What Is The Truth?: Francesc de Borja Moll

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bikinis Past And Present

When, in 1959, the mayor of Benidorm decided to take the establishment on, he probably couldn't have realised what he was unleashing. Or probably he could. What mayor Pedro Zaragoza did was to permit the wearing of bikinis. He was denounced by the Guardia Civil, threatened with excommunication by the Archbishop of Valencia, sought an audience with General Franco and, no doubt to everyone's surprise, opposition to the bikini was dropped.

So, Benidorm was where the bikini revolution started, but the decision to allow bikinis didn't mean that Spanish beaches were suddenly all exposed to similar quantities of additional bare female flesh as Benidorm's was. Things tended to vary from resort to resort, as was the case in Mallorca. There remained the thorny issue of the Guardia taking exception, so the Spanish tourism ministry had to assure foreign tour operators that, though there was no general law permitting the bikini, the boys in green would not be going around hassling female tourists in a two-piece.

The most influential voice in bringing about greater liberalism and thus the generally accepted practice of bikini-wearing was Manuel Fraga, who was made minister of tourism and information in 1962. This dual portfolio made some sense. Though the masses were starting to hover in the skies over Mallorca and the Costa Brava, Spain's reputation was hardly terribly positive. A key aspect of Fraga's information remit was one that dovetailed with tourism. It was information in the propaganda sense of information. Mallorca and the Costas were to benefit from a more benevolent, benign and Benidorm-liberalised image, and one of the images, to the horror of the Catholic conservative class, was the bikini.

Part of Fraga's propaganda was the use of the film industry. This wasn't entirely novel as the regime was already using films to portray Spain in a better light ("El Cid" was an example). Fraga had less grand notions. There was to be no epic but rather a series of films which featured the two elements of the new tourism industry - sun and beach. One of these films was released in 1962. It starred Elke Sommer. Its title was "Bahia de Palma". It was a romantic comedy in which Sommer played Olga, an heiress socialite with a vicious tongue, opposite Arturo Fernández, a concert pianist who had lost the will to play on account of heart break.

The film was apparently a success. Eager Spanish cinema-goers were repeat visitors to the movie theatres. In Germany - Sommer was/is German - the film was also a success but under a different title, "Spiel und Leidenschaft" (play and passion). Seemingly, it never made it to British cinema screens, and so the British film fan could not enjoy the sight which made "Bahia de Palma" a sensation: Elke Sommer in a bikini.

The title was, though, misleading in that not all location shots were in Palma Bay. Andraitx, Formentor, Santa Ponsa and Valldemossa all featured as well, but these additional locations only helped to do what the film was really intended to do, which was to promote Mallorca. By allowing the odd shot of a bikini, the regime's censors, no doubt advised by Fraga, permitted a promotional coup two times over: one of showing off Mallorca and its beaches and the other of showing what a tolerant and liberal place Spain was after all.

Despite its apparent success in Spain and in Germany, it is not a film that has gone down in the annals of cinema history as having been of any great merit. But it does find a place in that history because of the landmark bikini. It may have been propaganda but it was pragmatic propaganda. Fraga knew the value of greater liberalism and understood that foreign values were different to those of the sexually repressed Spain of that time. Whether the establishment liked it or not, and most didn't, for Spain to reap the full benefits of tourism, it had to lighten up.

This was all fifty-two years ago. An awful lot of bare flesh has since passed under the tourism bridgehead formed by Elke Sommer, but the amount of bare flesh now on show is, so we are led to believe, out of control, hence the "bikini law".

Fraga knew a thing or two about how to handle the media. He was from a different time, but in some ways it might be good were he still around. He might just get the message across correctly. I was asked the other day about the restrictions on wearing bikinis in Mallorca. There are none, only those which Palma are introducing, and which even there are not intended to stop bikini-wearing in the immediate vicinity of the beaches. Somewhere the message is going wrong, and it is, moreover, a message which seems peculiarly of the past. I wonder what Elke Sommer thinks. Bahia de Palma, bikinis verboten.

* Photo: Elke Sommer, "Bahia de Palma".

Manolo Escobar And "Y Viva España"

For far too long, ever since 1974 in fact, the British holidaymaker, when having partaken of sufficient numbers of cold drinks, has been prone to burst into song - song being relative both in terms of what is actually being sung and how it is being sung (badly usually). The song in question is of course "Y Viva España", a manifestation of musical vandalism and criminality for which, almost forty years later, Spain has been unable to atone.

But "Y Viva España", famously enough, wasn't written by a Spaniard. It was the product of two Belgians, Leo Caerts and Leo Rozenstraten. The English version - and the song was covered in various languages - was sung by the Swedish singer Sylvia Vrethammar. It acquired its anthemic status for the British holidaymaker to Spain thanks to its lyrics having been the work of one Eddie Seago who, having teamed up with an school friend, Mike Leander, was also one of the powers behind Gary Glitter, something which might now be looked back on with less than total satisfaction for reasons unrelated to Gary's question as to whether anyone wanted to be in his gang.

Seago's lyrics were very different to those in the Spanish version. When one compares the two versions, it seems clear that in the early '70s the British holidaymaker was still very much viewed as a product of the saucy postcard, end-of-the-pier seaside holiday in Blackpool, Bognor and Bridlington. The lyrics were of their time in having been "racy": all those señoritas by the score and kisses behind the castanets. They bore no relation to the lyrics of the song that made Manolo Escobar, already famous, even more famous. His single came out in 1973 and it also appeared on an album of the same name. It is one of the biggest-selling Spanish albums of all time.

Escobar's song spoke of Spain "the land of love" (in a totally unsaucy fashion), of a land that only Gods could have made "so beautiful", of the bullfight (so there was a nod in the direction of matadors being chatted, as Eddie Seago revealed), of a great national party and of people singing with passion. Its final line is "España es la mejor" - Spain is the best. It was in fact a song of Spanish sentimentalism and patriotism, one that was fit for the times and fit for the regime of the times. There is a sort of early music video in which Manolo gives the song his full patriotic fervour, one that is peculiar for the fact that Manolo floats across various Spanish scenes and for, among the smiling entourage behind him (who don't float), there being some evidence of multiculturalism. I had not seen the video until the other day and was surprised to see two black faces.

It is possible to now look back at "Y Viva España" and to view it as an exercise in propaganda. The story of the song and its part in Spanish nationalism of the time becomes that much more interesting when one realises that, although Leo Rozenstraten (who was otherwise an actor) wrote the original lyrics, they weren't actually in Spanish. The song never was Spanish. Samantha, who had the first hit with it, sang in Dutch. The Spanish version (there were two slightly differing versions) appears to have had two lyricists, one of whom, Manuel de Gómez, was described as a diplomat. So, "Y Viva España", which from the outset had its familiar tune and Spanish style, was taken and moulded into a patriotic song with a heavy dose of holidaymaker appeal. It was the perfect combination for the tourism-dependent but nationalist Franco regime and it was the perfect combination to be unleashed on the Spanish population by a popular singer and television presenter, Manolo Escobar.

Escobar was, in the later years of the Franco regime, an important entertainment symbol for the dictatorship. He also appeared in musical comedies, thus reinforcing the fact that entertainment in the Spain of those years was never controversial and and only ever lightweight and happy.

Despite his association, if only indirectly with the Franco regime, Escobar remained popular for decades after. He was one of a group of singers and entertainers who acquired national fame from the sixties onwards and, as such, was an older contemporary of Julio Iglesias. He died on 24 October, aged 82. "Y Viva España" had brought him his greatest fame, a song that lives on with holidaymakers even if it isn't the song he sang. He died at home, and there were perhaps few more appropriate places for his home to have been. Benidorm.

Putting In And Keeping Up Appearances

What do protests against President Bauzá and a visit by Pollensa's mayor to the nature park of La Gola in Puerto Pollensa have to do with each other? Very little on the face of it, but both can be considered as good PR.

Why are the protests good PR? The answer is simple. Get crowds of the youth stroppy mob indulging in some chanting and lobbing the odd missile and the propaganda value is incalculable. It all works in the president's favour. Kick up enough fuss about violent demonstrators and everyone will start tutting and having sympathy for a president battling against problems of economic crisis. The demonstrators would be far better served going along and standing in silence or with their backs to Bauzá when he arrives. This would send out a very different message, and the interpretation of the demonstration would be very different.

Bauzá has been putting in appearances all over the place, conducting a Cook's tour of the provinces. One day Pollensa and Santa Margalida, the next day Artà and Cala Ratjada. The tour is all in aid of getting around the local Partido Popular branches, but it has another, more cynical side to it. The president and his advisors could have expected a spot of bother and demonstrators duly obliged on the first stop of the tour in Inca. They couldn't have hoped for better. One demo spawns another. Copycatism. When politicians then condemn violence (and there has been little or no real violence) and start chucking around insults of their own at opposition parties which don't appear to be as inclined to do some condemning of their own, don't be fooled into believing that they aren't anything but delighted.

The additional PR benefit to Bauzá is that once the demos had started in Inca and then Manacor, he can then say that he will not be cowed or deterred by the "violence" and will continue on his tour. Were he not to, then democracy would be undermined and besides he is the democratically elected president; all this sort of guff. People are astonishingly naïve if they fail to see the propaganda purposes of Bauzá's tour, while the demonstrators have been astonishingly naïve, not to say stupid, in falling into the trap.

Then there was the visit of mayor Cifre to La Gola. He was accompanied by the government's environment minister, Biel Company. No demos, but instead a photo opportunity for the two men who essentially run the nature park. One fancies they were there more out of sufferance rather than really wanting to be there. As someone had decided that Thursday was European Day of Nature Parks, something would have to have been done to acknowledge the fact. Why not go to La Gola as a way of marking the day? At a stroke, not only could the day be given an official stamp of celebration, so also could it be shown that the town hall and the ministry were there at La Gola, taking seriously their responsibilities for its operation and its visitors' centre, a centre which is hardly ever open and will still be open for only parts of the year; it's going to shut again for two months at the end of June.

So, it was all good PR again, designed to quell the criticisms of town hall and ministry alike regarding their management of La Gola. Once more, if anyone truly believes the visit represents a more proactive attitude on behalf of these institutions towards La Gola, then they are being naïve. The visit was about putting in and keeping up appearances by making an appearance that wouldn't normally have been made, had it not been for the fortuitous coincidence of nature parks day.

Back to the Bauzá protests. These have also been somewhat embarrassing for all concerned. The number of school kids shown in a video issued by "Ultima Hora" attending the demo in Santa Margalida suggested that this was far from a protest of real militants and was not something of any "violence". But there is a more serious side to this, which is that the mere presence of those school kids does perhaps represent an example of a growing radicalisation of Mallorca's youth who are embracing more the Catalanist message. This radicalisation is one I have suggested has been occurring before through seemingly innocent events such as the "Acampallengua", the annual camp for promoting Catalan culture and the Catalan language among Mallorca's youth. The next one is to be held over the first weekend of June in Manacor, one of the main centres of opposition to Bauzá. It may not be as innocent as previous ones.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.