Ramon Gual, The Hero Of Valldemossa

In June 1535, the Holy Roman Emperor, Carlos V, aka Carlos I of Spain, came to Mallorca. He came and he wasn't alone. There were 40,000 soldiers as well on at least ninety different types of ship.

This military force was not for use in Mallorca. The Emperor decided to stop over. He wanted to visit the village that he had officially decreed to be the second city of Mallorca: the most loyal city of the Emperor. The honour had been bestowed twelve years earlier when the Emperor's forces had been on a military mission - the quashing of the Germanies uprising. Alcudia was that most loyal of cities. It was where the nobility had been able to take refuge. In October 1522 an imperial naval squadron had arrived in the bay of Pollensa. The uprising would be conclusively ended in July the following year. The Emperor wanted to show his thanks to Alcudia. He didn't stay long. He was on his way to Tunis, to liberate the city from the Ottoman admiral, Barbarossa.

The Emperor's interest in Mallorca was otherwise minimal. The island could have done with some of those troops having stayed around. Barbarossa died in 1546. He was succeeded as supreme commander of the Ottoman naval forces in the Mediterranean by Turgut Reis - Dragut, "the greatest pirate warrior of all time", it has been said.

We are very familiar with Dragut. How could we not be? Every August he reappears on the streets of Pollensa to re-enact what was a failed mission in 1550. Dragut is the best known of the Ottoman pirates, more so than Uchali, aka Occhiali, Oxiali, Uluj Ali, he of the Soller re-enactment.

The Mallorcan coast was under constant threat from the Ottomans by the mid-sixteenth century. The year after Dragut's failure in Pollensa, the Turks landed at Cap Pinar in Alcudia. While Joan Mas is remembered as the hero of Pollensa, it was Bartomeu Maura, the lieutenant in Alcudia, who was the victor the following year. He was helped by 150 men of Alcudia.

This episode in Alcudia, as with another one in 1558, has generally been forgotten. The same was the case with what happened on 1 October 1552. Four hundred years after this, there was a commemoration. It was an initiative of the town hall and of the painter Josep Coll Bardolet. The town hall in question was Valldemossa, and it marked the occasion by naming a street Ramon Gual. He was Valldemossa's Joan Mas, the captain who helped to eventually save the village.

The story is of a force of 36 men who faced 400 Turks, who had landed at the Cala d'en Claret. These invaders sacked the village. They killed Aina Creus, the grandmother of Catalina Thomàs, La Beata. The fact that the local people faced such apparently overwhelming opposition can make this story sound implausible, but they aren't as imbalanced as they were once reported. In 1755, the Glorias de Mallorca was published. This drew on the work of Vicente Mut, who was a military man but also an historian. He was in fact the chronicler of the Kingdom of Mallorca from 1641 to 1687. According to Mut, there were 500 "Moros" and just 28 men.

A later publication, the third volume of Historia general del reino de Mallorca (1841), elaborates on the previous. Ramon Gual by now had 35 men, and a reason why there were so few was because it was a Saturday and many had left to sell fruit (one guesses in Palma). The Moors were guided by a "renegade foreigner" named Pedro Valenciano, who had lived in Valldemossa for a number of years and knew all the lanes and ways even at night. The Moors entered the village. It was a curiosity that they didn't enter the Charterhouse. Otherwise, they went about sacking the place and rounded up 400 prisoners.

Gual was able to watch the Moors withdraw. Aware of their ships having moved to a new position and of guessing they would take a particular route, he "fired the hearts of his men", and there were by now 28, as the others had been dispersed to take up watch functions. Invoking the help of Sant Jordi (Saint George), they charged the Moors, took them by surprise, so that they started to flee in confusion. The men knew the rugged and difficult ways better than the Moors. Many were beheaded as they tried to get away.

There is more to it, but this gives something of an idea as to what supposedly happened on that day in 1552. And the events are now, like Pollensa and Soller, re-enacted. When introducing this simulation in 2014, it was decided that it should be on the first Saturday of October, just as the original was. So, the fiesta for the Moors and Christians is this coming Saturday. In addition to the battle, the programme has changed somewhat to as it was in 1952, when there were pipers, "globos grotescos" (bigheads of some type), a float parade, a Chopin concert and a verse contest between glosadors. Which just goes to show that current-day fiesta traditions, which struggled to be maintained for much of the Franco period, were observed.

Which Is The Prettiest Village Of Them All?

Which is the prettiest village in Mallorca? Common consent has it that it is Fornalutx. Nestled in the Tramuntana, the only unpretty aspect of this small place is what they do with bulls. But tormenting animals doesn't appear to enter the equation when the inspectors are out and about. These aren't animal-welfare inspectors, they are pretty village inspectors.

Rather like restaurants and chefs need to meet strict criteria for Michelin scrutineers, so a village must also come up to standards if it wishes to be among the prettiest - a pueblo that is among the "más bonito".

Los Pueblos más Bonitos de España is an association that was founded in 2011. It took as its model Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. Its aims are: to promote, disseminate and preserve cultural, natural and rural heritage as well as raise awareness of the values of this heritage while also promoting cultural tourism and areas with low levels of industrialisation.

To qualify for inclusion as más bonito a pueblo must have no more than 15,000 inhabitants. In the case of Mallorca, therefore, most "municipalities" could be eligible; most municipalities in Spain could be as well. Having 15,000 people makes a place pretty big when one considers that Fornalutx can muster only around 700. Indeed, having up to 15,000 people would suggest that village status is no longer feasible. There again, we're talking pueblos here; the definition, as in village, town or even hamlet terms can be difficult to pin down precisely.

But Fornalutx, population-wise, unquestionably has village status. What, however, makes it pretty and one of the latest pueblos to be added to the más bonito hall of fame? Experts from the association say that all criteria are met. There is notable architectural heritage. Urban (sic) cleaning is of a high order. There is preservation of building fronts, even of car parks. There are plants on the streets. Water is well managed (though maybe the drought might have something to say about this).

There must, one feels, be rather more to it than this lot. By these criteria, one would think that a whole host of Mallorcan villages (hamlets, whatever) could make the list. Perhaps they will, but then the más bonito list is pretty exclusive. If there were hundreds, thousands of pretty places, the list would no longer be pretty exclusive. As it is, Fornalutx can boast that it is not just the prettiest pueblo in Mallorca, it is the island's only pretty pueblo. Until its recent elevation to the ranks, Mallorca and the Balearics didn't feature on the list.

There are parts of Spain which, according to the list, are prettier than others. Of the 48 in all that are now on it, there is a significant bias in favour of two regions - Aragon and Castile and Leon. Which isn't to say that they don't deserve to be; just that having around half of the prettiest pueblos between them seems a little odd.

The judging committee is presumably immune to outside influences, such as those of social media and the internet. There are other más bonito-type listings. In the case of the website Toprural, it doesn't just have más bonito, it has "maravillosos": the seven wonders of Spain's rural environment. Among the candidates this year isn't Fornalutx but Valldemossa. Of the remaining nineteen against which Valldemossa is pitched are some pueblos familiar to the más bonito list. Valldemossa would appear to need to go some to force itself on to the seven wonders' podium. Much will probably depend on how coherent its social media campaign will be. Rather like Trip Advisor and its best-of lists, anything that is decided by social media and the internet needs to be treated with a touch of scepticism. Still, it does wonders for internet traffic if you invite users to vote for wonders.

Likewise, there is an entirely different más bonito list. The news website 20minutos has one. Sixty pueblos in all are up for voting grabs. There can be only one winner, and the front-runner at present is San Vicente de la Barquera in Cantabria. It has some 55,000 more votes than the first entrant for Mallorca. Which is? Fornalutx? No, it's Pollensa. Fornalutx doesn't get a look in. Is Valldemossa among the sixty? No, but Portocolom is. The only other place in Mallorca, it's way down among the also-rans.

The judges from the más bonito association are likely, one would feel, to be more objective than internet users who might vote for a place purely because they live there or have been there on holiday. The association's list also carries cachet. Fornalutx will take its place on the international tourist stage when it is honoured at Madrid's travel fair. So well done, Fornalutx. Just don't go complaining that there are too many tourists, now that the accolade has been bestowed.

* Photo of Fornalutx from Wikipedia.