So then, just so everyone is clear ... Alcudia town, Pollensa town, El Vilà, La Font and Ullaró are saturated. Everywhere else isn't: Puerto Alcudia, Alcanada, Playa de Muro, Can Picafort, Son Serra, Muro, Santa Margalida, Sa Pobla, Búger, Campanet, Crestatx, Bonaire, Barcares, Puerto Pollensa, Formentor, Cala San Vicente.
How on earth do they arrive at such conclusions? No one really knows. They just do. And having arrived at these conclusions, the saturated areas can be eligible to no more than sixty days of holiday rental per annum, licences renewable every five years at the mere cost of 5,000 euros per accommodation place, assuming any licences are eventually forthcoming.
Licences being forthcoming is as much of the issue as all this daft zoning business. It isn't clear how they will be divvied out. I have seen a list per municipality of rental places, but as this list comes to over 100,000 places I have to assume that it is one that takes account of what is already legal (there are only some 30,000 new places on offer). If I'm reading this list correctly, in the case of Pollensa, as an example, there would be some 3,000 going spare. How many of these might end up being apartment places would be anyone's guess. There are hurdles to be overcome, such as communities' rights of veto.
Pollensa's mayor, Miquel Àngel March, has said that he's satisfied with the conclusions. Pollensa is saturated, thus there is the sixty-day restriction. But what was it that March said almost two years ago about problems of accommodation in Puerto Pollensa? I don't know that he is entirely satisfied. Alcudia's Toni Mir isn't satisfied, because the town is deemed to be saturated. The town hall will be letting the Council of Mallorca know what it thinks of this saturation. It won't get very far.
Elsewhere, Sa Pobla's Biel Ferragut is doubtless happy. The town hall has been betting on a favourable rentals outcome in order to boost the Sa Pobla tourism economy. Muro's Marti Fornés hasn't said anything; he's probably keeping his head down, given his historical links to the local hotel industry. Joan Monjo in Santa Margalida, an El Pi man like Mir, has no saturation concerns.
For now, though, it is all a bit of a waiting game. The Council of Mallorca still has its plan to tidy up, and the government has its moratorium to finish. Nothing, it seems to me, is likely to alter this summer. There are too many factors to take account of in facilitating licences, and they will take time to deal with.
While Santa Margalida town, Can Picafort and Son Serra have been given the blue or orange colour-coded all-clear for 365 days a year rental, the town hall is in the process of reclassifying land in Can Picafort in order that some new hotels can pop up. The timing of this, what with all the discussion of saturation (or not), might be considered a little unfortunate. And just as unfortunate is the ongoing row over the Son Baulo sewage and water treatment plant.
A reason why a new plant is needed is that the one in Albufera can't cope with all the additional demand placed on it by tourism. Increased numbers of tourists have meant increased strain on a plant that is considered to be obsolete. Adding more hotels in Can Picafort would simply create even greater problems. Yet Santa Margalida town hall continues to defy everyone and anyone when it comes to the Son Baulo plant.
Muro town hall is now taking the matter to court. Specifically, it wants a legal review of the Santa Margalida decision to unilaterally break an agreement for the Son Baulo plant that was signed in 2005. In a statement, Muro makes clear that at the turn of the century it was already understood that capacity at the Albufera plant was being exceeded. That was eighteen years ago, and nothing has happened.
Adding greater weight to the Muro court case is the decision of the government's Abaqua water agency (the successor to Ibasan, which was the agency that signed the 2005 agreement) to instruct the regional attorney to challenge the Santa Margalida decision. The agency points out that the Son Baulo plant was declared to be in the general interest in 2010, meaning that there isn't a legal obstacle blocking its construction. That's the theory anyway. In practice, eight more years have passed, and the courts are now involved.
Showing posts with label Santa Margalida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Santa Margalida. Show all posts
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Sunday, September 03, 2017
La Beata: The Fiesta Which Shouldn't Be
It's the procession for La Beata in Santa Margalida today: the most representative (typical) procession of all Mallorca's processions, so they say. It isn't the only procession for Santa Catalina Thomàs (other spellings of her surname are available), but this one outdoes the others. Valldemossa's in July comes close, but Valldemossa's procession is for La Beateta, the saint as a small girl. In Santa Margalida she has grown up.
Why, you may wonder, do they say it's the most representative of processions? Well, one reason is that it is unique. Yes, there are other La Beatas but nothing like this one. Most representative, most typical, unique; they all refer to an occasion that is representative of a Mallorca association with the church that historically has displayed irreverence and opposition: the Mallorcan way. The Sibil-la chant of Christmas Eve is an example of this centuries-old way. Santa Margalida's procession is another, even if its tradition is only a couple of centuries old.
Beatified in 1792 (and canonised in 1930), the procession was first documented in 1829. Eleven years later there was a description of it. A scholar, Antoni Furió, referred to the role of the demons. It was the demons who were to incur the wrath of the Bishop of Mallorca, Rafael Manso.
The procession has always been held on the first Sunday of September. On 29 August 1849, so just prior to it taking place, the bishop sent a letter to the parish of Santa Margalida. It had come to his attention that it was customary to each year celebrate the festivity of the Blessed Catalina Thomàs with a procession that doesn't conclude until after dark. Moreover, the bishop noted, there are scenes in which a devil is in disguise. He, the devil, persecutes and intends to kill the Blessed, but his appearance gives rise to laughter and to the distraction of the faithful. Holy aspects are open to ridicule. There are serious disorders and offences against God.
The bishop continued by saying that something this profane cannot be tolerated as a religious act. The demons would have to go, and the parish was told, in no uncertain terms, that the procession and other acts must finish by sunset.
This was stern stuff, but the people of Santa Margalida were made of sterner stuff. They basically ignored the bishop, who in any event was to soon move on to a post in Zamora. The bishopric, it would seem, let the matter drop.
But how had the procession ever come about? Unlike Valldemossa, where Catalina Thomàs was born, there was absolutely no link between her and Santa Margalida. The procession and the fiesta that now is really had little reason to take place in the town.
No one to this day can truly figure out why it does. Yes, there would have been celebrations for Catalina in different parts of Mallorca, but these would typically have honoured her birth, death or beatification, none of which applied to early September. The only explanation as to the timing has to do with harvests; there may well have already been some form of harvest festival. As to the procession itself, it appears to be based on a folk rhyme, one about Catalina, who was taking food to some poor harvesters when an envious demon snatched her jar, smashed it and buried it, only for Catalina to retrieve the food, which turned out to be even tastier than prior to the demon's intervention. This rhyme may have been specific to Santa Margalida, though why it would have been is unclear. But somehow it seems as if it ended up as a procession, and again to emphasise the essentially quasi-religious (at most) aspect of it, the procession was a form of comedy. The demon was the object of mirth. Bishop Manso had been rather po-faced.
The procession retains this comedic element. The demons smash jars (jugs, pitchers, call them what you like) at the feet of the Blessed (and others). The Blessed is undeterred and not tempted into being diverted from her great piety by this demonic carry-on. The demons themselves are unlike other demons. They most certainly are not of the fiery trident variety: the town's Hiachat demons take care of the correfoc. Instead, they are almost reminiscent of the mediaeval fool or jester. And the jester, it might be noted, had all but died out in Europe by the turn of the nineteenth century. In Spain, it hadn't.
Today, therefore, they'll be at it again. Jars will be smashed, spectators and participants will smile and laugh. It's the fiesta that shouldn't be. Catalina isn't a patron, she never set foot in Santa Margalida, but a rhyme caught on, and nowadays Mallorca turns out for this most representative of processions. The town hall sends out invitations to dignitaries. Even the bishop might get one.
Why, you may wonder, do they say it's the most representative of processions? Well, one reason is that it is unique. Yes, there are other La Beatas but nothing like this one. Most representative, most typical, unique; they all refer to an occasion that is representative of a Mallorca association with the church that historically has displayed irreverence and opposition: the Mallorcan way. The Sibil-la chant of Christmas Eve is an example of this centuries-old way. Santa Margalida's procession is another, even if its tradition is only a couple of centuries old.
Beatified in 1792 (and canonised in 1930), the procession was first documented in 1829. Eleven years later there was a description of it. A scholar, Antoni Furió, referred to the role of the demons. It was the demons who were to incur the wrath of the Bishop of Mallorca, Rafael Manso.
The procession has always been held on the first Sunday of September. On 29 August 1849, so just prior to it taking place, the bishop sent a letter to the parish of Santa Margalida. It had come to his attention that it was customary to each year celebrate the festivity of the Blessed Catalina Thomàs with a procession that doesn't conclude until after dark. Moreover, the bishop noted, there are scenes in which a devil is in disguise. He, the devil, persecutes and intends to kill the Blessed, but his appearance gives rise to laughter and to the distraction of the faithful. Holy aspects are open to ridicule. There are serious disorders and offences against God.
The bishop continued by saying that something this profane cannot be tolerated as a religious act. The demons would have to go, and the parish was told, in no uncertain terms, that the procession and other acts must finish by sunset.
This was stern stuff, but the people of Santa Margalida were made of sterner stuff. They basically ignored the bishop, who in any event was to soon move on to a post in Zamora. The bishopric, it would seem, let the matter drop.
But how had the procession ever come about? Unlike Valldemossa, where Catalina Thomàs was born, there was absolutely no link between her and Santa Margalida. The procession and the fiesta that now is really had little reason to take place in the town.
No one to this day can truly figure out why it does. Yes, there would have been celebrations for Catalina in different parts of Mallorca, but these would typically have honoured her birth, death or beatification, none of which applied to early September. The only explanation as to the timing has to do with harvests; there may well have already been some form of harvest festival. As to the procession itself, it appears to be based on a folk rhyme, one about Catalina, who was taking food to some poor harvesters when an envious demon snatched her jar, smashed it and buried it, only for Catalina to retrieve the food, which turned out to be even tastier than prior to the demon's intervention. This rhyme may have been specific to Santa Margalida, though why it would have been is unclear. But somehow it seems as if it ended up as a procession, and again to emphasise the essentially quasi-religious (at most) aspect of it, the procession was a form of comedy. The demon was the object of mirth. Bishop Manso had been rather po-faced.
The procession retains this comedic element. The demons smash jars (jugs, pitchers, call them what you like) at the feet of the Blessed (and others). The Blessed is undeterred and not tempted into being diverted from her great piety by this demonic carry-on. The demons themselves are unlike other demons. They most certainly are not of the fiery trident variety: the town's Hiachat demons take care of the correfoc. Instead, they are almost reminiscent of the mediaeval fool or jester. And the jester, it might be noted, had all but died out in Europe by the turn of the nineteenth century. In Spain, it hadn't.
Today, therefore, they'll be at it again. Jars will be smashed, spectators and participants will smile and laugh. It's the fiesta that shouldn't be. Catalina isn't a patron, she never set foot in Santa Margalida, but a rhyme caught on, and nowadays Mallorca turns out for this most representative of processions. The town hall sends out invitations to dignitaries. Even the bishop might get one.
Monday, January 02, 2017
Illustrious Sons And Daughters
Palma has a new illustrious son. He is posthumously so, which is the case with many who have had illustriousness bestowed upon them. He was shot in 1937. His name was and is Alexandre Jaume i Rosselló, a one-time journalist and Palma councillor. A current councillor, Susanna Moll, said of him at the ceremony on New Year's Eve that he died because they (Franco's Nationalists) were afraid of him and wished to silence him. "However, the opposite has happened. Memory, justice and reparation is what we are giving in proclaiming him an illustrious son of the city."
Alongside Jaume in the cemetery in Palma on 24 February, 1937 was Emili Darder, the Republican mayor whose name is better known for having been a victim of the multiple execution that took place on that day. Eighty years on, and the Balearic parliament looks set to pass its new law for democratic memory to coincide with the executions. The eightieth anniversaries are clocking up. Last year it was the start of the Civil War. No one was celebrating. Instead they were looking for restoration. Of memory. The graves' act was passed just days before the date eighty years previously when the war had started.
The use of "memory" has greater relevance than simply remembering. What we are witnessing is a deepening of the resolve that the national government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had initiated. The historical memory law and the current initiatives (with the Balearics very much to the fore) seek to reverse the years of amnesia. Some will question the sense of raking up the past and indeed digging it up where the exhumations are concerned. Others will say that it is long overdue.
Perhaps everyone should pause and reflect on some of the present madness descending on Europe at present. If they do, then they will surely appreciate the value in this restoration. The past should not be forgotten. Spain, despite its political uncertainties and years of austerity and crisis, is showing itself to be generally tolerant. It is understanding its past: the far right do not have a voice in this land.
Jaume joins a long list of illustrious sons and daughters in Palma. Darder is one of them, but it isn't a list devoted only to Republicans. There are monarchs, such as the four Jaumes from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Ferdinand VII, Isabel II and Alfonso XIII.
Quite obviously none of the latter were supporters of Republicanism, while each has a history, regardless of monarchy, not in tune with current-day Palma political thinking: Ferdinand was mad, an absolutist and a traitor to liberalism; Isabel, Ferdinand's daughter, was overthrown during the Glorious Revolution, which ushered in the shortlived First Republic; Alfonso, her grandson, went into exile at the end of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and at the start of the Second Republic.
Each, moreover, was a Bourbon, and the very mention of the name has Republicans and Catalanists reaching for the nearest lighter. "Revolutionary" elements, i.e. the youth organisation Arran, were responsible to setting fire to a picture of King Felipe on the evening of 30 December, when there normally always is trouble in Palma.
The illustrious ones from the past can therefore cause a bit of an issue in the present, and it isn't necessary for them to have been Bourbon monarchs. They can include, for instance, bankers or smugglers or spies, or all three in the case of Joan March Ordinas. His portrait is missing from a collection devoted to Santa Margalida's illustrious sons and it is unlikely to appear because, apart from the fact that he is generally reviled, no portrait was done. Indeed, it was only some three years ago that a discovery was made in the municipal archives which showed that March had been made an illustrious son in 1956.
The town has been wondering ever since if it can withdraw the recognition. It seems that it was kept quiet because it had been an attempt by the town hall to persuade March to part with some money to pay for buildings; March wasn't prepared to. When the discovery was made, the then mayor, Toni Reus, ordered a review of the town's illustrious sons. In his words: "We don't know how many illustrious sons Santa Margalida has."
And the town still doesn't. The new mayor, Joan Monjo, is asking for another review. There are portraits of people who seemingly were never officially named illustrious sons, while March is one of three whose portraits don't appear. Another is Miquel Ordinas Santandreu, March's secretary, who was declared an illustrious son in 1922. This was on account of benefits (buildings) for which he had been responsible. Unfortunately, these benefits would now be liable to court proceedings because of a trafficking of influence.
Which just goes to suggest that some illustrious sons of Mallorca's towns might be better recognised as infamous sons.
Alongside Jaume in the cemetery in Palma on 24 February, 1937 was Emili Darder, the Republican mayor whose name is better known for having been a victim of the multiple execution that took place on that day. Eighty years on, and the Balearic parliament looks set to pass its new law for democratic memory to coincide with the executions. The eightieth anniversaries are clocking up. Last year it was the start of the Civil War. No one was celebrating. Instead they were looking for restoration. Of memory. The graves' act was passed just days before the date eighty years previously when the war had started.
The use of "memory" has greater relevance than simply remembering. What we are witnessing is a deepening of the resolve that the national government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had initiated. The historical memory law and the current initiatives (with the Balearics very much to the fore) seek to reverse the years of amnesia. Some will question the sense of raking up the past and indeed digging it up where the exhumations are concerned. Others will say that it is long overdue.
Perhaps everyone should pause and reflect on some of the present madness descending on Europe at present. If they do, then they will surely appreciate the value in this restoration. The past should not be forgotten. Spain, despite its political uncertainties and years of austerity and crisis, is showing itself to be generally tolerant. It is understanding its past: the far right do not have a voice in this land.
Jaume joins a long list of illustrious sons and daughters in Palma. Darder is one of them, but it isn't a list devoted only to Republicans. There are monarchs, such as the four Jaumes from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Ferdinand VII, Isabel II and Alfonso XIII.
Quite obviously none of the latter were supporters of Republicanism, while each has a history, regardless of monarchy, not in tune with current-day Palma political thinking: Ferdinand was mad, an absolutist and a traitor to liberalism; Isabel, Ferdinand's daughter, was overthrown during the Glorious Revolution, which ushered in the shortlived First Republic; Alfonso, her grandson, went into exile at the end of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and at the start of the Second Republic.
Each, moreover, was a Bourbon, and the very mention of the name has Republicans and Catalanists reaching for the nearest lighter. "Revolutionary" elements, i.e. the youth organisation Arran, were responsible to setting fire to a picture of King Felipe on the evening of 30 December, when there normally always is trouble in Palma.
The illustrious ones from the past can therefore cause a bit of an issue in the present, and it isn't necessary for them to have been Bourbon monarchs. They can include, for instance, bankers or smugglers or spies, or all three in the case of Joan March Ordinas. His portrait is missing from a collection devoted to Santa Margalida's illustrious sons and it is unlikely to appear because, apart from the fact that he is generally reviled, no portrait was done. Indeed, it was only some three years ago that a discovery was made in the municipal archives which showed that March had been made an illustrious son in 1956.
The town has been wondering ever since if it can withdraw the recognition. It seems that it was kept quiet because it had been an attempt by the town hall to persuade March to part with some money to pay for buildings; March wasn't prepared to. When the discovery was made, the then mayor, Toni Reus, ordered a review of the town's illustrious sons. In his words: "We don't know how many illustrious sons Santa Margalida has."
And the town still doesn't. The new mayor, Joan Monjo, is asking for another review. There are portraits of people who seemingly were never officially named illustrious sons, while March is one of three whose portraits don't appear. Another is Miquel Ordinas Santandreu, March's secretary, who was declared an illustrious son in 1922. This was on account of benefits (buildings) for which he had been responsible. Unfortunately, these benefits would now be liable to court proceedings because of a trafficking of influence.
Which just goes to suggest that some illustrious sons of Mallorca's towns might be better recognised as infamous sons.
Sunday, September 04, 2016
Breaking Pots: Games And La Beata
I am reminded of a game I played many a long year ago (when a child) at a birthday party. As far as I can recall, it was the only time I ever encountered the game. It had been, therefore, a novelty. The name of the game was (and no doubt still is) Are You There, Moriarty? Who Moriarty was I had no idea - I'm assuming, rightly or wrongly, that he had something to do with Sherlock Holmes' archenemy - and in the game he was your opponent. Blindfolded, and without going into too much detail, you basically tried to belt your opponent with a rolled-up newspaper.
This memory of a blindfolded game comes flooding back because of pots, which might also be termed jars or pitchers. All of an earthenware variety, these pots are central to a children's game in which the player is blindfolded, spun around a few times and given a cane (certainly something more robust than a rolled-up newspaper) with which to try and break a pot that is hanging from some cord.
This is a very popular game among others that crop up at Mallorcan fiestas under the general heading of, well, popular games. Rather than enquiring after the whereabouts of Moriarty, other players seek to assist the prospective pot-breaker by shouting instructions - right, left, back, forward and so on.
Where this game came from is anyone's guess, so a guess has been made. This has it that it originated from mediaeval China and was imported to Venice by that Venetian traveller extraordinaire of the period, Marco Polo. (And before you say that Polo never went to China, scholars have ripped to shreds the theory that he didn't.) So, Polo brought the game back and it was adapted to Lent celebrations. Given trading relations between Venice, other Italian ports and Spain, it made its way across the water. It was to develop into one of the final acts of Carnival, similar in a sense to the burying of the sardine in marking the onset of the abstinence of Lent. Break a pot and out would fall something tasty. Nowadays the pots have sweets.
Pot-breaking is therefore a common theme of fiestas. In its children's game guise it isn't violent, but it takes on a whole different significance on the first Sunday of every September. Pots aren't just broken, they are smashed. Force is involved, though blindfolds are not. Indeed, and somewhat unusually, no masks are involved. The demons of Santa Margalida are identifiable, and it is they who engage in a great deal of pot-smashing.
The legend of Santa Catalina Tomàs - La Beata - is enshrined in an old folk song. It is a song which tells of Catalina taking food to poor labourers (sometimes stated as farmers) and being confronted by an envious demon who grabs the pot, jar (or pitcher) with the food in it and smashes it, only for Catalina to pick up the pieces and to deliver a feast that was even tastier than it would have been. La Beata of the procession of the first Sunday each September defies demonic pot-smashing, while couples from the town likewise are undeterred by the demons who snatch their pots and give them a good smashing.
The procession, which the Bishop of Mallorca attempted to at least modify if not ban outright in 1849 because the whole occasion was felt to be disobedient to God, attracts vast numbers. Although it is now far better known, especially among tourists, than was once the case, even some thirty years ago it was attracting, according to a local publication, more than ten thousand people. It is not termed the "most representative" Mallorcan procession for nothing. They've been calling it this for decades.
There was never any association between the saint and the town. She wasn't born there (she came from Valldemossa) and she didn't enter a convent there (that was in Palma). Quite why Santa Margalida came to have the association is something of a mystery. However, it was evidently the case that some one hundred years after she died in 1574, the town felt a particularly strong devotion towards her. In 1687 the town hall advanced "ten Mallorcan pounds" to the cause for her to be beatified. (This didn't occur until 1792.) And somewhere along the line came the folk song and thus the legend of the pot-smashing.
This memory of a blindfolded game comes flooding back because of pots, which might also be termed jars or pitchers. All of an earthenware variety, these pots are central to a children's game in which the player is blindfolded, spun around a few times and given a cane (certainly something more robust than a rolled-up newspaper) with which to try and break a pot that is hanging from some cord.
This is a very popular game among others that crop up at Mallorcan fiestas under the general heading of, well, popular games. Rather than enquiring after the whereabouts of Moriarty, other players seek to assist the prospective pot-breaker by shouting instructions - right, left, back, forward and so on.
Where this game came from is anyone's guess, so a guess has been made. This has it that it originated from mediaeval China and was imported to Venice by that Venetian traveller extraordinaire of the period, Marco Polo. (And before you say that Polo never went to China, scholars have ripped to shreds the theory that he didn't.) So, Polo brought the game back and it was adapted to Lent celebrations. Given trading relations between Venice, other Italian ports and Spain, it made its way across the water. It was to develop into one of the final acts of Carnival, similar in a sense to the burying of the sardine in marking the onset of the abstinence of Lent. Break a pot and out would fall something tasty. Nowadays the pots have sweets.
Pot-breaking is therefore a common theme of fiestas. In its children's game guise it isn't violent, but it takes on a whole different significance on the first Sunday of every September. Pots aren't just broken, they are smashed. Force is involved, though blindfolds are not. Indeed, and somewhat unusually, no masks are involved. The demons of Santa Margalida are identifiable, and it is they who engage in a great deal of pot-smashing.
The legend of Santa Catalina Tomàs - La Beata - is enshrined in an old folk song. It is a song which tells of Catalina taking food to poor labourers (sometimes stated as farmers) and being confronted by an envious demon who grabs the pot, jar (or pitcher) with the food in it and smashes it, only for Catalina to pick up the pieces and to deliver a feast that was even tastier than it would have been. La Beata of the procession of the first Sunday each September defies demonic pot-smashing, while couples from the town likewise are undeterred by the demons who snatch their pots and give them a good smashing.
The procession, which the Bishop of Mallorca attempted to at least modify if not ban outright in 1849 because the whole occasion was felt to be disobedient to God, attracts vast numbers. Although it is now far better known, especially among tourists, than was once the case, even some thirty years ago it was attracting, according to a local publication, more than ten thousand people. It is not termed the "most representative" Mallorcan procession for nothing. They've been calling it this for decades.
There was never any association between the saint and the town. She wasn't born there (she came from Valldemossa) and she didn't enter a convent there (that was in Palma). Quite why Santa Margalida came to have the association is something of a mystery. However, it was evidently the case that some one hundred years after she died in 1574, the town felt a particularly strong devotion towards her. In 1687 the town hall advanced "ten Mallorcan pounds" to the cause for her to be beatified. (This didn't occur until 1792.) And somewhere along the line came the folk song and thus the legend of the pot-smashing.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Almonds And Underwear: Saint Matthew
They were getting their kit off in Bunyola yesterday. Not all of it. Decorum demands that underwear remains, and the invention of a modern tradition turns such decorum into an event - "correguda en ropa interior", the run in underwear, though it might be noted that correguda does also mean something else. It is probably best that I don't mention what. It was the tenth staging of the bra, panties and pants party, it having been started by a group of the town's "jóvenes" in 2005. (Well, you wouldn't have expected the town's "ancianos" to have initiated such an event.)
Saint Matthew, he of Apostle fame, was not noted for parading around in his boxers or revealing Calvin Kleins. It is doubtful that he would have approved of the Bunyola brassiere bout, but modernity decrees that antique apostles are stripped down and varnished with baby oil. In Bunyola, at any rate. It's the Sant Mateu fiestas, but knickers to old Matthew and all hail the new saint - a hip dude Matt or Matty in Modus Vivendi.
Matthew was many things in terms of his saintly patronage, but the list of his sponsorship did not stretch to underwear or indeed to almonds. In Santa Margalida, where barely a week seems to pass without some fiesta or other, they're at it again, and this time they've run Saint Matthew up the fiestas' flagpole and given him a delicious bag of sugar-coated almonds to munch on.
This is the almond harvesting season, and Santa Margalida has, since 2012, combined a fiesta which had been paid little attention to in the town - Matthew's - with the almond and come up with its "mostra de l'ametla", a grand almond show. It is a town which has a strong interest in the success or not of the almond harvest, as was highlighted in 2012 when there were genuine concerns about the health of the local almond trees. These were anxieties caused by the presence of a fungus that had been attacking the trees and which first really became evident on the island in 2008. It is a disease which has principally affected trees in the Llevant region, especially around Sant Llorenç. Decaying trees in Santa Margalida were more the victim of drought rather than fungus, but the concerns raised two years ago led to a greater awareness of the need to pay trees, especially older ones, rather more TLC than had been the case.
The almond tree has long been a feature of the Mallorcan landscape, and it is of course especially so when it is in blossom in February, but the almond only really became an agricultural force in the nineteenth century when almonds as a crop gained popularity once farming land was reorganised into smaller plots. In 1820, there was negligible almond production, but forty years later almost 6,000 hectares were devoted to its cultivation. Mallorca's almond production contributed to Spain being the world leader, a status that was lost in the late 1970s when the US, and in particular California, overtook Spain as the dominant global producer of almonds. Competition and the enduring impact of old provisions under the Common Agricultural Policy wreaked havoc with Mallorca's almonds as much as any disease. In a period of only six years from 2005, agricultural land devoted to almond production was slashed by over a half.
Great efforts have been made to at least stabilise the situation, and with some success. There has been very little loss of further cultivated land, but the disease has not made stabilisation any easier, especially when carobs, as an alternative crop, have been unaffected. The Santa Margalida fair has to be seen, therefore, within the context of these various threats to the almond and to food-manufacture traditions that it has brought. And one of the most obvious traditions is that of ice-cream. At the fair today there is a workshop devoted to the making of almond ice-cream.
It's hard to place an exact date on when ice-cream manufacture started in Mallorca, but in the eighteenth century it was being made for the Can Joan de s'Aigo chocolate and ice-cream parlour in Palma. The original Sr. de s'Aigo, so the story goes, used to get ice and snow from the Tramuntana mountains and mix it with almond milk. Nowadays, almond ice-cream is a mainstay of the ice-cream freezers of the island's supermarkets.
Yesterday evening in Santa Margalida there was a procession of lanterns for Saint Matthew. They were made from melons and pumpkins and not from almonds - it would be pretty tricky to do so, just as it would be tricky to make underwear from almonds. Saint Matthew has provided the pretext for fiesta events that have nothing whatsoever to do with him, but forget Matthew and concentrate on the almonds. All day today in Santa Margalida there will be special almond dishes as part of its "Picametla" gastronomy event.
Saint Matthew, he of Apostle fame, was not noted for parading around in his boxers or revealing Calvin Kleins. It is doubtful that he would have approved of the Bunyola brassiere bout, but modernity decrees that antique apostles are stripped down and varnished with baby oil. In Bunyola, at any rate. It's the Sant Mateu fiestas, but knickers to old Matthew and all hail the new saint - a hip dude Matt or Matty in Modus Vivendi.
Matthew was many things in terms of his saintly patronage, but the list of his sponsorship did not stretch to underwear or indeed to almonds. In Santa Margalida, where barely a week seems to pass without some fiesta or other, they're at it again, and this time they've run Saint Matthew up the fiestas' flagpole and given him a delicious bag of sugar-coated almonds to munch on.
This is the almond harvesting season, and Santa Margalida has, since 2012, combined a fiesta which had been paid little attention to in the town - Matthew's - with the almond and come up with its "mostra de l'ametla", a grand almond show. It is a town which has a strong interest in the success or not of the almond harvest, as was highlighted in 2012 when there were genuine concerns about the health of the local almond trees. These were anxieties caused by the presence of a fungus that had been attacking the trees and which first really became evident on the island in 2008. It is a disease which has principally affected trees in the Llevant region, especially around Sant Llorenç. Decaying trees in Santa Margalida were more the victim of drought rather than fungus, but the concerns raised two years ago led to a greater awareness of the need to pay trees, especially older ones, rather more TLC than had been the case.
The almond tree has long been a feature of the Mallorcan landscape, and it is of course especially so when it is in blossom in February, but the almond only really became an agricultural force in the nineteenth century when almonds as a crop gained popularity once farming land was reorganised into smaller plots. In 1820, there was negligible almond production, but forty years later almost 6,000 hectares were devoted to its cultivation. Mallorca's almond production contributed to Spain being the world leader, a status that was lost in the late 1970s when the US, and in particular California, overtook Spain as the dominant global producer of almonds. Competition and the enduring impact of old provisions under the Common Agricultural Policy wreaked havoc with Mallorca's almonds as much as any disease. In a period of only six years from 2005, agricultural land devoted to almond production was slashed by over a half.
Great efforts have been made to at least stabilise the situation, and with some success. There has been very little loss of further cultivated land, but the disease has not made stabilisation any easier, especially when carobs, as an alternative crop, have been unaffected. The Santa Margalida fair has to be seen, therefore, within the context of these various threats to the almond and to food-manufacture traditions that it has brought. And one of the most obvious traditions is that of ice-cream. At the fair today there is a workshop devoted to the making of almond ice-cream.
It's hard to place an exact date on when ice-cream manufacture started in Mallorca, but in the eighteenth century it was being made for the Can Joan de s'Aigo chocolate and ice-cream parlour in Palma. The original Sr. de s'Aigo, so the story goes, used to get ice and snow from the Tramuntana mountains and mix it with almond milk. Nowadays, almond ice-cream is a mainstay of the ice-cream freezers of the island's supermarkets.
Yesterday evening in Santa Margalida there was a procession of lanterns for Saint Matthew. They were made from melons and pumpkins and not from almonds - it would be pretty tricky to do so, just as it would be tricky to make underwear from almonds. Saint Matthew has provided the pretext for fiesta events that have nothing whatsoever to do with him, but forget Matthew and concentrate on the almonds. All day today in Santa Margalida there will be special almond dishes as part of its "Picametla" gastronomy event.
Tuesday, September 09, 2014
The Most Typical Contemporary Procession
Most typical or most representative, however one chooses to translate the slogan of Santa Margalida's La Beata procession, its typicalness or representativeness is now very much more contemporary than its telling of a legend from the mists of time. It is the political-statement procession for the current day, a parade of causes and interests, and all of them ones that would find favour with the independent socialist republic of Santa Margalida, which did after all invite their standard bearers.
Santa Margalida's town hall administration is one of Mallorca's finest examples of anti-Bauzáism. It is splendidly antagonistic towards the Partido Popular regional government. Anything the government does or says, and the town hall will disagree. It hasn't always been so, but when the Suma pel Canvi stormed to election victory in 2011, a very different tone was set at the Casa Vila. The Suma, a coalition of independents and PSOE, had at its head the battling veteran hardman of the left, Miguel Cifre, who has since handed the mayoral wand to his Dave Spart protégé, Toni Reus.
The tone under Toni has not changed, and it was evident from those who attended this year's most typical procession. Among its number were the now-restored-from-hunger-strike Catalan independentist and teacher Jaume Sastre, one of the key members of the Assemblea de Docents teachers' organisation. Others included representatives from the eco warriors GOB and the Consell de Joventut de les Illes Balears, a youth organisation which was once given an award for its promotion of Catalan language and culture.
Most typically for this most typical of processions, one would expect the numbers to be swelled by very important persons of Balearic political high command. They were conspicuous by their absence. There was no José Ramón Bauzá. There was no president of the Council of Mallorca, Maria Salom; there was no tourism minister, Jaime Martínez; there was no minister for education, Joana Camps. They all thought it wise not to attend. Neither Bauzá nor Camps was exposed, therefore, to the prospect of attempting small talk with Sastre during the embarrassing period prior to taking the walk behind La Beata when they have to sit next to each other on the temporary terraced seating reserved for dignitaries. There have been deliciously awkward moments in the past when rivals have been forced by protocol to shake hands or do the two-kiss thing through clearly clenched teeth. But they would not have been as awkward as if Camps had felt obliged to engage Sastre in the double-peck treatment.
Martínez probably felt that it was for the best for him and Reus not to have had to have pressed sweaty palms together. Reus doesn't think much to the tourism law, having invoked human rights as a reason why the ordinary people of Can Picafort should be able to rent out their holiday properties to whomsoever they want to. Salom has butted heads with the town hall over various matters, such as the dump for waste in the town, access to which the town hall had threatened to block.
No, it was sensible for them all to have discovered that they had other more pressing engagements. Their absence, though, meant that someone had to draw the short straw and put in an appearance. And so poor old (young) Marti Sansaloni, the health minister, was instructed to turn up. He must have been horrified at the prospect. The town hall has not forgotten the Alpha Pam affair. The name of the Senegalese illegal immigrant from Can Picafort who died as a result of having been denied treatment at Inca hospital is still very much remembered in Santa Margalida. There are still those who believe that Sansaloni should have resigned or have been brought before a court.
Fiestas can be occasions for protest. The Festival of the Standard in Palma at New Year is an event which is particularly vulnerable in this regard, and there has been unpleasantness and violence. It is a festival which encapsulates much of the anti- and pro-Catalan sentiment on the island. The Sant Antoni fiesta in Sa Pobla is another potential flashpoint, and President Bauzá has not been made to feel too welcome. Perhaps the most serious incident was that in Felanitx at the Sant Agustí fiesta in August 2011 where tear gas was used during the supposedly humorous "palio" by which prominent politicians run a gauntlet. Bauzá has never attended it, but Salom was there in 2011.
La Beata, though, has become the most politicised of the fiesta occasions. It is unlikely that any serious disturbance would have occurred this year had Bauzá shown up (he did go last year and there wasn't trouble), but things have moved on since last year. Divisions are even more in evidence, and so they proved to be, as demonstrated by those who didn't attend.
Santa Margalida's town hall administration is one of Mallorca's finest examples of anti-Bauzáism. It is splendidly antagonistic towards the Partido Popular regional government. Anything the government does or says, and the town hall will disagree. It hasn't always been so, but when the Suma pel Canvi stormed to election victory in 2011, a very different tone was set at the Casa Vila. The Suma, a coalition of independents and PSOE, had at its head the battling veteran hardman of the left, Miguel Cifre, who has since handed the mayoral wand to his Dave Spart protégé, Toni Reus.
The tone under Toni has not changed, and it was evident from those who attended this year's most typical procession. Among its number were the now-restored-from-hunger-strike Catalan independentist and teacher Jaume Sastre, one of the key members of the Assemblea de Docents teachers' organisation. Others included representatives from the eco warriors GOB and the Consell de Joventut de les Illes Balears, a youth organisation which was once given an award for its promotion of Catalan language and culture.
Most typically for this most typical of processions, one would expect the numbers to be swelled by very important persons of Balearic political high command. They were conspicuous by their absence. There was no José Ramón Bauzá. There was no president of the Council of Mallorca, Maria Salom; there was no tourism minister, Jaime Martínez; there was no minister for education, Joana Camps. They all thought it wise not to attend. Neither Bauzá nor Camps was exposed, therefore, to the prospect of attempting small talk with Sastre during the embarrassing period prior to taking the walk behind La Beata when they have to sit next to each other on the temporary terraced seating reserved for dignitaries. There have been deliciously awkward moments in the past when rivals have been forced by protocol to shake hands or do the two-kiss thing through clearly clenched teeth. But they would not have been as awkward as if Camps had felt obliged to engage Sastre in the double-peck treatment.
Martínez probably felt that it was for the best for him and Reus not to have had to have pressed sweaty palms together. Reus doesn't think much to the tourism law, having invoked human rights as a reason why the ordinary people of Can Picafort should be able to rent out their holiday properties to whomsoever they want to. Salom has butted heads with the town hall over various matters, such as the dump for waste in the town, access to which the town hall had threatened to block.
No, it was sensible for them all to have discovered that they had other more pressing engagements. Their absence, though, meant that someone had to draw the short straw and put in an appearance. And so poor old (young) Marti Sansaloni, the health minister, was instructed to turn up. He must have been horrified at the prospect. The town hall has not forgotten the Alpha Pam affair. The name of the Senegalese illegal immigrant from Can Picafort who died as a result of having been denied treatment at Inca hospital is still very much remembered in Santa Margalida. There are still those who believe that Sansaloni should have resigned or have been brought before a court.
Fiestas can be occasions for protest. The Festival of the Standard in Palma at New Year is an event which is particularly vulnerable in this regard, and there has been unpleasantness and violence. It is a festival which encapsulates much of the anti- and pro-Catalan sentiment on the island. The Sant Antoni fiesta in Sa Pobla is another potential flashpoint, and President Bauzá has not been made to feel too welcome. Perhaps the most serious incident was that in Felanitx at the Sant Agustí fiesta in August 2011 where tear gas was used during the supposedly humorous "palio" by which prominent politicians run a gauntlet. Bauzá has never attended it, but Salom was there in 2011.
La Beata, though, has become the most politicised of the fiesta occasions. It is unlikely that any serious disturbance would have occurred this year had Bauzá shown up (he did go last year and there wasn't trouble), but things have moved on since last year. Divisions are even more in evidence, and so they proved to be, as demonstrated by those who didn't attend.
Thursday, September 04, 2014
Neighbours At War: Sewage treatment
Lurking on the edge of the wetlands of Albufera there is something which, from an aerial view, looks like a giant painter's palette. Its colours range from grey-silvers to greens to royal and deeper blues. It is the Albufera sewage treatment plant. Most people don't know of its existence, except perhaps because of the occasional whiff. The rustic part of Playa de Muro (the so-called Sector Two), which comprises a couple of urbanisations, nine hotels and an awful lot of forest and dunes, is subject to strange smells. There is, especially in high summer, one that is like burnt sulphur. I have always assumed this to be because of a sort of marsh gas from the low-level wetlands and vegetation. I may be right. But there are other more pungent smells. An antiquated sewage pipe network is one cause. An antiquated sewage plant may well be another.
The plant is not far from Playa de Muro's border with Can Picafort. It is, therefore, within the municipality of Muro, whose neighbour, Santa Margalida, shares the facility. Or to be more specific, the coastal resorts of Playa de Muro and Can Picafort - with their combined eighty odd hotels - share it. The transient tourist populations of the two resorts massively dwarf the resident populations. These are places which exist primarily because of hotel tourism, and that hotel tourism lies at the centre of an ongoing sewage row between Muro and Santa Margalida town halls.
The Albufera plant, like the pipe network, is antiquated. A new one or an additional one has been required for years. The regional government's environment ministry has earmarked a site for a new one. It is in Son Bauló, the eastern part of Can Picafort. This proposed site has created a stink, the reason being that there are fears that its outlet - 3.7 kilometres out to sea in the bay of Alcúdia and at a depth of 25 metres - might lead to beach pollution and cause destruction of posidonia sea grass. Santa Margalida town hall, in a rare demonstration of unity between its usually antagonistic political parties, continues to flatly reject the plant's construction. The environmental concerns are one reason, but there are, as always, political and commercial ones as well.
Santa Margalida's stance is essentially one of not in our backyard, to which Muro has pointed out that for years Santa Margalida has been happy enough to make use of a sewage plant which is in Muro's backyard. Muro claims that the Albufera plant is creaking, that it could itself cause environmental contamination (to the eco-sensitive wetlands) and that it is past its sell-by date. It, therefore, maintains that the new plant is an absolute necessity. Santa Margalida says that the Albufera plant should be extended. The result? Stand-off.
Into this row has now entered a throwback political dimension. Santa Margalida maintains that the Son Bauló solution was something of a stitch-up involving the discredited former president of the Balearics, Jaume Matas. It was a political pact, the town hall claims, between Matas and the former mayor of Muro, Miguel Ramis, by which a study of the Son Bauló site was given the appearance of legality through some alleged manipulation. Miguel Ramis was the founder of Grupotel; he still is its president. Ten years ago, hoteliers in Playa de Muro, of which Grupotel is one, clubbed together and bought land in Son Bauló; the very land on which the sewage treatment plant may be sited.
That Santa Margalida is now seeking to make some political capital out of the affair adds a new twist to the story but it is a twist which seems all a bit late in the day. Furthermore, around the time that the land was being acquired, there did appear to be general consensus between the town halls as to the necessity for a new plant and for it to be established in Son Bauló. The former mayor of Santa Margalida, Antoni del Olmo, signed up to an agreement in 2005, one which Muro says that Santa Margalida should honour. It should also be noted that the acquisition of the land by the Playa de Muro hoteliers was transparent and one which most parties at the time seemed to accept as a solution in a spirit of sharing and co-operation between hoteliers in the two resorts and between the two town halls.
Since that time, though, the politics have moved on. So, what happens next? GOB, the environmental watchdogs, have added their penny's worth, saying that there should be a third option, one that is neither Albufera nor Son Bauló, but without offering an actual alternative. All the time, while the arguments fly, the Albufera plant, according to Muro, becomes more of a risk. One day, perhaps, the whiffs in Playa de Muro will be even more pungent.
The plant is not far from Playa de Muro's border with Can Picafort. It is, therefore, within the municipality of Muro, whose neighbour, Santa Margalida, shares the facility. Or to be more specific, the coastal resorts of Playa de Muro and Can Picafort - with their combined eighty odd hotels - share it. The transient tourist populations of the two resorts massively dwarf the resident populations. These are places which exist primarily because of hotel tourism, and that hotel tourism lies at the centre of an ongoing sewage row between Muro and Santa Margalida town halls.
The Albufera plant, like the pipe network, is antiquated. A new one or an additional one has been required for years. The regional government's environment ministry has earmarked a site for a new one. It is in Son Bauló, the eastern part of Can Picafort. This proposed site has created a stink, the reason being that there are fears that its outlet - 3.7 kilometres out to sea in the bay of Alcúdia and at a depth of 25 metres - might lead to beach pollution and cause destruction of posidonia sea grass. Santa Margalida town hall, in a rare demonstration of unity between its usually antagonistic political parties, continues to flatly reject the plant's construction. The environmental concerns are one reason, but there are, as always, political and commercial ones as well.
Santa Margalida's stance is essentially one of not in our backyard, to which Muro has pointed out that for years Santa Margalida has been happy enough to make use of a sewage plant which is in Muro's backyard. Muro claims that the Albufera plant is creaking, that it could itself cause environmental contamination (to the eco-sensitive wetlands) and that it is past its sell-by date. It, therefore, maintains that the new plant is an absolute necessity. Santa Margalida says that the Albufera plant should be extended. The result? Stand-off.
Into this row has now entered a throwback political dimension. Santa Margalida maintains that the Son Bauló solution was something of a stitch-up involving the discredited former president of the Balearics, Jaume Matas. It was a political pact, the town hall claims, between Matas and the former mayor of Muro, Miguel Ramis, by which a study of the Son Bauló site was given the appearance of legality through some alleged manipulation. Miguel Ramis was the founder of Grupotel; he still is its president. Ten years ago, hoteliers in Playa de Muro, of which Grupotel is one, clubbed together and bought land in Son Bauló; the very land on which the sewage treatment plant may be sited.
That Santa Margalida is now seeking to make some political capital out of the affair adds a new twist to the story but it is a twist which seems all a bit late in the day. Furthermore, around the time that the land was being acquired, there did appear to be general consensus between the town halls as to the necessity for a new plant and for it to be established in Son Bauló. The former mayor of Santa Margalida, Antoni del Olmo, signed up to an agreement in 2005, one which Muro says that Santa Margalida should honour. It should also be noted that the acquisition of the land by the Playa de Muro hoteliers was transparent and one which most parties at the time seemed to accept as a solution in a spirit of sharing and co-operation between hoteliers in the two resorts and between the two town halls.
Since that time, though, the politics have moved on. So, what happens next? GOB, the environmental watchdogs, have added their penny's worth, saying that there should be a third option, one that is neither Albufera nor Son Bauló, but without offering an actual alternative. All the time, while the arguments fly, the Albufera plant, according to Muro, becomes more of a risk. One day, perhaps, the whiffs in Playa de Muro will be even more pungent.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Great "Vilers": Joan Mascaró i Fornés
But he was a rogue who pretty much controlled Mallorca. He became Spain's wealthiest man. Perhaps there is just a touch of jealousy. While Santa Margalida's one-time affluence from agriculture had declined over the years, March was new wealth. Banking, shipping, petrol. He owned the lot, and what he owned survive to this day - Banca March, Trasmediterranea, Campsa.
This coming Tuesday, there is to be a day of culture as part of the La Beata fiestas. It is actually an evening, but no matter. It will take place in the Casal de Cultura Joan Mascaró i Fornés, and Mascaró was a son of Santa Margalida who did nothing to have any honour taken away. He was an unusual and remarkable man. And, perhaps as proof that rogues seek redemption through good works, he was a recipient of Joan March's benevolence.
Mascaró was born in 1897 in a small farmhouse on the finca s’Hort d’en Degollat, the site of the fiestas' haymaking celebrations which take place today. His parents were of humble farming stock, so his background was such that he hadn’t been destined to become the great scholar he became. But at the age of seven, he went to live with an uncle in Palma, where he studied and, at the age of sixteen, he became fascinated in the occult and Oriental spiritualism.
He mastered English to the extent that he was employed in 1916 as a secretary at the British Consulate, and it was his ability in English which brought him to the attention of Joan March. It was March who was to be Mascaró’s patron, and in 1929, having been funded to attend Cambridge University, he emerged with a degree in English Literature and Classical Oriental Languages.
Mascaró was to travel and to work in what was then Ceylon, and in 1935 he completed the first translation into Catalan of the “Bhagavad Gita”, one of the most important scriptures of the Hindu culture and religion. He was eventually to translate this epic into English, and when it was published by Penguin in 1962, he suddenly found himself catapulted into international fame. His work was greeted with great praise by scholars and the non-scholarly, one of the latter having been George Harrison, with whom Mascaró was to conduct a correspondence. He was to also translate other texts from the “Upanishads”, which is the collection of Hindu texts of which “Bhagavad Gita” is one.
Despite his extensive research into Hindu literature and culture, Mascaró never lost sight of his Catalan origins and culture. His translations into Catalan, which had been more or less lost during Franco times, were revived and re-published in the 1980s.
He died at the age of 89 in 1987, his remains being taken from Cambridge, where he had lived, in order to be buried in Santa Margalida. Mascaró is held in a position of reverence in Santa Margalida. For his advocacy of Catalan and for his widely acclaimed translations, he is remembered fondly, whereas his benefactor, Joan March, is not.
Saturday, August 23, 2014
What's On Around Alcúdia And Pollensa - La Beata
The programme in English at: http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2014/08/santa-margalida-la-beata-2014.html
Friday, May 16, 2014
Muro: The New Model Town Hall
Muro is a town which generally goes about its business without making a great deal of fuss or drawing a huge amount of attention to itself. Gone are the days when the grand old men of Muro's politics would clash and when things would rarely appear to be sweetness and light. Both of them also had their well-publicised legal problems. Miguel Ramis, the founder of Grupotel and one-time mayor, was disqualified from public office over a land matter, while Jaume Perelló, another ex-mayor, was sentenced to a year in prison because of vote-rigging. There are of course still the occasional spats, but by and large the town hall avoids being named in dishonourable dispatches and conducts itself in an unfussy and efficient manner. So efficient is it, that it is only one of two town halls in Mallorca to have no debt.
Other town halls in the area still have alarming levels of debt, despite some years of austerity. Alcúdia's and Santa Margalida's are roughly the same, edging towards four and a half million euros. Pollensa's is a bit under four million. Sa Pobla has a whacking great 10.35 million. So how is it that Muro manages to owe not a centimo? Basically, it is all down to good housekeeping. Mayor Martí Fornes has explained that running a town hall should be like running your home finances. You don't spend more than you can afford. It all sounds remarkably like Margaret Thatcher and remarkably sensible.
There was a debt, some two million euros, a few years ago, but it has been whittled down to nothing through prudence. It is not as though there aren't investments, just that they are closely controlled. The efficiency stretches to payments to suppliers. Muro takes, on average, a mere sixteen days to pay up.
Muro's financial position may all be a function of size (roughly a third the population of Alcúdia) and of a large number of mainly up-market hotels from which healthy revenues can be obtained, but however it is managing to keep the debt to zero, it can be held up as something of a model town hall for others to aspire to.
Meanwhile, the town hall is taking measures to improve security on beaches and to tackle the problem of the illegal massages which are offered on the beaches. Calvia town hall has taken a lead in respect of the latter by putting out to tender a number of massage tents on various beaches in the town. Muro is following suit, as is Santa Margalida (aka Can Picafort). It is a pragmatic response in face of a problem that is not easily solved. It might appear to be easy to solve, but as Santa Margalida's mayor, Antoni Reus, has pointed out, the local police can confiscate the oil and the towel but an hour or so later the massage girls are back again. It's a familiar story, akin to that of the "lookies". Issuing fines isn't much use, as they don't get paid.
Muro will have two massage tents this summer, while Santa Margalida will have four. Though it might be hoped that some of the trade that the illegal massage girls have until now exploited will prefer to have an authorised beach massage, will it mean the end of the illegality and the sheer nuisance factor? Somehow, you would doubt it.
On beach security, Muro will be installing safes with the sunbed and parasol units. Or rather, the concessionaires who supply the sunbeds will be installing them. Doubtless this will have meant higher tenders for the sunbed lots on the beaches. The concessions are good revenue-earners for both Muro and Santa Margalida town halls, but they have also had their share of controversy. One can but hope that the safes will not be the targets of any vandalism. Both Muro and Can Picafort have a bit of form when it comes to sunbeds being vandalised. Not, it would seem, by ne'er-do-well tourists or local lads with nothing better to do, but by rivals.
Other town halls in the area still have alarming levels of debt, despite some years of austerity. Alcúdia's and Santa Margalida's are roughly the same, edging towards four and a half million euros. Pollensa's is a bit under four million. Sa Pobla has a whacking great 10.35 million. So how is it that Muro manages to owe not a centimo? Basically, it is all down to good housekeeping. Mayor Martí Fornes has explained that running a town hall should be like running your home finances. You don't spend more than you can afford. It all sounds remarkably like Margaret Thatcher and remarkably sensible.
There was a debt, some two million euros, a few years ago, but it has been whittled down to nothing through prudence. It is not as though there aren't investments, just that they are closely controlled. The efficiency stretches to payments to suppliers. Muro takes, on average, a mere sixteen days to pay up.
Muro's financial position may all be a function of size (roughly a third the population of Alcúdia) and of a large number of mainly up-market hotels from which healthy revenues can be obtained, but however it is managing to keep the debt to zero, it can be held up as something of a model town hall for others to aspire to.
Meanwhile, the town hall is taking measures to improve security on beaches and to tackle the problem of the illegal massages which are offered on the beaches. Calvia town hall has taken a lead in respect of the latter by putting out to tender a number of massage tents on various beaches in the town. Muro is following suit, as is Santa Margalida (aka Can Picafort). It is a pragmatic response in face of a problem that is not easily solved. It might appear to be easy to solve, but as Santa Margalida's mayor, Antoni Reus, has pointed out, the local police can confiscate the oil and the towel but an hour or so later the massage girls are back again. It's a familiar story, akin to that of the "lookies". Issuing fines isn't much use, as they don't get paid.
Muro will have two massage tents this summer, while Santa Margalida will have four. Though it might be hoped that some of the trade that the illegal massage girls have until now exploited will prefer to have an authorised beach massage, will it mean the end of the illegality and the sheer nuisance factor? Somehow, you would doubt it.
On beach security, Muro will be installing safes with the sunbed and parasol units. Or rather, the concessionaires who supply the sunbeds will be installing them. Doubtless this will have meant higher tenders for the sunbed lots on the beaches. The concessions are good revenue-earners for both Muro and Santa Margalida town halls, but they have also had their share of controversy. One can but hope that the safes will not be the targets of any vandalism. Both Muro and Can Picafort have a bit of form when it comes to sunbeds being vandalised. Not, it would seem, by ne'er-do-well tourists or local lads with nothing better to do, but by rivals.
Monday, April 07, 2014
What's On Around Alcúdia And Pollensa - Santa Margalida Spring Fair
Programme in English at: http://thehotguide.blogspot.com.es/2014/04/santa-margalida-spring-fair.html
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Losing The Heartland: President Bauzá
If you read the programmes for fiestas, you will always find an entry in the schedule for the "arrival of the authorities (aka the dignitaries)". Normally, this just refers to a mayor and a few of his or her town-hall acolytes. Occasionally, however, it refers to dignitaries of a higher order, such as the president of the Balearics. It all depends on the importance and standing of the fiesta in question.
Two of the most important fiestas in Mallorca - in fact, the two most important - are those of Sant Antoni in Sa Pobla and La Beata in Santa Margalida. At the second of these, staged in early September, the dignitaries have already arrived and have been perched on temporary seating before officially arriving (so to speak) and following the procession of La Beata as she faces temptations by devils and the smashing of terracotta jars.
La Beata is the self-proclaimed "most typical" fiesta in Mallorca and for this reason it attracts the dignitaries that it does; it is a must-be-seen-at event for the grand order of Mallorcan politicians. Sa Pobla's Sant Antoni is similar to La Beata insofar as it is an occasion of island-wide significance, so therefore an occasion for the great and good (sic) to attend, and is staged in a town which lays claim to being the sort of spiritual home to Mallorca's Catalanism. Santa Margalida, a town once removed from Sa Pobla (Muro's between them), might also put a bid in for this title were it not for it having a different claim - its status as a "vila", an old categorisation and one that is unique to Santa Margalida. It may not really mean much nowadays, but the people of Santa Margalida maintain its importance by referring to themselves as "vilers".
Whatever the different claims of the two towns, they share in common the fact that they are both extremely Mallorcan. The same, one could say, applies to any town in Mallorca which isn't Palma or Calvia, but nowhere else has quite the Mallorcan kudos as Sa Pobla or Santa Margalida; they are the repositories of centuries-old ruralism, tradition, culture and language, augmented by heavy doses of the religion thing in the shape of Sant Antoni and Santa Catalina.
The two fiestas have, however, posed something of a conundrum over the past couple of years for politicians-in-attendance: one in particular, i.e. President Bauzá. In both 2012 and 2013, his appearance at La Beata was confirmed only at the last minute. In 2012, he had initially been banned (or not invited at any rate) by former mayor, the battling, veteran hard man of the left, Miguel Cifre. In the end, he was invited, as he was last year. But these were invites without any great enthusiasm.
What had led Cifre to not issue an invite was what happened when Bauzá performed his Cook's Tour of Partido Popular HQs in various towns. In Santa Margalida the town's centre became a virtual no-go area because of security and after the visit there were insinuations (from a PP source) of the townspeople being violent. Cifre was mightily displeased. In Sa Pobla, during the same tour of the party faithful out in the sticks, there were jeers and disturbances when the president appeared.
Perhaps because La Beata is a rather more solemn affair than Sant Antoni, Bauzá has been able to get away with going to Santa Margalida without there being too much of a fuss. In Sa Pobla, however, and despite it having a PP mayor, he has stayed away from Sant Antoni for the past two years. Having been greeted by abuse and booing in 2012, he has headed off to the quiet of Menorca instead.
It might be thought fair enough that he prefers not to be subjected to abuse or to cause a security issue, but his non-appearance at Sant Antoni, taken together with the uncertainties that have surrounded his attendance at La Beata, amount to rather more than anxieties over what sort of a reception he will get. These are fiestas in heartland Mallorca; heartland not just in a geographical sense. If Bauzá cannot attend or if there are question marks over his attendance, then he has lost this heartland, and in the process an empathy with the heart of Mallorca has also been lost.
Mallorca seems like two places. One place is Palma and its suburbs of Calvia and Marratxí (Bauzá's old stomping ground). The other place is the rest. The now broken Bauzá-Delgado axis was representative of this separation; a cosmopolitan Spanishness at variance with and out of step with the insular instincts of the "part forana". It is a division which could be styled as the new versus the old, but this is not so. It is a division in terms of an island's psyche.
Bauzá has faced an enormous challenge because of the economic circumstances which he inherited. He was always bound to therefore come up against opposition, but handling of the islands' economy is really the least of it. Had he stuck to this, then he would not have lost the heartland. But he hasn't. And in instituting policies that he has, he has created a polarity of two Mallorcas pulling in opposite directions.
Two of the most important fiestas in Mallorca - in fact, the two most important - are those of Sant Antoni in Sa Pobla and La Beata in Santa Margalida. At the second of these, staged in early September, the dignitaries have already arrived and have been perched on temporary seating before officially arriving (so to speak) and following the procession of La Beata as she faces temptations by devils and the smashing of terracotta jars.
La Beata is the self-proclaimed "most typical" fiesta in Mallorca and for this reason it attracts the dignitaries that it does; it is a must-be-seen-at event for the grand order of Mallorcan politicians. Sa Pobla's Sant Antoni is similar to La Beata insofar as it is an occasion of island-wide significance, so therefore an occasion for the great and good (sic) to attend, and is staged in a town which lays claim to being the sort of spiritual home to Mallorca's Catalanism. Santa Margalida, a town once removed from Sa Pobla (Muro's between them), might also put a bid in for this title were it not for it having a different claim - its status as a "vila", an old categorisation and one that is unique to Santa Margalida. It may not really mean much nowadays, but the people of Santa Margalida maintain its importance by referring to themselves as "vilers".
Whatever the different claims of the two towns, they share in common the fact that they are both extremely Mallorcan. The same, one could say, applies to any town in Mallorca which isn't Palma or Calvia, but nowhere else has quite the Mallorcan kudos as Sa Pobla or Santa Margalida; they are the repositories of centuries-old ruralism, tradition, culture and language, augmented by heavy doses of the religion thing in the shape of Sant Antoni and Santa Catalina.
The two fiestas have, however, posed something of a conundrum over the past couple of years for politicians-in-attendance: one in particular, i.e. President Bauzá. In both 2012 and 2013, his appearance at La Beata was confirmed only at the last minute. In 2012, he had initially been banned (or not invited at any rate) by former mayor, the battling, veteran hard man of the left, Miguel Cifre. In the end, he was invited, as he was last year. But these were invites without any great enthusiasm.
What had led Cifre to not issue an invite was what happened when Bauzá performed his Cook's Tour of Partido Popular HQs in various towns. In Santa Margalida the town's centre became a virtual no-go area because of security and after the visit there were insinuations (from a PP source) of the townspeople being violent. Cifre was mightily displeased. In Sa Pobla, during the same tour of the party faithful out in the sticks, there were jeers and disturbances when the president appeared.
Perhaps because La Beata is a rather more solemn affair than Sant Antoni, Bauzá has been able to get away with going to Santa Margalida without there being too much of a fuss. In Sa Pobla, however, and despite it having a PP mayor, he has stayed away from Sant Antoni for the past two years. Having been greeted by abuse and booing in 2012, he has headed off to the quiet of Menorca instead.
It might be thought fair enough that he prefers not to be subjected to abuse or to cause a security issue, but his non-appearance at Sant Antoni, taken together with the uncertainties that have surrounded his attendance at La Beata, amount to rather more than anxieties over what sort of a reception he will get. These are fiestas in heartland Mallorca; heartland not just in a geographical sense. If Bauzá cannot attend or if there are question marks over his attendance, then he has lost this heartland, and in the process an empathy with the heart of Mallorca has also been lost.
Mallorca seems like two places. One place is Palma and its suburbs of Calvia and Marratxí (Bauzá's old stomping ground). The other place is the rest. The now broken Bauzá-Delgado axis was representative of this separation; a cosmopolitan Spanishness at variance with and out of step with the insular instincts of the "part forana". It is a division which could be styled as the new versus the old, but this is not so. It is a division in terms of an island's psyche.
Bauzá has faced an enormous challenge because of the economic circumstances which he inherited. He was always bound to therefore come up against opposition, but handling of the islands' economy is really the least of it. Had he stuck to this, then he would not have lost the heartland. But he hasn't. And in instituting policies that he has, he has created a polarity of two Mallorcas pulling in opposite directions.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Pouring Cold Water on Mallorca's Tourism Growth
Currently, Mallorca receives in the region of nine million tourists a year, over half of them pressed into a period of around fourteen weeks in summer. Such a concentration of humanity leads to the August peaks of total population of the island (residents, tourists and transient workers) when there are, not untypically, 60% more people than in December. In 2012, for instance, on 4 August there were 1,350,000 people as opposed to 843,000 on 23 December. Were the island to in fact receive 100 million tourists over this seven-year period, this would correspond to an increase of just under 60% of what it would receive based on current figures. It would be an enormous increase - 5.3 million more tourists per annum.
On the face of it, if this 100 million were to in fact be a realistic and achievable number, then the island's tourism future would indeed be very rosy. But how achievable would it be? Allowing for the taking-up of hotel occupancy slack, especially in the lower months of the summer, the capacity wouldn't be there. Even if there were the capacity, it doesn't follow that tourists would come in the great numbers that would be needed to make up for what, based on current levels, would be a missing 37 million tourists over seven years.
What might make a difference would be a relaxation of rules on private holiday accommodation (something that would be most unlikely) and something of a construction boom (also unlikely). While there are new hotel projects in the offing, these would not amount to anything like the number of places that would be required.
One has to conclude, therefore, that the report was, at best, an exaggeration. At worst, it was just plain wrong and complete rubbish. Moreover, behind the glowing headline of 100 million tourists was the absence of some pretty obvious questions. Would Mallorca actually want so many tourists and would there be the infrastructure, not just in terms of accommodation, to allow for so many tourists?
Santa Margalida is a town with one of Mallorca's leading tourist resorts, Can Picafort. At present, the town's regular population is no more than 12,000 people. In summer, this can double, thanks to tourists who are primarily accommodated in Can Picafort. There is a limit at the moment on tourist places in the municipality. The maximum is 13,000.
Under an old urban ordinance, the total number of people that Santa Margalida could ultimately accommodate was set at 50,000. This was a figure arrived at years ago and one that did of course envisage significantly more development than has actually occurred. The town hall has now revised this number down to 34,000, but this 34,000 is a limit which does not foresee any meaningful expansion of regulated tourist accommodation, i.e. hotels. It is a theoretical figure which sets a limit on urban development of a residential nature, one that would see the resident population almost doubling but one that is not about to be attained in the foreseeable future.
Town halls do, in theory and usually in practice, have the final say on urban planning matters. The Balearic Government attempted to shift the goalposts on this where tourism accommodation was concerned but was forced to back down in the face of opposition from the town halls and the Council of Mallorca. The town halls do also have responsibility for certain vital services, such as water supplies. And it is these services, as much as anything else, which have to make projections of such a massive increase in tourism numbers highly questionable. If Santa Margalida is indicative of other towns, then it will not be attained.
Such an increase does, though, raise a question which is difficult to answer. Difficult but not impossible. And that is what might be the maximum number of people that Mallorca could support at any one moment in time? Water supplies are one part of the equation. There are others - airport capacity, roads, medical services, emergency and security services, power as well environmental impact. It would not be impossible to create computer models which might give an indication, but, and setting aside possible impacts of climate change, water supplies would be the most important factor.
In this regard, German research published in the journal "Land Use Policy"** highlights the harmful nature of a Mallorcan drive towards ever more "quality" tourism and so the use of water for domestic consumption, pools, golf courses etc. in what are often non-tourism areas of the island. This research echoes the so-called "Benidorm effect", the one by which high concentrations of tourists in limited areas are vastly more efficient in terms of managing resources than a sprawl of tourism. But as can be seen from what Santa Margalida are doing, there is no desire or intention to make its tourism denser.
100 million tourists might sound like good news, but could such a level of tourism be sustained? Where water is concerned, almost certainly not.
** Hof and Schmitt, "Urban and tourist land use patterns and water consumption: Evidence from Mallorca, Balearic Islands", "Land Use Policy", 2011.
http://xesc.cat/ET2050_library/docs/med/water_mallorca.pdf
Index for November 2013
Aznar's memoirs and the Madrid bombs - 3 November 2013
Balearics regional election and party leadership - 16 November 2013
Bank financing of tourist resort renewal - 4 November 2013
Catalan or Mallorquín - 18 November 2013
Doctor Who in Spain - 20 November 2013
Golf tourism - 14 November 2013
I Need Spain slogan - 19 November 2013
IB3 and its costs - 12 November 2013
Illegal rural property - 10 November 2013
Illesbalears.es - 21 November 2013
Innovation and Mallorcan culture - 27 November 2013
Mallorcan place names' ancient origins - 29 November 2013
Millennials and tourism - 15 November 2013
Muro pumpkin autumn fair - 1 November 2013
Olive oil dispensers - 24 November 2013
Palacio de Congresos - 13 November 2013
Poster designs: Pollensa and Muro fairs - 9 November 2013
President Bauzá interview on La Sexta - 26 November 2013
PSOE and national leadership - 11 November 2013
Sa Pobla Japanese tourism - 23 November 2013
Second casino and PP fallout - 25 November 2013
Smart all-inclusive resorts of the future - 2 November 2013
Solar energy law - 8 November 2013
Tourism growth in Mallorca and water resources - 30 November 2013
Tubular Bells, The Exorcist and Mallorca - 28 November 2013
Turespaña director-general - 5 November 2013
Unsold properties - 6 November 2013
Weather in November in Mallorca - 17 November 2013
Winter tourism products - 7 November 2013
Sunday, October 13, 2013
A Notorious Son Of Santa Margalida
The reasons for this dislike are well-known. He was associated with Franco. His fortune, certainly the roots of it from his young days, came from smuggling, while there is good evidence to indicate that he was still involved in smuggling quite some years after he had become a prominent businessman. Stories of intrigue and of doing away with people surround him, and there is also the question mark over his own death. Was the car crash an accident or not?
March was born in Santa Margalida. This association is something which the people of the town (most of them anyway) would rather didn't exist. It is an association, though, which has been given new life. Unknown to pretty much everyone in Santa Margalida, March had been named as an illustrious son of the town in 1956. This only came to light when a historian stumbled across the agreement drawn up by the town hall in that year quite by chance; the town's records are being digitised, and in the process the document was discovered.
One says that he was named as an illustrious son, but the document which did so was filed away and forgotten about. March was nominated with this title but it was never actually bestowed upon him. Despite this, the discovery that he was going to be named an illustrious son and the existence of the document which confirms this have caused a fuss in Santa Margalida.
The town hall's ruling administration comprises members of a local coalition - Suma pel Canvi - which is made up of independents and the PSOE socialist party and this in turn forms a coalition with the Convergència. The Suma people want the title to be withdrawn, the Convergència isn't so sure, while the opposition Partido Popular is keeping quiet on the subject.
The reason for Suma wanting the title withdrawn is March's Francoist background. Commonly referred to as Franco's banker, March, where Suma is concerned, was the man who financed Franco's coup and so also financed Nationalism and the repression of Republicanism.
This Francoist connection emphasises a point I made recently about the extent to which Franco still dominates Spanish life, and so March is a particularly sensitive subject for Mallorcans and not just Mallorcans from Santa Margalida. But is Suma making something of a March and Francoist mountain out of the molehill of a document everyone had forgotten existed? It isn't as if March was actually ever made an illustrious son, and the reason why he wasn't is perhaps more interesting and revealing than the document itself.
It would appear that this honorary title was a form of cash for honours arrangement. At the time, back in 1956, Santa Margalida town hall, strapped for cash, needed some financial help to build a new town hall. Who did it think of as a potential benefactor? Someone who was a financier and who would do nicely as an illustrious son. March, however, was not inclined to help with the financing. He claimed to have had his own financial problems at the time as well. The request refused, the town hall representatives thought better of awarding him the title but rather than just withdrawing it, the relevant document was filed, perhaps to be revived at some future date.
The desire for the current-day administration to have the honour withdrawn doesn't make total sense, as March never actually received it. Indeed, as the town hall's predecessors some fifty-odd years ago had effectively attempted to bribe March (itself ironic as March wasn't exactly unacquainted with such a method), the current-day guardians of the town might feel rather embarrassed to admit to the attempted bribe.
It is understandable, given the Franco connection, that the Suma should wish to formally strip March of the title, but - and by no means wishing to sound like an apologist for March - one does have to wonder if the contemporary narrative as it is applied to him has airbrushed out less negative factors. He is a fascinating individual for many reasons. He was clearly a very powerful man, but to what extent might it be said that he was instrumental in the general development and well-being of Mallorca? He was, among other things, involved in shipping and the early electricity industry. He also founded the Banca March, and it was the existence of an established banking system in Mallorca that was a factor in facilitating the eventual boom in tourism.
Notorious son of Santa Margalida would probably be a more apt title, but it is notoriety that needs some nuance.
* The photo, pretty obviously, is from the cover of the book by Pere Ferrer about the most mysterious man in the world. Ferrer is not the historian mentioned in the article.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Nuts In September: Santa Margalida
Ok, so Matt did have a conversion and saw the errors of his ways, but he has been unfortunate enough to have been lumbered with all this patronage for the past couple of thousand years. Why couldn't he have had something altogether more pleasant to watch over? Like almonds. As far as I am aware, Saint Matt does not have and never has had anything to do with almonds. For all I know, he may never have eaten one or sampled the delights of the Battenberg cake or the Bakewell tart. But this hasn't stopped Santa Margalida using almonds as the excuse for putting on a few days celebration in his honour. Or maybe it's the other way round. Either way, from the 19th to the 28th of September there is to be the second almond "show" (for Sant Mateu) in the town and next Saturday (the big Matt day) and Sunday there will be a "picametla", which involves local bars and restaurants serving snacks and meals made with almonds. "Ametla" means almond.
Almonds are important to the economy of Santa Margalida, as they are important to Mallorca's agricultural economy as a whole. But this traditional fruit crop is under threat. In the five years to the end of 2011, the total amount of land that had been devoted to almond growing had fallen by a quarter. The almond was a victim of a number of factors - foreign competition and the Common Agricultural Policy being of greatest importance.
Olive production benefited as a result of CAP subsidies and minimum prices. Though subsidies are no longer as they were, olive growing has continued to increase, pushing aside more traditional crops, such as almonds. In addition, a subsidy known as coupled payment suppression meant a 13% reduction on margins for Spanish nut farmers.
Santa Margalida's celebration of the almond is, therefore, more than just a typical fair devoted to local produce, as with, for instance, Sa Pobla's potato fair. It is about a fruit which, while not endangered with extinction, is being lessened in its traditional importance.
If the growing of almonds is cut back further, it might be that some traditional local food is affected. It is the almond which went into the making of the original Mallorcan ice-cream (almond milk at any rate) along with ice gathered from the mountains. Almond goes into "turrón", the nougaty thing which is especially popular at Christmas, and into "gató", the local sponge cake.
There probably wouldn't be any effect on this in that substitutes would be used. That, though, would be sacrilege, especially if the Californian imported almond were to be used instead. You can tell a Mallorcan almond from most others and certainly from a Californian one. Why? It doesn't taste as good.
Almonds and hazelnuts, these are Mallorca's main nuts. They shouldn't be lost. Go to Santa Margalida and support your local almond, therefore. And if you see some beardy bloke who says he isn't a tax collector but who might be snooping around the stalls selling almond produce, tell him he's a banker.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
MALLORCA TODAY - Police who mocked defecating tourist await interior ministry decision
The three policemen from the local force in Santa Margalida who mocked and insulted a drunk tourist who was defecating in the Paseo Colon in Can Picafort are awaiting a decision as to their futures by the interior ministry, a report into the matter having been forwarded to it by the town hall. The incident, which occurred last year, was captured on a mobile and the video has been circulating on the internet. One of the officers now works for another town hall, while the other two are still with Santa Margalida, but all three face suspension from duty with loss of pay for up to three years, their offences including a failure in duty of care.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
MALLORCA TODAY - Police face three-year suspension over Can Picafort video
Santa Margalida town hall is investigating a video in which a drunk tourist is seen defecating in the street in Can Picafort and then walking away with soiled shorts. The video was shot by local police, who, rather than coming to his assistance, mocked him. The officers face a three-year suspension from duty without pay.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Thursday, July 18, 2013
MALLORCA TODAY - Santa Margalida to impose fines for street mess
Santa Margalida town hall is to use an ordinance passed in 2004 regarding street and public space cleanliness to impose fines for littering, spitting and other forms of messing streets. The issue is especially acute in Can Picafort where, despite town hall cleaning operations, the volume of tourism makes keeping the streets clean a difficult task.
See more: Diario de Mallorca
See more: Diario de Mallorca
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Water Of The Meadow: Sa Pobla
Yesterday was the first day of the Santa Margalida fiestas in Sa Pobla. There are times when these fiestas get confusing. It's also Santa Margalida time in, where else, Santa Margalida, just down the road a bit. The Sa Pobla Santa Margalida fiestas last until 20 July, the day of Santa Margalida, and then the fiestas of Sant Jaume take over. Sant Jaume is the patron saint of Sa Pobla. One of them, the male one. Santa Margalida is the other one, the female one.
Santa Margalida came to be the female patron saint of Sa Pobla before Sa Pobla became Sa Pobla. Or rather, she was the patron saint of what was the original Sa Pobla, which wasn't where Sa Pobla is but was where Crestatx (Crestaig) now is, so over the other side of the motorway from Sa Pobla.
Santa Margalida was the patron of the sanctuary at Crestatx, a settlement of which there is evidence of there having been Roman occupation, which isn't all that surprising given the relative proximity of the Pollentia Roman town in what became Alcúdia and also of Bochoris, which is nowadays Puerto Pollensa. It is perhaps worth noting that, though Alcúdia and Palma are always cited as having been the two most significant Roman towns, Bochoris was the third most significant, and the settlement there left behind the Roman bridge in Pollensa town.
Various Roman artifacts have been discovered in the Crestatx area - ceramics, coins and so on - and so the origins of Sa Pobla can be said to be Roman. Indeed, the name Crestatx is said to come from the Latin "castra" for camp. But after this Roman period, as with Alcúdia and Pollensa or anywhere in Mallorca, little is really known about the time between the Romans being kicked out in the fifth century and the Muslim occupation starting at the beginning of the tenth century. The settlement in Crestatx at some point during this occupation also acquired the name Huyalfàs, which was later corrupted as Uyalfas or Vialfas. Huyalfàs was derived from the Arabic - "hnayar-al-fas" (or variously, huayar-alfar or huayar-alfhas) - meaning water of the meadow, a reference, one imagines, to Albufera.
During the Muslim epoch, this Crestatx settlement came under the jurisdiction of the district of Inkan, i.e. Inca, but after the conquest of Mallorca in 1229 by King Jaume I of Aragon, Huyalfàs was firstly documented in 1241 in the "Llibre Verd" (green book) of land and was eventually relocated to what now is Sa Pobla. In 1300, Jaume's son, Jaume II, decreed the establishment of the royal town of Sa Pobla de Huyalfàs. In fact, there were a number of "poblacions" (small towns or villages) created in Mallorca at that time, such as Artà and Manacor. These new towns were established on the basis that they were all equal in that they had a hundred residents, 500 acres of land and a further 1000 acres of scrubland. It would seem that Crestatx couldn't be developed in this way, which is why Huyalfàs moved.
Officially, the new town took the title of "vila reial" and was granted a charter as a "poblament" (or "pobla"), which basically means settlement and can quite easily be confused with "poble", which means town, village or people. In the new town, 32 establishments were permitted plus the building of a church, and it was this, the church, that brought Sant Antoni firmly into the Sa Pobla story.
It might be thought surprising that Sant Antoni isn't one of Sa Pobla's patron saints. The association of Sant Antoni is of course very strong and gives rise to the most important of the Sant Antoni celebrations in January each other. This association can be traced back to the original Catalan conquest. The tradition or cult of Sant Antoni was strong in Catalonia, and it was one that King Jaume I imported. On the one hand, it was a tradition that appealed to a superstition for the protection of animals, as Antoni was the patron saint of animals, but it was the cult that was to eventually spawn, thanks to legends of Antoni and demons and what have you, what there now is - the demons and the nights of fire.
The church that was built in the new town was, therefore, the church of Sant Antoni de Huyalfàs (or Uialfàs or Uyalfas) and it was finally established in 1357, this original being replaced over 300 years later in 1697.
So, this all explains something about how Sa Pobla and its saints came to be as they are, but there is a question about its name, the answer to which I don't have. Why was Huyalfàs (Uialfàs or whatever) dropped? It ceased to officially be part of the name centuries ago, during the fifteenth century in fact. Sa Pobla, the settlement, has been the name ever since, and the use of the definite article "sa" (which is Mallorquín rather than Catalan) makes a definitive statement for this most Mallorcan of towns and one with the history that it has and a history, moreover, which makes the "castellanisation" of the town's name into La Puebla (a translation which still does occur and which very much occurred during the last century) a total nonsense. It can only be Sa Pobla.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Santa Margalida came to be the female patron saint of Sa Pobla before Sa Pobla became Sa Pobla. Or rather, she was the patron saint of what was the original Sa Pobla, which wasn't where Sa Pobla is but was where Crestatx (Crestaig) now is, so over the other side of the motorway from Sa Pobla.
Santa Margalida was the patron of the sanctuary at Crestatx, a settlement of which there is evidence of there having been Roman occupation, which isn't all that surprising given the relative proximity of the Pollentia Roman town in what became Alcúdia and also of Bochoris, which is nowadays Puerto Pollensa. It is perhaps worth noting that, though Alcúdia and Palma are always cited as having been the two most significant Roman towns, Bochoris was the third most significant, and the settlement there left behind the Roman bridge in Pollensa town.
Various Roman artifacts have been discovered in the Crestatx area - ceramics, coins and so on - and so the origins of Sa Pobla can be said to be Roman. Indeed, the name Crestatx is said to come from the Latin "castra" for camp. But after this Roman period, as with Alcúdia and Pollensa or anywhere in Mallorca, little is really known about the time between the Romans being kicked out in the fifth century and the Muslim occupation starting at the beginning of the tenth century. The settlement in Crestatx at some point during this occupation also acquired the name Huyalfàs, which was later corrupted as Uyalfas or Vialfas. Huyalfàs was derived from the Arabic - "hnayar-al-fas" (or variously, huayar-alfar or huayar-alfhas) - meaning water of the meadow, a reference, one imagines, to Albufera.
During the Muslim epoch, this Crestatx settlement came under the jurisdiction of the district of Inkan, i.e. Inca, but after the conquest of Mallorca in 1229 by King Jaume I of Aragon, Huyalfàs was firstly documented in 1241 in the "Llibre Verd" (green book) of land and was eventually relocated to what now is Sa Pobla. In 1300, Jaume's son, Jaume II, decreed the establishment of the royal town of Sa Pobla de Huyalfàs. In fact, there were a number of "poblacions" (small towns or villages) created in Mallorca at that time, such as Artà and Manacor. These new towns were established on the basis that they were all equal in that they had a hundred residents, 500 acres of land and a further 1000 acres of scrubland. It would seem that Crestatx couldn't be developed in this way, which is why Huyalfàs moved.
Officially, the new town took the title of "vila reial" and was granted a charter as a "poblament" (or "pobla"), which basically means settlement and can quite easily be confused with "poble", which means town, village or people. In the new town, 32 establishments were permitted plus the building of a church, and it was this, the church, that brought Sant Antoni firmly into the Sa Pobla story.
It might be thought surprising that Sant Antoni isn't one of Sa Pobla's patron saints. The association of Sant Antoni is of course very strong and gives rise to the most important of the Sant Antoni celebrations in January each other. This association can be traced back to the original Catalan conquest. The tradition or cult of Sant Antoni was strong in Catalonia, and it was one that King Jaume I imported. On the one hand, it was a tradition that appealed to a superstition for the protection of animals, as Antoni was the patron saint of animals, but it was the cult that was to eventually spawn, thanks to legends of Antoni and demons and what have you, what there now is - the demons and the nights of fire.
The church that was built in the new town was, therefore, the church of Sant Antoni de Huyalfàs (or Uialfàs or Uyalfas) and it was finally established in 1357, this original being replaced over 300 years later in 1697.
So, this all explains something about how Sa Pobla and its saints came to be as they are, but there is a question about its name, the answer to which I don't have. Why was Huyalfàs (Uialfàs or whatever) dropped? It ceased to officially be part of the name centuries ago, during the fifteenth century in fact. Sa Pobla, the settlement, has been the name ever since, and the use of the definite article "sa" (which is Mallorquín rather than Catalan) makes a definitive statement for this most Mallorcan of towns and one with the history that it has and a history, moreover, which makes the "castellanisation" of the town's name into La Puebla (a translation which still does occur and which very much occurred during the last century) a total nonsense. It can only be Sa Pobla.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Friday, July 05, 2013
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
