The Tradition Industry

There was this flyer in the letter-box. “Traditional Mallorcan cuisine.” The words were in Spanish. You might think that advertising traditional Mallorcan cuisine should demand that the blurb is in Catalan and not in Spanish, but maybe the restaurant is owned by a staunch supporter of the Partido Popular. Anyway, let’s not go there again.

The flyer was less a promotion for the restaurant and more one for a take-away service. “We will cook for you and bring our specialities to your home.” Which is sort of what you expect with a take-away service, but perhaps these things have to be spelt out, as traditional Mallorcan cuisine being ferried around in cardboard containers covered with aluminium on the back of a scooter (or however it is transported) doesn’t sound all that traditional. Contemporary meets the traditional, and it comes on a Honda 125.

Take-away is really pizzas, beef chow mein and tikka masala. Pork wrapped in cabbage? It doesn’t quite have the take-away ring about it. Traditional cuisine demands traditional modes of eating, as in sitting down in a restaurant. But there again, what is traditional?

This is a question I have been grappling with. Traditional – Mallorcan traditional – is referred to that often that is hard to know what is a tradition and what isn’t. The word is interchangeable with “typical”. Restaurants do typical/traditional cuisine, troupes perform typical/traditional dance and music, fiestas are typical/traditional. In the case of La Beata in Santa Margalida, this is the most typical of the lot – or so they always say. Girly saint rebuffs the attentions and temptations of the devil, good conquers evil and a whole tradition spawns demons with fire crackers, beasty masks and virgins of the parish parading in white.

The irony of tradition in a Mallorcan style is that it has created something that is distinctly of today – the tradition industry. There is marketing gold to be alchemised from a dry-stone wall, silver to be sold from the singing of a Sibil·la, bronze from coins clattering in the tills of the most ancient of the island’s traditions, the Talayotic.

The blurring of the lines between modernity and antiquity invites a question as to the degree to which tradition is forced and with the express purpose of creating a marketing benefit from the historical. The very promotion of tradition, with its narrative captured in the word itself and in the words typical or authentic, is sloganising. The words themselves are marketing tools, directed at both the native and the visiting markets.

The constant reinforcement of tradition for domestic consumption reflects a society still uneasy with modernity. Traditional Mallorcan society, by which one means that before the tourism industrial revolution of the sixties and one that was far more wedded to the land than it is now, still resides in the collective memory. This is unlike Britain, for example, where there is a general lack of tradition and an accommodation with its absence that doesn’t require an industry with its marketing plans to force it onto the populace or the tourist.

Of course, there are organisations such as English Heritage which maintain a connection with the past, but the promotion of English and British tradition and culture doesn’t have a sense of desperation; that of demanding that the past is held onto.

A key difference, though, between what occurs in long-industrialised countries and an island such as Mallorca where traditional society can be actively remembered lies in the capacity for a tradition industry to flourish. It could never have happened in Britain, for instance, because the wherewithal for such an industry simply didn’t exist. And by the time the wherewithal was discovered, it was far too late. Contemporary Mallorca, on the other hand, has that wherewithal, because the invention and development of marketing, and hence the tradition industry, pretty much coincided with the island’s industrial revolution.

Mallorca’s traditions aren’t invented, thanks to the temporal proximity to when traditional society started its decline, but they are an invention of the marketer who flogs them to a tourist market which has forgotten its own traditions.

Tradition is good. That’s the message, even if what is described as traditional isn’t necessarily exceptional. So it is with much traditional Mallorcan cuisine. Yea, it’s ok, but then so are fish and chips. They’re traditional, but they don’t come with a label attached that demands that they are considered thus. And the constant labelling is the constant reinforcement of a marketing message.

The flyer in the letter-box was selling. But it was also selling, in its curiously contemporary take-away way, that is on behalf of one of Mallorca’s strongest industries, its tradition industry.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

And Your Bra And Panties: Fiesta traditions

Cut along to your local fiesta and the last thing you might expect is to be presented with a group of “lads” proudly waving their prosthetic erections around. Depends what type of fiesta you go to though, I suppose. If traditional Mallorcan, then the only big knobs would normally be the local dignitaries as they make their entrances for the fiesta climax. But then how many years count as traditional? In Bunyola, there is a modern fiesta tradition. Come in your underwear, as in attend in your smalls, unless you’re the boys with a woody strap-on and you invite the double entendre.

For six years, the Saint Matt fiesta in the town has featured a parade of “ropa interior” – that’s bras and pants to you and me. The flaunting of the nearly nude is lubricated by free beer. Bread and circuses. It’s an old trick, one I learnt at university: anaethetise the college population with regular and copious, gratis Boddies and Thwaites and they’ll be bound to return you at the next elections. Give ’em enough and they’ll do anything, like the lads during Bunyola’s Friday parade or the lasses concealing their modesty with multi-coloured bouncy baubles.

This is a splendid new tradition. Not for the fact of bare flesh – you can cop an eyeful enough of that on your nearest beach – but because it is not the same. Not the same as all the other fiestas. Want to know what’s going to be happening at this year’s fiesta? Easy. Look at last year’s programme, or the one from the year before. All you need do is change the dates, and with some fiestas you don’t even need to do that. Alternatively you can simply look at the fiesta schedule from a different town: pipers a-piping; giants a-dancing; balls-de-botting. Yep, they’ll all be there.

There is much to be said for continuity and for the headlining fiesta events that drag in the crowds – be they Moors and Christians having a bundle, the Beata procession of Santa Margalida or the grape fight of Binissalem’s Vermar. The year-on-year familiarity of the fiestas can be reassuring in the same way as it is if you go to a different type of party and find that you know everyone. The only trouble is that you end up telling the same jokes, having the same arguments and disappearing behind the shed with the same adulterous missus.

The formulaic introspection of fiesta and the maintenance of tradition are increasingly the source of anxiety as the forces of the generation gap square up to each other in the market or church square. Not completely. There remain the honour and pride of, for instance, being selected as La Beata or as “vermadors” and “vermadores”, but the good burghers of the Mallorcan towns are shaking their heads at what they see as a threat to the fiesta tradition – one that comes from the very breaking with tradition.

The night parties of the fiestas are, in their current incarnation, relatively new traditions. But so much concern do they now arouse that you have a town hall such as Sa Pobla scrapping the Districte 54. Partly this was for financial reasons, or so they said; the more pressing reason was the mess and noise. Sa Pobla is not the only town hall which worries for the future of fiestas if the young treat them merely as excuses for massive piss-ups. In Pollensa, much as the town hall tried to limit alcohol in the fiesta centre for the Patrona parties and to ask kindly that the squares and streets weren’t used as lavatories, the ambience was awash with less of the romanticism than the brochures might have you believe.

In Sa Pobla this year the fiesta programme was one that could be enjoyed by those of all ages. That was what the town hall reckoned. But was it? Having unleashed the genie of the night parties, it is hard for the town halls to put them back in the bottle without some resentment. Moreover, there must be the temptation to retrench further into the past and into long-established tradition, thus provoking a greater distance between the generations.

In Bunyola the undies parade is for all generations. It is an example of tradition invigoration that is positive in both its harmlessness and its profound silliness, one that is different and at the same time respectful of the population as a whole; well, maybe the mock stiffies might not be. Perhaps, though, too much is made of the night parties and the apparent rejection of tradition by the young. There is another tradition – quite a bit older than Bunyola’s. It is the Fornalutx “correbou”. If you had spent some time looking at images of the reaction to the recent protest in the village against the bull run, you might have been surprised, shocked even. The reactionaries were predominantly the young. It doesn’t add up. The young are meant to reject tradition.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

The Horn Of A Dilemma: Correbou and animal traditions

The animal right-ists have been getting into a right old tizz again. There was a barney in Fornalutx on Sunday when the Anima Naturalis group protested against the annual “correbou” in this village near Soller. Locals, in favour of the event, reckoned that the group, all twenty or so of them, acted “provocatively”. There was a scrap, the boys in green got involved, a car window was smashed, and insults were hurled.

Anima Naturalis flew solo on Sunday. Other animal-rights groups had condemned the protest, as they believed they were edging towards an agreement with the village mayor to introduce changes to the correbou. That process may have been harmed by the protest. Amenable the mayor may be to changes, but this didn’t stop town (village?) hall representatives siding with the pro-correbou-ists.

The correbou involves a bull being hauled, cajoled, run – describe it as you will – through the streets on the end of ropes. In Fornalutx they don’t apply fire to the horns, as is the case with similar events in Catalonia, but the animal is taunted before being dragged off to the slaughterhouse, cut up and nosebagged by carnivorous locals. The correbou is primitive, with none of the spectacular and ceremony of the “corrida”. There is no pretence of dignity, honour even, being afforded to the bull, as is the case with the bullfight. The animal is, essentially, the object of derision, and there is simply no comparison with other animal events, such as the innately potty duck tossing in Can Picafort.

A letter-writer to yesterday’s “Bulletin” took the editor to task for defending both the bullfight and the correbou and for calling for a “compromise” that would satisfy those in favour and those against these events. This compromise was not enunciated; it’s an empty call when you don’t explain what this might entail. I was more taken aback by the editor’s admission that he had never attended a bullfight. One can hold opinions as to bullfights without witnessing them first hand, but without experiencing them one fails to get a complete understanding. Such journalistic incuriosity is staggering.

Nevertheless, some sort of a compromise might yet occur in Fornalutx. The mayor has apparently been talking about shortening the “run” itself, holding it on a working day when fewer would attend and not having the bull crowned with a laurel wreath. None of this will sound like a better deal to the bull if it is still subjected to the taunts and ends up between two chunks of bread. Besides which, it is the kill or the angering of the bull that most spectators of a bullfight or correbou expect, a point the letter-writer makes.

What is clear, though, is that there is a growing movement against alleged animal cruelty during fiestas, be it the bullfight (as in Alcúdia and Muro for example), the correbou, the duck throwing of Can Picafort or the cock on a soapy tree in Pollensa. What is also clear is that emotions are being heightened and, in certain instances, the law being flouted. The traditions are so ingrained, though, that it is difficult to see how they can be undone. There are calls for there to be no animals involved in any fiesta events, but even where the law intervenes, it is obeyed reluctantly (as by Santa Margalida town hall in the case of the ducks). And what happens when and if the law does step in? We now have Tony Blair, who had made a fox-hunting ban an electoral pledge, admitting he got that wrong. And British traditions are nothing like as strong as Mallorcan or Spanish ones. But a question about the law, which is a bit of an ass and a load of bull. How can the ducks of Can Picafort be subject to law on animal protection and the bulls of Fornalutx not? It’s hypocritical, and as I have suggested before, the ducks are a far easier target.

Here are photos of the aggro in Fornalutx. The chap who is daubed in black was meant to portray the bull. Some locals reckoned it was racist, thus completely (and probably deliberately) missing the point. What you mostly see in these photos are shots of the Guardia contending with the locals who support the correbou. What seems evident is that this support comes from all age groups, but especially younger ones; something which you might not have expected.

http://comunidad.diariodemallorca.es/galeria-multimedia/Mallorca/Batalla-campal-Fornalutx/17508/1.html

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

We Three Kings

The Christmas period is finally over. The kings arrived in the towns and ports of Mallorca on the night of the fifth, performed some adoration, distributed their presents, and yesterday was the culmination of the festive season – for another year.

Distribution of presents. Now, there’s a thing. It is typical for the kings to hack around the streets dropping of gifts for children, house by house. Well, this is how it happens in many instances, such as in Muro. Not for the Mallorcans a Santa’s grotto, the kings get out and about, put in some legwork, shielding themselves from the rain. It’s the tradition, this doling out of gifts. But is it? It’s the tradition, the kings parades, such as the one from the port in Alcúdia to the old town. But is it? If Christmas, Santa and presents were largely a Victorian invention in Britain, so the “traditions” of the kings in Mallorca are mainly a thing of the last century. There were “kings” long before, but not in the sense that they have become kings now, taking part in elaborate processions and handing out some Christmas bounty to the young of the towns.

“The Diario” ran a fascinating piece yesterday. The paper spoke to various oldsters in different towns on the island, asking them to recall what the “kings” were like when they were small, back in the 1920s and 1930s. A very different picture to today’s emerges from these memories. Not everywhere had a “kings” party or parade, far from it. One chap recalls that at home there was little by way of celebration and that he was an adult when he first witnessed a kings parade and anything like present-giving. He’s 84 now, so it would not have been until the 1940s perhaps that there was something resembling the current-day activities, and even then the gifts amounted to little more than a couple of oranges or a chocolate sweet. Others have similar recollections. A gift might have been an ensaimada, if they were lucky, or unlucky as the case may be – depends whether you like lard and sugar. Not everyone was even that lucky. Some of those spoken to don’t remember there ever being any presents.

The gifts that today’s kings hand out may still not be that grand – they don’t stretch to a Wii or a new mobile for every kid in the neighbourhood, at least one hopes not – but they are certainly more grand and there are far more of them. Which does rather beg a question. Who pays for them? The town halls presumably. There may not be the gross commercialism of Christmas in Mallorca by comparison with elsewhere, but Christmas – and the Kings – still come at a price and with a materialistic element that is in keeping with a contemporary culture, thus removed from the so-called tradition, even if this tradition is not quite as it seems.