I’ll Take You To Burn – Sant Antoni Fire Nights

The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that there have been mentions on the blog to the Sant Antoni and Sant Sebastià fiestas that are about to hit various towns: to hit with an incendiary force and with an explosion of flame and the nearest window blown out with heat.

Sant Antoni is hard-core Mallorca fiesta. Eschewed is the soft and smooth veneer of a sultry summer’s eve, one of tourist scantiness, scattily viewed through a vacated sangria jug. This is winter fiesta, one of rawness both in weather and portrayal. Wild winds and wild men racing with fire, before all becomes calm and the local cats and dogs are dragged in front of men of the cloth for some ritualistic benediction. This is not a steak barbecue, but a dish of revulsion – an eel wrapped in spinach and doused with paprika. Or salami strapped into some bread and washed away with primitive wine.

Sant Antoni is hair-suit fiesta, one played out against the bitter breeze that cuts in from the exposure of the grey and wetlands of winter Albufera, one of herds of the island populace corralled into town centres by a police newly alert to an alien force of crowd safety, a police that then hovers on roundabouts, ready to test revellers for the impact of that primitive wine.

Sant Antoni is antiquity fiesta, one of the peculiar drone and rhythm of the ximbomba, a co-opted Mallorcan instrument, one taken from an Arabic heritage; one of the glosadors, the hierbas or mesclat-sinking singers of frightful, improvised caterwauling. Sant Antoni, in its heartland of Sa Pobla and Muro, is as old as churches of the towns: it is the towns. Sa Pobla, and the original oratory of Crestatx, are of the same vintage as the assumption of Sant Antoni within their midsts.

Sant Antoni is temptation and rejection of the devil, his modern-day cohorts being the men of fire, dressed as demons who run with flames. It is fiesta that, in the very absence of tourists in January, is a Mallorca party. There is a sense with all Mallorcan fiestas that, as a foreigner, one is somehow gate-crashing someone else’s party, invading an alternative culture. But it is this – the different culture – that Sant Antoni is really all about. This is full-on Mallorcan fiesta. It may be a mistake, it may be missing a trick to not seek a wider international audience, but if one ever really wanted to understand the meaning of the Mallorcan fiesta, then Sant Antoni is it, and Sa Pobla and Muro do it better than most.

Killing Them Softly

Further to yesterday. There is some disquiet that there was not a cohesive message coming from the various political parties in Muro against the Costas demolition plan. Only the Unió Mallorquina got involved, something for which it was criticised as it appeared to make Ses Casetes the party’s own issue. Maybe that’s why others stayed away. Something else that came out was that, while Ses Casetes is threatened by the definition as to what is public domain or land, a hotel next to the area is excluded. One presumes that this means the Hotel Platja Daurada, a hotel operated by the EIX group, which so happens to have its offices next to the hotel.

 

Even if this not the right hotel – and there is no other hotel that joins onto Ses Casetes – it is hard not to get the impression that maybe Ses Casetes is something of a soft target. For the very reasons that it is not a hotel and is not an urbanisation of expensive real estate or of the fabulously wealthy, perhaps it is a convenient fall-guy in the Costas wish to do some cleaning up of public land along the shorelines of Mallorca. Killing the small houses softly. 

 

Yet for all this, if one takes a stroll around Ses Casetes, and the photo** from yesterday does give an impression of the place – unmade tracks as roads for instance – then one does wonder as to the legitimacy of the development. It does seem hugely anachronistic, which is of course part of the charm. That it has not been developed in terms, say, of roads, does not mean that it does not have legitimacy, but there is also something that is not quite right there. The original or oldest small houses around the parking area and just off are one thing, but some tracks go into the forest, and next to some tracks are houses that are not like the small houses. They are in fact new; certainly by comparison. 

 

** To be found on the main blog site – http://www.alcudiapollensa.blogspot.com.

 

 

The land itself was ceded to the town many years ago. A question may well be what that land actually was. Some of the buildings would certainly appear to be in possible conflict with what is meant to be the wider nature park of Albufera. 

 

Whatever the real legal situation, the people of Ses Casetes deserve support. One thing that came across vividly during the demonstration was the strength of the community that is Ses Casetes, of the vast age ranges that tell of the history of ownership and of the generations who have summered (and also wintered at holiday times) in the small houses. It is definitely a place worth preserving.

 

 

Some hours after the Muro demo, there was the other one – in Sa Pobla. This was a gathering of “demons” in a defiant act of fire-running against the European directive that would limit the participation of children and general interactivity during fire-runs at Mallorcan fiestas. 3,000 people are estimated to have attended. Further to what I said on 23 October (“Feel The Fire”) when I wondered about the safety of fire-runs and of bonfires, I was told by Kevin at JKs about how the Santander bank in Puerto Pollensa nearly once copped for it, while John MacLean has sent an email specifically about fires in Sa Pobla during Sant Antoni. I quote: “We were absolutely gobsmacked to see a roaring fire, surrounded by the usual crowd of partygoers, slap bang on the forecourt of the Repsol filling station”. (Yep, that’s right, filling station as in petrol station.) “It could not have been more than ten feet from the pumps. At that point, I realised that the Mallorcans and the ‘poblers’ (as the folk of Sa Pobla are called) are not only a different breed but totally off their heads. Needless to say, we didn’t hang about!”

 

And they’re complaining about a bit of European health and safety that might stop kids setting fire to themselves during fire-runs. Tradition is one thing, but madness is another.

Feel The Fire

Another day, another demo. Actually, the same day as the demo against the demolition of Ses Casetes, just a different town – Sa Pobla – and a different matter of concern. And this is? Fire. Fire and fire-runs. One of the most traditional aspects of the Mallorcan fiesta is threatened (allegedly) by the European Union and its directive 2007/23/EC which comes into force at the start of next year – just in time, of course, before one of the biggest “fire” occasions in Mallorca, the Sant Antoni devils night of 16 January. And which town has the biggest of these occasions? Sa Pobla of course.

 

I have tried to read this directive. Have you ever tried reading European directives? As a cure to insomnia, they probably have some merit. Anyway, this one is all about fireworks and other pyrotechnics. At its heart is the free movement of pyrotechnic articles which, being European legislation, is anything but. Possibly; I did rather get lost at that point. But also being European legislation, it would not be doing its job if it didn’t draw up volumes of law in respect of health and safety. It is this aspect, fundamentally, that could change the fire-run tradition. One says could. I actually doubt it.

 

Much as traditions should be preserved, I have long wondered about the whole fire-run and bonfire-lighting malarkey in Mallorca. In towns such as Puerto Pollensa, bonfires are lit in close proximity to houses and bars. There may not have been major conflagrations, but it’s not hard to imagine that the fires might get out of hand. Then there are the fire-runs themselves. Advice is always issued as to the wearing of the right clothing and the like, but once again you do wonder. 

 

In the directive, there is this thing about the observance of “festivities” in member states. It has not been drafted without acknowledgement of these traditions or indeed permissions issued by member-state governments. The fire-run itself does not appear to be endangered, but there are rules being set out about the handling of fire and fireworks and the ages of those doing so.

 

In May, the fire-run tradition was taken to the streets of Manchester as part of the attempt to drum up Mancunian business for the beaches of Mallorca. I’m sure that Manchester was impressed. Or maybe it wasn’t. But it should have been. The fire-run is a spectacle. It should be left to continue. Also earlier this year, a delegation of mayors and others trotted off to Brussels to lobby against the directive and to also ask for more European money. There was some talk of legal action if the directive did actually impinge on the fire-run to the extent of it being outlawed. This, the outlawing, I cannot see happening. Apart from anything else, who – locally – would enforce the ruling? And, as I point out, there is this mention in the directive of observing local traditions.

 

The Sa Pobla demo may be a bit of an over-reaction. There seems to be an admission that the definitive ruling on the fire-run is missing, which maybe how Brussels wants it. Thataway, it can let the local traditions carry on while at the same time insisting that there is adequate safety, to which the locals would respond that there already is. But where kids of certain ages are concerned, the fact that the directive might lead them to handling nothing more incendiary than a sparkler may actually be sensible. 

 

Don’t let’s get too worked up, though. The fire-runs will continue. And so will the devils.

Sick And Tired

They’re gone. The scratch-cardists. The office in Puerto Alcúdia has closed. No-one will be lamenting the loss. All that remains for the moment is the sign – To Holiday and Real Liberty, sometimes known as right liberty. 

 

There has been a fair old turnover of the street sellers this season. More seem to have been taken on in an attempt to generate ever more business. Maybe it hasn’t worked. Maybe tourists are more resistant. Maybe those taken on did not like what they were doing. Maybe there were too many and they were not making their commissions. If there is any sympathy, it is for those who took up this employment in the hope of making some summer dosh. They may have antagonised a lot of people, but they were only the frontline operators for the backroom selling. I am told that there has been a fair amount of dashing around by people looking for transfers and flights out.

 

It was quite an impressive set-up. The offices were large. A kiddies area, the sales area, the separate offices, the plaques displaying some major names, such as hotel chains, the staff with ties. One looked familiar. There is a youtube knocking around of an exposé by the BBC in the Canaries. The salesman shown by the hidden camera looked similar to one from the Alcúdia office.

 

The website, for those who succumb to the sales pitch, is still up. It says that To Holiday is operated by Elite Holidays Royal Travel in the Canaries. The site is visually the same to that of Travelsafe, a company that the forums have been less than complimentary about. The revealing thread on the Holiday Watchdog site that has embraced To Holiday also has the names of Real Liberty and Elite in its title; its content also embraces an outfit known as Carpe Diem, which appears to be the company higher up the “organisation” above Elite.

 

The local police have, apparently, been issuing fines. Maybe they – the fines – have mounted up. Maybe business has just dried up. Maybe the pressure had been growing. Whatever. The office is closed. The police, who had grown “sick and tired” of the whole issue (as said to me,) may, from 2010, have more clout if the issue arises again. There is due to be a change in European law to deal with holiday clubs as from next year. Timeshare selling had been outlawed, but the holiday club was not. This appears to be set to change. The problem of the scratch-cardists in Alcúdia may now be over. We’ll see. 

 

 

Town hall troubles

Two town hall things lurking in “The Diario”. Pollensa town hall, which may or may not have yet set its budgets for this year, is one of a group of town hall administrations seeking credit – to the tune of slightly less than one million euros. The deficit that the town hall is running is partially due to an historic shortfall dating back to 2005. According to the head of finance, there is now also an issue in respect of unpaid taxes from bars and restaurants with terraces. And in Sa Pobla, the town hall, which had said that it would be pursuing a strategy of low- or no-cost acts in order to keep its fiesta programme intact, has more or less “exhausted” its budget of just under 350,000 euros, claims the opposition Partido Popular. 

Back Home

“Home-made. 100%.”

I was parked by the Dakota Tex-Mex van. Home-made and 100% it said. I thought about asking the bloke who got out of the van about it; not that it would have got me very far. Which home do you suppose it’s being made in? Are there kitchens in houses across Alcudia, Playa de Muro and Puerto Pollensa pumping out burgers and so on? No, I guess not. But were there to be, then they might well all be hooked up to a central database system. On a site operated by a software company called Cuiner is a notice about the migration of Grupo Boulevard’s applications to the Cuiner Central Base (Boulevard operates the Dakotas and Café 1919, among other things), to allow for analyses of information from the establishments. Technology and home-made; the two don’t really stand together somehow.

I only know about this application because I did a quick google. I wanted to know if maybe there was some substance to the “since 1965” that is also to be seen on the van and at the restaurants. Maybe there was or is some brand going back till then. Not that I found one. Or perhaps I should have gone past page four. Somewhere lurking in the Badlands may well be a Dakota Tex-Mex that is some 40-odd years old. But even were there to be, why I wonder would it be a Dakota Tex-Mex? Dakota is neither Tex nor Mex; indeed, the Dakotas are quite some way north of both Texas and Mexico. Mind you, the name “Dakota” has a certain cowboyish feel to it, but then again so do El Paso and Rio Grande, and they would be more Tex and Mex.

This home-made thing is not a promotional technique reserved to the Dakotas. Many places claim it. The word has, in a sense, acquired a new meaning. Strictly, one should say “made like in the home”, but that would never do in terms of the marketing lexicon, rather like “British-style” bar wouldn’t do either, even if it would be more accurate in many cases. But actually in the home? No.

It is, though, precisely the sophistication of advanced software that helps to get the goat of the radical Luddite foodist tendency; one that would rather be eating the goat, preferably to the accompaniment of a bunch of old Mallorcans shouting at each other. Not for them the branding of a Dakota or the debatable 100 per-cent-ness of made in the home. Not for them the professionalism of business success. This sits uneasily with a mythical Mallorca of Francoist backwardness. But let it not be forgotten that the Generalisimo’s urgent need for foreign currency and for building something resembling an economy was what opened the floodgates to all that has followed, and that includes businesses which offer restaurants that might just chime with a contemporary tourist. That “since 1965”? Maybe it refers to when it all started.

Spud u like in Sa Pobla
Rather more rural in culinary terms, Sa Pobla will this Saturday be putting on its first gastronomy event dedicated to the potato, a staple not only of the local diet but also the local agriculture. Perhaps it was the success of last year’s potato-themed autumn fair (21 November: Potato Head) that inspired this gastronomic extravaganza. Whatever. But if you want, there will be 23 restaurants participating in serving up potato dishes from as little as one euro. Could it be, therefore, that you can get a plate of chips? Tell you what, throw in a burger or some tex-mex, and that will do nicely. But that would never do.

By The Old Canal

Further to yesterday’s piece regarding the “Acampallengua”, there was a bit of controversy surrounding the Sa Pobla event. The vice-president of the Obra Cultural Balear, the organisation that promotes the Catalan language and culture, was detained for a couple of hours by the Guardia on the Sunday morning whilst the night party was in full swing. Quite why is unclear, though the Guardia suggest that there may have been some sort of “disobedience”. The president of the organisation dubbed it an “absurd provocation”. (Quotes in translation from the report in “The Diario”.)

The canals and bridges of Puerto Alcúdia have sometimes been subjected to criticism by tourists. The bridges themselves are in need of upgrading, something everyone pretty much accepts, and now the Costas authority, which is responsible for the canals, the lakes and the bridges, has presented a plan costing close on 5 million euros to upgrade the walkways and the canals. The original project that formed the lakes and canals from Albufera was intended to create a “little Venice”, and the further development will require some expropriation, for example, from Bellevue. The creation of new walkways and possibly also bridges for the Lago Esperanza (the big lake) was talked about well over a year ago when a plan was also put forward for the lake to become a canoeing centre. While an upgrade in appearance and in facilities is to be welcomed, the thing that may remain a point of concern is the cleanliness of the canals. The odd plastic bottle here or there is almost to be expected, but when whole rubbish bins get deposited it means that someone needs to be doing the rounds rather more regularly than they seem to. One hopes that they also have a plan to keep them up to standard and also to keep the fountains going, all year if necessary, in order to create better water circulation. The other aspect of both the lakes and the canals that really should be addressed, but probably won’t be, is the mosquito population. And with regard to mosquitoes, they seem to be bigger and more abundant than ever this spring.

Coming back to all-inclusives and tour operators etc., I’m grateful to Anne Marie for pointing out the some time erroneous information that tour-operator reps give out. She cites the example of one rep who explained to a coach load that the “old town of Alcúdia and its walls had been built by the Romans in the 11th century”. Apart from the fact that the Roman Empire had collapsed several centuries previously, by the 11th century Alcúdia was under Islamic control, and it was from Arabic that the town’s name was derived.

Not all reps are useless. There are some experienced reps who are extremely knowledegable and would never have made such a mistake, but unfortunately too many are ill-informed or maybe just take no notice of what information they are provided with. Whatever. Many tourists may not be interested in local culture and history, but the tour operators and their personnel still have a duty, or should have, to present the area correctly.

Art Of Noise

5am. There’s a bass sound coming from somewhere. Is it from a car in the street? No, sounds too far away. Onto the upper terrace, and it is a little clearer; not loud but discernible. It’s coming from across Albufera. Sa Pobla. It’s travelling some eight kilometres or so; it’s coming from the party for the “Acampallengua”. 5am. Hopefully, no-one in Sa Pobla was desperate for a good night’s sleep; they wouldn’t have had one.

And what is this “Acampallengua”? Literally it means camp language. It’s pretty accurate. This is an annual occasion that moves around the island. It is a celebration of Catalan, and particularly popular with the youth; hence the party and the sports that had been arranged during the day. The camping part is that they pitch up and pitch tents and then head off to the sports, the night party, the fire run, the arts workshops, the giants and the pipers and the worthy speeches by politicos and the head of Obra Cultural Balear, the Catalan promotional organisation – “we will not make a step backwards in the struggle for our language”, says he (as quoted in translation from “The Diario”).

On the face of it, this event seems fair enough, a bit of camping out, a bit of football and a bit of techno. Yet I can’t help feeling there is something slightly sinister about the politicisation of the event and therefore of the language. Statements such as that by the head of the Obra makes this pretty clear, and in his audience are teenagers who are being made more aware of their language (which is fair enough) but also potentially being radicalised (which may not be fair enough). Whatever. It’s not my argument.

More noise. The tourism season cranking up and the sounds of entertainment are wafting across the resorts; no, wafting is way too weak, make that reverberating. By no means for the first time, there are a number of mutterings about the loudness of the Bellevue show garden sound system. I’m told that it is louder than last year. Every word can be heard clearly as far away as Magic and probably further. “Do you like The Beatles? Scream and shout … ” And so they do, and then once the show has finished at the midnight deadline they continue for some more minutes, demanding more and shouting some more.

This was a theme last year, as it will probably be a theme next year and the year after. Whether the sound system is excessive is not for me to say, but there is an ongoing difficulty in reconciling the noise of holiday and the sleeping and peace requirements of residents and probably also some holidaymakers. Were this a “problem” only occasionally, it might not all be so annoying to some, but it is every night. Not sure how you resolve it, especially when the wind is in the right (or perhaps that’s the wrong) direction.