The Centuries Of Mallorcan Embroidery

At Alcudia's fair each October there are exhibitions of autumn embroideries. I confess that they are not shows to which I make a beeline, but there are many who do, while many are the embroiderers themselves. Needlework and embroidery sound like the epitome of the cottage industry; a Mallorcan woman of times gone by busying herself with creating patterns from fabrics on the step of the cottage. And that, for centuries, was pretty much how it was. But in which century did it start? No one can say with certainty, but the first references to Mallorcan embroideries appearing in the homes of the wealthy are contained in house content inventories of the mid-fourteenth century. The traditional craft of the local "brodat" (embroidery) is at least 700 years old.

By the start of the eighteenth century, the patterns and designs of the Mallorcan embroiderers had become well established. They typically featured, for example, undulating branches of climbing plants with petals, and the reputation that this Mallorcan craft acquired was such that during the reign of Isabel II in the mid-nineteenth century Mallorcan embroiderers were employed by her court. For the most part, however, embroidery remained a craft of the homeworker, and it wasn't until the last century that workshops began to crop up. Into the story comes, therefore, the town of Sant Llorenç, a place which, until 1892, was not a separate municipality; it had been part of Manacor.

It would seem that this granting of "independence" was the inspiration for the development of a more coherent embroidery industry in Sant Llorenç. On its own as a municipality, the town sought to develop its economy, and embroidery, which would have always existed, was to become an important part of the local economy. It was to become important also for the fact that it represented the first time that women truly formed a paid workforce on the island (the pearls business in Manacor was one of the few other examples).

In 1924 the first actual workshop was opened. Or at least this is when the workshop was first officially recorded as having been in existence. It had, in all likelihood, been going for a time before then. It was located on the Carrer Major next to what is now the Bar Olimpic. Initially, five women were employed and trained in using embroidery machinery, but from this modest beginning the local industry grew so that by the 1960s some 700 women were employed in what may have been seventeen workshops (getting at an accurate number is seemingly rather difficult because not all were properly registered). As such, the growth of embroidery in Sant Llorenç provides an interesting case study of how an industry is formed as a cluster in a specific location; one thing led to another, to another and to then more.

The early output of the 1920s was mainly for the Mallorcan market but there were also exports to Barcelona. Later, and by the time things had settled down years after the Civil War and when the Franco regime had taken a more realistic attitude to the economy, exports were heading overseas as well as to mainland markets. The workshops, which for a time closed because of the war and its immediate aftermath, reopened and ultimately started to develop new product lines for the burgeoning tourism industry. Inevitably though, as with other economic sectors on the island, it was tourism which was to prove to be the undoing of the embroidery trade, as was access to cheap imports from China. Alternative employment opportunities beckoned, but there was, however, a benefit for the women who had been engaged in the industry. It is said that they had earned sufficient money to be able to invest in tourism businesses.

In the same way as with other craft traditions on the island that had been undermined by politics and tourism, embroidery has been revived. Much of it is a throwback to the nineteenth century in that it is a cottage-style industry, while some of it is simply done as a hobby. Machinery there may be, but contemporary embroidery relies on old needlecraft and on the types of design that go way back in time; hence, there are branches, petals, flowers that typified embroideries of the eighteenth century.

Sant Llorenç has been celebrating its embroidery industry this year. An exhibition of workshops, embroiderers and embroideries at the rectory in the church square will continue until 21 December. It is an exhibition that celebrates a more modern era of embroidery but also a tradition that has existed on the island for all the centuries that it has.


Index for November 2014

Albufera and maintenance of nature areas - 17 November 2014
Ant discovery in the Tramuntana - 27 November 2014
Balearic Government communication - 24 November 2014
Caimari and Llubi fairs - 16 November 2014
Calvia Beach transformation of Magalluf - 3 November 2014, 7 November 2014
Catalonia vote - 11 November 2014
Cruise shipping - 21 November 2014
Day of the Dead - 2 November 2014
Duchess of Alba / Balearics education ministry - 22 November 2014
Embroidery - 30 November 2014
Forty years on: Franco - 13 November 2014
Francesc de Borja Moll - 5 November 2014
Health service in the Balearics - 6 November 2014, 15 November 2014
Holiday lets: need for proper regulation - 18 November 2014
Més and the Mallorcan left - 19 November 2014
Partido Popular and corruption - 29 November 2014
Podemos lead in polls - 4 November 2014, 8 November 2014
Preservation and heritage - 20 November 2014
Radio and TV history - 12 November 2013
Small government - 14 November 2014
Spearfishing champions - 9 November 2014
Sports tourism - 10 November 2014
Strategic quality plan for tourism - 28 November 2014
Tax giveaway - 1 November 2014
Treasure Hunt in Mallorca - 26 November 2014
Xeremía - 23 November 2014
Youtubers - 25 November 2014

The Mini-Train Wars

When, following a hiatus of some twelve years, Alcúdia revived its mini tourist train service last year, the war that erupted was one that involved the local taxi drivers. They were far from happy about the appearance of two brand spanking new, shiny mini trains. They raised a petition against the train, citing loss of business of anything up to 40%, lodged the petition with Alcúdia town hall and got precisely nowhere. The train was to stay.

The company running this new service was and is Carrilets Turistics Catalunya. It has been operating mini tourist trains since 1995. The first service was in Gerona, where it is headquartered. Founded by Ramon Fuertes Jordà, its director is his son, Marc Fuertes Garcia. It is quite an impressive outfit, with large storage facilities at its Gerona HQ. It is very active in Mallorca: in Alcúdia, in Can Picafort, in Manacor. But not in Sant Llorenç. It wants to be active there, but ...

On 28 March this year, Sant Llorenç town hall's "mesa de contractació" met. The president of this "table" was Mateu Puigròs, the mayor of Sant Llorenç, and a member of the Grup Independent de Son Carrió (GISCa), who was returned as mayor in 2011 with the support of PSOE and and another group of independents, despite the PP having had most councillors voted in (the PP was unable to form a coalition). The meeting of this mesa considered the offers of five businesses which had tendered for the concession to operate the mini-train. The minutes of the meeting mainly comprise a lengthy communication from Marc Fuertes which challenged the valuations placed on the services being proposed by the five companies.

This communication detailed problems with some of these proposals, for example those of Cala d'Or Express SA. One of the problems with its proposals was the absence of a garage or workshop. Sr. Fuertes noted that Carrilets Turistics Catalunya had offered, inter alia, storage both in neighbouring Son Servera and in Puerto Alcúdia. He also noted the greater capacity of the Carrilets' trains and their superior environmental performance.

Of course, you might have expected Sr. Fuertes to have done this. He was defending his company's interests, after all. But Sr. Fuertes had smelt a rat. The goalposts for the valuation scoring system had, he argued, been moved. The award went to Cala d'Or Express. Carrilets Turistics Catalunya filed a denuncia, claiming irregularities in the award and levelling a criminal charge against the mayor and others. Personal friendship had been behind the award, it was alleged.

Mayor Puigròs refuted the allegations. He accepted that one of the owners of the rival operator was not unknown to him, but that was because he was a resident of Sant Llorenç, nothing more. The mayor was scandalised to the point of considering action for defamation. Meanwhile, the PP, which had missed out at the election in 2011, was calling for the award to be set aside and for there to be a repeat process "in the name of transparency". It was then suggested, in a short item in the local press, that there was "something mysterious" about the relationship between the PP in Sant Llorenç and Carrilets Turistics, the mystery - if one understands the implication - having been that the PP had consistently failed to get itself elected, so it was looking for a means of attacking Puigròs.

This little jibe at the PP was probably uncalled-for. It was made in early June, a month after the train service should have started. It still hasn't started. And a key reason why it hasn't started is that the winning operator did not have permission for garage facilities, just as Sr. Fuertes had pointed out in his communication that had been considered at the "mesa" more than a month before the service should have commenced, a communication which had included the allegation that photographic images presented by its rival had been Photoshopped. A few days ago, Sr. Fuertes noted that had everything been ok with the rival bid, then the train would have been running.

Appropriate licences, the town hall says, will be in order very shortly, and so the train will once again operate. It is now, of course, the middle of August, three and a half months after the train should have started running. Carrilets Turistics' complaint is still being considered by the courts, but meanwhile the resorts of Cala Millor, Sa Coma and S'Illot have been deprived of their train. The war in Sant Llorenç is of a different order to that in Alcúdia, and it is one which has a feel of blocking an outsider company. Carrilets Turistics may be moving into a dominant position in the lucrative mini-train business in Mallorca (minimum annual income of 150k in Sant Llorenç), but if it's a good company - and there's no reason to believe it isn't - then so be it.

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.

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.