolutely everything to Tarragona and in particular the archbishop of that city. In March 1230, just a short time after invading Mallorca and dismantling Muslim rule, King Jaume I was highly generous in his distribution of Mallorcan territory to the diocese. Tarragona was rewarded for its part in the invasion so that the archbishop (Espárago de la Barca) ended up with a fairly impressive Mallorca real-estate portfolio. This included a quarter of Inca, Mancor de la Vall, Caimari and Moscari (other Selva villages), Selva itself and Beniamar (aka Biniamar). Oh, and there was also the island of Cabrera.
The archbishop and Jaume had a longstanding relationship. Although he probably wasn't his uncle as such, this was how Jaume apparently referred to him. Pope Innocent III was to make the archbishop the principal advisor to Jaume during his youth. In 1228 the council of Barcelona came to the decision to conquer Mallorca. The archbishop was a central figure in this decision being arrived at. He came up with men and money to help Jaume's invasion.
The archbishop, it would seem, made Biniamar his power base. He installed a mayor to dispense justice and as importantly to look after his feudal powers. Moreover, the cult of worship for Santa Tecla in Tarragona was to be embedded in the village. This is how she came to be the patron.
What did the archbishop gain apart from just land? Well, in Biniamar there was its olive oil. The village of Caimari nowadays insists that its olive oil is the finest you can get in Mallorca (and makes this claim for its olive oil fair each year). There will have long been inter-village rivalries in this regard. The smaller villages of Selva all have their proud claims for one thing or another, and Biniamar in a sense has the loosest relationship with Selva and the other villages. It is more or less in Lloseta, far closer to that village than it is to Selva itself.
The archbishop would have also been made aware that Biniamar had a centuries-old mining tradition. This was something it shared with other villages in the area, such as Selva and Lloseta. Much later, in the second half of the nineteenth century, mines were opened which bore names such as "La Buena" and "La Esperanza". The good and the hope only partially materialised. At the time of the start of the Second Republic in 1931, Biniamar was associated with the Selva Mining Union.
Mining was tough, dangerous and low-paid work. The Catalan protest singer Lluís Llach was to write: "The miner sings at the bottom of the vast hole. No one listens. This much he knows. Only the walls of that cave so large. With tears as they turn to mud." The Biniamar miners might have sung to Santa Tecla. Her patronage doesn't extend to mining, but one of her miracles was the sudden opening of a new passage in a cave for her to escape persecutors. If the mines collapsed, they would have needed a miracle.
Showing posts with label Mining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mining. Show all posts
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Sunday, May 01, 2016
The Forgotten Mining Industry Of Mallorca
It was in July 1976. Onofre Serra and Nadal Perelló were working on a finca in Sineu. They were drilling for water. When they had gone down some 60 metres, they found some pieces of rock that were rather strange. They took them to the local silversmith. They had found gold. Possibly.
The finca's owner was somewhat sceptical. Nevertheless, and as news of the discovery spread, he put up a warning sign for trespassers beware. Various "experts" were consulted. A one-time gold digger in Venezuela, who then lived in Sa Pobla, reckoned it was gold. Official confirmation was sought, so some samples were sent off to Madrid. And then ... . Well, that seems to have been it. This story comes from a news report of the time. There don't appear to be further reports. If there was gold in Sineu, one suspects we would have heard a great deal more about it.
It is a story that is interesting for different reasons. One, obviously, is that it might have inspired the Mallorcan gold rush. It didn't. A second has to do with legend. On the finca there is a narrow cave entrance. So the legend has it, a Moorish king who was fighting against the Christians buried his treasure there.
The third reason is because of what might have occurred had there really been gold. A gold rush yes, but in the form of mining. And in the second half of the 1970s, mining could have done with the boost: it had all but died out.
The town hall in Alcudia has recently amended its catalogue of local heritage. Under this amendment, it has raised to the highest level of protection the town's mining heritage. These are the mines of Son Fe on the outskirts of the town as one enters it from the motorway. They are afforded this protection by the town hall and they are also the only mines to be classified as protected industrial heritage by the Council of Mallorca. This, despite the fact that there are various examples of former mines, such as in Alaro and Binissalem.
The story of mining in Mallorca is one that gets very little exposure. Yet mining was once an important industry. Though some forms of mining would have been practised over many centuries, the first record that has been uncovered of its official existence comes from August 1837. It refers to a reduction - yes a reduction - in tax for a mine in Lloseta. It, as with other mines, was given a name. "Barbara" was its title. There were to be others, such as "Verdad" (truth) in Son Fe, Alcudia, or "El Eden" in Maria de la Salut.
The real explosion in the island's mining was not to occur until a landmark national law was passed in 1868. After several years of wholly bungled lawmaking, they finally approved legislation that made clear - once and for all - that anything which was mined belonged to the state and not to the crown. This opened the way to all sorts of approvals for mineworking, and not only in Mallorca.
The following fifty years represented the real boom time for the island's mining. There was then a period of twenty years when few new mines were opened or requested. With the arrival of the Franco regime and the system of self-sufficient, autarky economy, there was more growth, only for mining to eventually become a thing of the past.
Most of the mining was for lignite carbon - brown coal. Though this has low heat content, it was to come in useful for powering electricity plants. The largest mining company was Lignitos S.A. In the early 1920s it was acquired by Gas y Electricidad S.A., better known as GESA. When a policy decision was taken by GESA to reduce a dependence on oil, the coal came in very handy. Other mining was principally for iron, copper and lead.
By comparison with other parts of Spain, Asturias for example, Mallorca never attained any real reputation for its coal mining: the coal was only ever used for the islands' own purposes. And this lack of reputation seems to partly explain why this one-time industry and the old mines fail to receive any great attention. But here was an industry which could, as an example, employ twelve miners and produce almost 1,500 tons of lignite carbon a year: these were the 1931 figures for the Son Fe "Virgen del Puig" mine, the remains of which now look like an abandoned old concrete hut.
This might not have been a lot of workers and it might not have been a huge output, but when all the various mines were put together, this was once a significant industry.
The finca's owner was somewhat sceptical. Nevertheless, and as news of the discovery spread, he put up a warning sign for trespassers beware. Various "experts" were consulted. A one-time gold digger in Venezuela, who then lived in Sa Pobla, reckoned it was gold. Official confirmation was sought, so some samples were sent off to Madrid. And then ... . Well, that seems to have been it. This story comes from a news report of the time. There don't appear to be further reports. If there was gold in Sineu, one suspects we would have heard a great deal more about it.
It is a story that is interesting for different reasons. One, obviously, is that it might have inspired the Mallorcan gold rush. It didn't. A second has to do with legend. On the finca there is a narrow cave entrance. So the legend has it, a Moorish king who was fighting against the Christians buried his treasure there.
The third reason is because of what might have occurred had there really been gold. A gold rush yes, but in the form of mining. And in the second half of the 1970s, mining could have done with the boost: it had all but died out.
The town hall in Alcudia has recently amended its catalogue of local heritage. Under this amendment, it has raised to the highest level of protection the town's mining heritage. These are the mines of Son Fe on the outskirts of the town as one enters it from the motorway. They are afforded this protection by the town hall and they are also the only mines to be classified as protected industrial heritage by the Council of Mallorca. This, despite the fact that there are various examples of former mines, such as in Alaro and Binissalem.
The story of mining in Mallorca is one that gets very little exposure. Yet mining was once an important industry. Though some forms of mining would have been practised over many centuries, the first record that has been uncovered of its official existence comes from August 1837. It refers to a reduction - yes a reduction - in tax for a mine in Lloseta. It, as with other mines, was given a name. "Barbara" was its title. There were to be others, such as "Verdad" (truth) in Son Fe, Alcudia, or "El Eden" in Maria de la Salut.
The real explosion in the island's mining was not to occur until a landmark national law was passed in 1868. After several years of wholly bungled lawmaking, they finally approved legislation that made clear - once and for all - that anything which was mined belonged to the state and not to the crown. This opened the way to all sorts of approvals for mineworking, and not only in Mallorca.
The following fifty years represented the real boom time for the island's mining. There was then a period of twenty years when few new mines were opened or requested. With the arrival of the Franco regime and the system of self-sufficient, autarky economy, there was more growth, only for mining to eventually become a thing of the past.
Most of the mining was for lignite carbon - brown coal. Though this has low heat content, it was to come in useful for powering electricity plants. The largest mining company was Lignitos S.A. In the early 1920s it was acquired by Gas y Electricidad S.A., better known as GESA. When a policy decision was taken by GESA to reduce a dependence on oil, the coal came in very handy. Other mining was principally for iron, copper and lead.
By comparison with other parts of Spain, Asturias for example, Mallorca never attained any real reputation for its coal mining: the coal was only ever used for the islands' own purposes. And this lack of reputation seems to partly explain why this one-time industry and the old mines fail to receive any great attention. But here was an industry which could, as an example, employ twelve miners and produce almost 1,500 tons of lignite carbon a year: these were the 1931 figures for the Son Fe "Virgen del Puig" mine, the remains of which now look like an abandoned old concrete hut.
This might not have been a lot of workers and it might not have been a huge output, but when all the various mines were put together, this was once a significant industry.
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