When, do you imagine, will the nationalist (Mallorcan) left in Palma present the motion for a decree to change the name of Plaça Espanya? There wouldn't be anything so mad as altering it officially to Plaza España (which officially it used to be), for clear reasons of politico-linguistic correctness, or Anglicising it as Spain Square (which would be utterly ridiculous). Rather, there would be an entirely different name. Anyone care to offer some alternatives? Perhaps there should be a referendum, otherwise known in Palma-land as a citizens' consultation.
One possibility might be Plaça Més in recognition of all things Mallorcan nationalist. Or how about pre-empting the elevation of the mayor-in-waiting to the rank of mayor next year? Rename it Plaça Antoni Noguera, the deputy mayor who models cities, or one in particular. While they're at it, just rename Palma, but for God's sake leave off the "de Mallorca": Antoni Noguera, the new capital of Mallorca, named in his own image.
Why might they even consider a renaming of the square? The clue, quite clearly, is in the current name. Espanya (aka España): Spain, a concept of nationalism at variance with the one promoted by Més. Think they might not? Well think again. The Més brethren in Sencelles have succeeded in getting the town's Spain square converted to, erm, the Town square, Plaça de la Vila.
Sencelles isn't of course Palma. It is a rural backwater known principally for its wine and for the youth of the municipality haring around the streets on old Mobylettes while being hosed down with water (drought, what drought?) and then rolling two giant bales of hay into the square (Espanya or otherwise) before proceeding to throw the hay at each other. But notwithstanding its comparative inconsequence in the scheme of Mallorcan things (everywhere is inconsequential compared with Palma), Sencelles may act as the spur for Palma to follow the lead of somewhere in the sticks rather than presuming that it must always lead others.
For Palma, for Més and for its republican tendencies, there is an additional justification. Més in Sencelles weren't simply objecting to Spain being the name of the square, there was also the fact that it was "Francoist denomination". And in this regard, Més were absolutely correct. The Spain name was applied following the Civil War, so the renaming is a case of going back to how things were. Few people actually call it Plaça Espanya in any event.
A similar situation applies to Palma's Plaça Espanya. Once upon a time, certainly from the seventeenth century, an area was known as the Plaça de la Porta Pintada in reference to the gate in the mediaeval walls through which it is said that King Jaume I entered in his conquest of 1229. The square was for a time also known as Joanot Colom. He was one of the leaders of the sixteenth-century Germanies uprising that was eventually put down by Carlos V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Colom was beheaded, drawn and quartered, and Porta Pintada was one of the locations for his remains to be put on show. This name endured for a couple of decades before it became Eusebi Estada, who was the chap mainly responsible for building Mallorca's railway. A further couple of decades on, and along came Franco.
In 1990, the Castellano Plaza España was officially dropped in favour of the Catalan. Around the same time, the name Plaça de la Porta Pintada was restored, but it refers only to a part by Olms street.
Going back in time, the historical legacy of the smaller square might suggest that the whole of Plaça Espanya should revert to its seventeenth-century name. Moreover, and apart from direct nationalist sentiments, there is also the fact of the statue of Jaume I and so the link to the days of the conquest and the tale of the Porta Pintada. However, given a desire for historical accuracy, Porta Pintada cannot claim to be the whole square, as it didn't used to occupy the area it now does.
Might there be a change of name? In Sencelles it probably doesn't cause too many issues, but in Palma it would do. Plaça Espanya is very well known and referenced. But as has been seen with the Feixina monument and the intention to demolish it, the current town hall is not averse to seeking to eliminate Francoist symbolism.
There are of course plenty of other Spain squares knocking around. Inca has one, for instance. As it also has a calle Héroes del Baleares, a reference to the same circumstances surrounding the monument. Més have been calling for it to be done away with for years. The street has another name, La Balanguera (the Mallorcan hymn), but the very fact that there are two names creates confusion.
Change the name of Plaça Espanya? Well maybe, but the confusion would be immense.
Showing posts with label Squares. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Squares. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 09, 2016
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Stories Of The Squares: "Café de Plaça"
Plaça. Plaza. Square. Anyone fancy having a guess as to how many squares there are in Mallorca? A thousand? Ten thousand? More? I've no idea and I'm certainly not about to try and count them, but even were I to, the task would be made more difficult by what constitutes a square. It should be obvious - things on all four sides, as a general guideline - but there are squares that don't conform to this model: they are just parts, bits of something else, a promenade or a street which, for unknown reasons, acquire a plaça in their names.
The square is the heart of the village, but at times it's hard to be sure which square is most at heart. A Plaça Major should be a clue. Or a Plaça de l'Ajuntament perhaps, the square in front of the town hall. In some places, they could have either name. Sa Pobla, for instance. Its Major is looked across from the Ajuntament, and from the Major one can look to the first floor and observe the mayor on the phone. Squares, town halls, mayors - essences of Mallorcan life.
There are squares in some towns or villages which have attained such square-like status that they no longer both referring to it by name. It is just the square. Sa Plaça. Sineu is probably a good example.
The squares have their stories to tell, the ones that exist in some of the names. Some stories are simple and obvious. Mercat, the market. Vila, the town. Others require explanation. Puerto Pollensa has its market/church square, but the name is actually Plaça Miquel Capllonch, a composer and pianist who was born in Pollensa. Lloret has Jaume I, the conquering king of the thirteenth century. Petra has its Ramon Llull and its Fray Juniper Serra, tributes to two of the greats of Mallorca's history, one of whom, Serra, was born in Petra.
Integral to the stories of the squares are the bars and cafes. The social lives of the years have been played out, related and discussed and been abstractly engrained into their walls by the coffee, wine and cigarettes of reminiscence. Their stories are those of the oral tradition, the hand-me-down, word-of-mouth transmission of the collective memory. Some bars become iconic, enduring; some change, modernise. But whatever happens to the bar, the square remains unaltered, save for paving, for new town hall street furniture, for renewed lights.
Alcúdia has its squares but it is a town that has more than just the conveying of stories over tables and on terraces. It has a story, a written one and one that has been dramatised. The bar, the cafe, the square combine. In 1965, Alexandre Cuéllar put them together. He wrote the "records" of the "Café de Plaça", loosely based on a cafe in the Plaça Constitució - Constitution Square.
Cuéllar was actually born in Catalonia, but he came to Mallorca and was, from 1943 to 1959, the secretary at Sa Pobla's town hall. He then returned to Olot in the Gerona province and worked at its town hall until he retired in 1979. But he had retained his links with Mallorca and was to strengthen them on his retirement. He had a summer residence in Barcares, a hamlet of enchantment on Alcúdia's Pollensa bay extremity.
It was while he was summering in Alcúdia that he would go to the square. He was, as he said in a 1996 interview (he died in 2006 at the age of 92), suffering a great nostalgia for Mallorca back in Olot. He felt separated from the island and from the people. Hence, he wrote his finest work - "Café de Plaça". The stories in the book, or the records as they are referred to, were, he was to admit, a reflection of an idyll, of a passing from a former time to a modern one, with the regret that came with it. In 1965 tourism was changing everything, even though the square remained as it had been and the cafe was still unaffected.
Cuéllar's book can be misunderstood. A key theme of it was what he called "blessed laziness". It can be taken as a criticism, but mostly everyone at the time he wrote it (and nowadays also) fully understood his point. The laziness was part of life, as was the contrariness that the stories identify. They were stories that accurately portrayed the almost total stillness of Mallorcan village existence. Nothing much happened. Everyone would congregate at the cafe and when there was actually work to be done, a good excuse would be found to have lunch instead.
The dramatisation is the final scene of the five-part Via Fora production which takes place around Alcúdia's walls (the next one is on 27 August). It is of course all in Catalan, but the high farce of the laziness is easy to appreciate. It is a performance of a story of one cafe, in one square, in one village at one time in the past: fifty years ago. It could have been written about any of the ... . How many squares do you reckon there are?
The square is the heart of the village, but at times it's hard to be sure which square is most at heart. A Plaça Major should be a clue. Or a Plaça de l'Ajuntament perhaps, the square in front of the town hall. In some places, they could have either name. Sa Pobla, for instance. Its Major is looked across from the Ajuntament, and from the Major one can look to the first floor and observe the mayor on the phone. Squares, town halls, mayors - essences of Mallorcan life.
There are squares in some towns or villages which have attained such square-like status that they no longer both referring to it by name. It is just the square. Sa Plaça. Sineu is probably a good example.
The squares have their stories to tell, the ones that exist in some of the names. Some stories are simple and obvious. Mercat, the market. Vila, the town. Others require explanation. Puerto Pollensa has its market/church square, but the name is actually Plaça Miquel Capllonch, a composer and pianist who was born in Pollensa. Lloret has Jaume I, the conquering king of the thirteenth century. Petra has its Ramon Llull and its Fray Juniper Serra, tributes to two of the greats of Mallorca's history, one of whom, Serra, was born in Petra.
Integral to the stories of the squares are the bars and cafes. The social lives of the years have been played out, related and discussed and been abstractly engrained into their walls by the coffee, wine and cigarettes of reminiscence. Their stories are those of the oral tradition, the hand-me-down, word-of-mouth transmission of the collective memory. Some bars become iconic, enduring; some change, modernise. But whatever happens to the bar, the square remains unaltered, save for paving, for new town hall street furniture, for renewed lights.
Alcúdia has its squares but it is a town that has more than just the conveying of stories over tables and on terraces. It has a story, a written one and one that has been dramatised. The bar, the cafe, the square combine. In 1965, Alexandre Cuéllar put them together. He wrote the "records" of the "Café de Plaça", loosely based on a cafe in the Plaça Constitució - Constitution Square.
Cuéllar was actually born in Catalonia, but he came to Mallorca and was, from 1943 to 1959, the secretary at Sa Pobla's town hall. He then returned to Olot in the Gerona province and worked at its town hall until he retired in 1979. But he had retained his links with Mallorca and was to strengthen them on his retirement. He had a summer residence in Barcares, a hamlet of enchantment on Alcúdia's Pollensa bay extremity.
It was while he was summering in Alcúdia that he would go to the square. He was, as he said in a 1996 interview (he died in 2006 at the age of 92), suffering a great nostalgia for Mallorca back in Olot. He felt separated from the island and from the people. Hence, he wrote his finest work - "Café de Plaça". The stories in the book, or the records as they are referred to, were, he was to admit, a reflection of an idyll, of a passing from a former time to a modern one, with the regret that came with it. In 1965 tourism was changing everything, even though the square remained as it had been and the cafe was still unaffected.
Cuéllar's book can be misunderstood. A key theme of it was what he called "blessed laziness". It can be taken as a criticism, but mostly everyone at the time he wrote it (and nowadays also) fully understood his point. The laziness was part of life, as was the contrariness that the stories identify. They were stories that accurately portrayed the almost total stillness of Mallorcan village existence. Nothing much happened. Everyone would congregate at the cafe and when there was actually work to be done, a good excuse would be found to have lunch instead.
The dramatisation is the final scene of the five-part Via Fora production which takes place around Alcúdia's walls (the next one is on 27 August). It is of course all in Catalan, but the high farce of the laziness is easy to appreciate. It is a performance of a story of one cafe, in one square, in one village at one time in the past: fifty years ago. It could have been written about any of the ... . How many squares do you reckon there are?
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