Die Hard: The Traditional Pig Slaughter

Pacma is a political party, the "animalist" party against animal mistreatment. It's been around since 2003 and has failed to make any real impact. It has never had any deputies in Congress or senators, but its vote has steadily increased. In this year's general election it scooped 1.19% of the vote for Congress, up from 0.87% in December 2015 and the 0.42% of 2011.

If it remains at the margins of the Spanish political system, does the increased share of the vote represent a greater appeal or has it simply been a protest? Both perhaps. It will never assume a significant role because of its essentially single-issue nature, but it does capture at least a sense of greater awareness of animal mistreatment, while it has also been to the fore in pressing for tougher action by the courts. With the aid of the Balearic association of lawyers for animal rights, Pacma and animal-rights organisations secured the first ever custodial sentence for animal mistreatment in Spain. In October last year, a Palma court upheld an eight-month sentence for the owner of a horse called Sorky. The owner had bludgeoned the horse to death after it performed badly during a trotting race at the Manacor course.

Cases of mistreatment do now appear fairly regularly in the local media, and animal welfare has been pushed up the political agenda by the left. In Palma, as an example, the Més councillor Neus Truyol has animal welfare as one of her three main responsibilities. That party (Més) may have been jolted into greater proactivity on animal rights by a former member - Guillermo Amengual. He is the main spokesperson for the campaign Mallorca Sense Sang (Mallorca Without Blood), which has led the move to outlaw bullfighting. He left Més to join the Esquerra Unida (United Left), as it was the only party to have a formal animal-rights' section.

Amengual is also the spokesperson for AnimaNaturalis, and in a newspaper chat over six years ago, the first question he was asked referred to "matances". This is the traditional annual slaughter (that's what the word means) of pigs. His answer, promoting vegetarianism, was that the AnimaNaturalis group was against all forms of animal processing (from birth to death), regardless of cultural or religious reasons.

The cultural aspect of the matances is something with which Pacma is now taking issue. It has released a video in support of its claim that the pig slaughter is one of the most "anachronistic" examples of Spain and its disagreeable attitudes towards animals.

The "matança" is about as old as it comes in Christian Mallorca. It clearly wouldn't have been around - or one would assume not - during the Muslim occupation. But it certainly was around at the time, post-conquest, of Ramon Llull. In the early fourteenth century, he referred to the matances and to the start of the season of the slaughter. Various writers of more modern times, such as the Archduke Louis Salvador in the nineteenth century, spoke about this cultural tradition.

The pig, where livestock farmers were concerned, hadn't been particularly popular until more intensive cultivation of figs led to a pig boom in the nineteenth century: figs were an easy means of fattening pigs quickly. Prior to this, it had been behind goats and sheep. However, the pig was ubiquitous in a domestic sense. Families would have one, or more than one, which was destined for the autumn slaughter and transformation into various pig products, of which sobrassada is the best known.

The slaughter itself would be an occasion for some celebration. It could go on for several days, depending on the size of the immediate population and therefore the number of pigs. It was deeply rooted in local culture, so much so that George Sand - who found plenty to take exception to in Mallorca - complained that the Mallorcans took more care of pigs than they did people.

It is perhaps the pig's misfortune that it is versatile in terms of how it can be transformed in a culinary fashion. And it was the various possibilities that made it so popular. One pig could satisfy a family's needs for several months, if the products were made correctly, and in the case of sobrassada, the addition of the local paprika provided excellent preservative qualities.

The matances are nowadays looked upon with fondness by traditionalists, who note how they survived the swine fever of 1956 and how they have made a comeback following the migrations to the coast that occurred because of the sixties' tourism boom. But this is the traditionalist's view. Not everyone shares it, and despite town hall requirements regarding the slaughter - it has to be performed in abattoirs and under strict food safety conditions - Pacma insists that there are still slaughters by non-professionals which do not conform to established procedure.

Pacma is therefore demanding that legislation on animal welfare be rigorously applied. It would seem, if only from a food safety point of view, that it should be. There are other forces, though, the traditional ones, which consider the pig with reverence: adored and primed in order to stave off hunger. Some traditions die hard.

The Pepper That Almost Died Out

The story goes that in 1403 Martin I, at that time the count of Barcelona and king of Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca, Sardinia and Corsica but not of Sicily, sent a request to the head of the household of the Sicilian king. The request was for a number of meat products as well as cheeses. These meat products were charcuterie - sausages, if you like - and on the list were "sobressades".

This royal order forms part of a longstanding debate as to the origin of the Mallorcan "sobrassada" and the derivation of the word. The linguistic story is inevitably a long one; there is nothing that scholars of Mallorca's culture enjoy more than debating etymology. To cut this story short, scholars maintain that the word originally came from Occitan, the close relative of Catalan, and thus found its way to Sicily.

As to the actual product, this seems to have been firmly rooted in southern Italy. It is conceivable that there was such a product from Roman times; indeed, it's highly likely and was therefore part of the diet of Mallorca's Roman era. But at the time that Martin I was on the lookout for foods for the banqueting table, he placed the order not with his Mallorcan domain but with the one place he wasn't actually king of.

Martin's request appears to be one of the first times, if not the first time, that sobrassada is to be found in documents of the Aragonese crown. There were to be other mentions. In the following century, and so reinforcing the Italian connections, there was talk of the sobrasadas of Naples. In 1550, a year otherwise famed for the attack by Dragut and the Moorish pirates, "sobressada" was documented in Pollensa; the spelling has always tended to vary to a degree.

It is around this time, i.e. the mid-sixteenth century, that Mallorca was starting to come into its own where the making of the sausage was concerned. But it wasn't to be until the eighteenth century that it was spiced up and adopted a reddish hue. Paprika had really arrived.

In Campos over the past three days, they've been holding their "Matancer" market. The name refers to the slaughter of (usually) pigs. The season for this doesn't officially get under way until 11 November, the feast of Saint Martin (not to be confused with Martin I). But ahead of it, the good citizens of Campos and elsewhere have been able to acquire what they might require in the processing of products from the slaughter. And sobrassada is at the top of the list of products.

Meanwhile, in Felanitx they have their annual "pebre bord" fair, the pebre bord being the distinctive variety of paprika grown in Mallorca. It is a fair which complements the Campos market by promoting one of the key ingredients of sobrassada in a Mallorcan style.

Felanitx is one of the towns and villages of Mallorca to be particularly associated with the pepper, but gone are the days when mostly all houses would hang out their strings of peppers in order to let them dry in the sun and so not lose their preservative power. Also known as "tap de cortí", it isn't by any means only used in making sobrassada, but its preservative qualities are a reason (apart from being nice and spicy) for it being an ingredient; sobrassada can be good for months.

There was a time when the pepper was cultivated widely on the island. By the end of the nineteenth century, the cultivation reached a peak but it was to eventually dwindle mainly because of increasing imports. It was, therefore, in danger of dying out completely.

Its revival is relatively recent; in fact, very recent. A group of producers launched a campaign for its recovery in 2009. The regional government then petitioned the national agriculture and food ministry in 2011 for it to be included in the national registry of commercial varieties. This was finally agreed to two years ago, and so tap de cortí is now a protected name, but producers want to go a step further and get a European designation of origin mark for Pebre Bord Mallorquí.

Cultivation is unlikely to be on the scale it was by the end of the nineteenth century. There are nowadays only some thirteen hectares (around 32 acres) devoted to it on the island. Low this may be, but with increasing promotion of traditional food products from Mallorca, such as sobrassada, the production is assured and may well increase. A pepper that was once threatened with extinction is now flourishing.

The Slaughter Of The Pig

On 19 June 2009, the regional government's health ministry issued a decree related to the sanitary control of pigs destined to be consumed privately. It was, said some, the death of what Antoni Maria Alcover, the famed philologist of Manacor, had defined in the dictionary of Catalan dialects as "the act of killing, above all ... of most animals". This act, defined in the dictionary as being a feminine noun, was "matança". Objectors to the decree took exception to rules being laid down for a long-established tradition: the wintertime slaughter of the fattened pig.

If you care to look at Mallorcan town hall websites, you will find that there are rules for this slaughter. In 2009 not all town halls were complying because, so they said, they hadn't been informed of the decree. One town hall which was complying was Sineu's. Five years later, and as with all well and truly informed town halls in Mallorca, it instructs the local citizenry that a slaughtered pig has to be given a bill of health by a vet. The animal has to have a mandatory trichinoscopic examination to check there is no trichinella parasite, the so-called pork worm. Old habits were dying hard in 2009. They didn't have such examinations in our day; that was the kind of reaction. And maybe they didn't have trichinosis disease which, at its most extreme, is fatal; death can occur within ten days of eating infected meat.

The matança (plural matances) is traditionally a gathering of family and others to perform the slaughter of a pig which has been fattened since early spring and to then prepare the pig in all manner of ways. It is a tradition that goes back over the centuries. The pig's products could sustain a family for months, and these products were to include the sobrassada. It benefited from the preservative nature of the "paprika tap de cortí" and was to become, along with other types of charcuterie, a mainstay of traditional Mallorcan cuisine.

The matança is not nowadays widely practised. Or at least the reported number of matances which this year have been subject to veterinary examination would suggest this to be the case; just over 500 inspections have been carried out. Nevertheless, and as with so many other Mallorcan traditions, there is a custom to be honoured and to be perpetuated. Which is where the town of Sineu comes into the equation. Today is the Fira de Ses Matances de Sineu, and central to the fair is a demonstration of what to do with the pig once it has been slaughtered (in an abattoir). Not a single part of the pig goes to waste - every piece of meat, the blood, the offal, the organs, the trotters, the fat are processed. It might all sound a bit gruesome, but then this is how it once was. There was no place for squeamishness when sustenance was needed, and it didn't matter that the pig had become more or less a part of the family. It might be noted that once upon a time pigs were essentially domestic animals rather than animals for farming. The production of meat was concentrated more on lamb and goat before an explosion in the cultivation of fig trees in the nineteenth century gave rise to far greater levels of pig farming; the fig is very fattening.

Tradition decrees that the slaughter of the pig doesn't occur until 11 November (Saint Martin's Day) and that it is more likely to occur nearer to Christmas time and so provide dishes for the festive period. Though the pig is the animal most commonly associated with the matança, it doesn't have exclusive rights on the slaughter; turkeys, for example, are also fattened and go towards the making of those festive meals.

The matances fair in Sineu is a recent innovation. It started in 2003 as a theme to be appended to the Fair of Saint Thomas, he who was the doubting Thomas of biblical fame. His day, as in the anniversary of his death, isn't in fact until next Sunday. But what's a week when there's a fair to be held? The second Sunday of December is Thomas's day in Sineu, and as part of the fair today there will also be a contest for the largest pig. Mallorcan fairs love a how-big-is-something competition, and last year the winning pig (the regular pink variety) weighed in at 315 kilos. There is a separate contest for the largest black pig as well.

So, in Sineu today it is all about the pig. If you prefer not to watch the demonstration put on by the pork butchers, there are plenty of gastronomic treats to sample; mostly all of them of course of pig origin and with the sobrassada taking a starring role. On balance perhaps, an event that vegetarians might prefer to give a miss, but an event which, nonetheless, is a celebration of how Mallorca once was.