A Majorcan World Viewed Through Wine

The popular attractions of Binissalem's Vermar fiestas are clear enough - the grape battle with some 8,000 kilos of grapes considered to be surplus to requirements; the grape-treading contest to see which pairs can produce the most grape must; the wine fair this Saturday and Sunday. Yet behind the Vermar, integral to the fiestas in fact, are traditions that were specifically created for what were fiestas invented in the mid-60s and a deeper appeal, a philosophical one, to a Majorcan spirit that resides in the land and in the millennia during which grapes have been harvested and wine has been produced.

The Vermar was a cultural phenomenon that, in no small part, owed its founding to Majorca's world of literary culture and which was to rapidly acquire the trappings of rural tradition and society. The clearest examples of these are the "vermadors" and "vermadores", the young masters and maidens of honour. The females came first, and equality decreed that there should be males as well. Young people of the village, dressed in attire appropriate for a rural community steeped in tradition that was threatened with erosion courtesy of the societal change brought about by mass tourism, honour the past. The Vermar was not originally a religious fiesta, and it has attained only a semblance of religiosity. But religious acknowledgement was necessary, essential even. An appeal to a patron, to a saintly figure was intimately linked to the success of the harvest and to people's well-being.

A son of Binissalem, Llorenç Moyà, inspired the fiestas. In 1965, he organised what was essentially a private party for wine enthusiasts at Can Gelabert in the village. Moyà, an important figure in Majorca's twentieth-century literature, was representative of a literary class seeking to make sense of a Majorcan psyche in a changing world. His own religion was to lead him to write his version of the "Via Crucis", an enactment of which is staged each Good Friday on the steps of the Cathedral in Palma. And Moyà was to turn to another significant literary figure, Josep Maria Llompart, to deliver the opening address for the Vermar fiestas.

By 1968, elements of the Vermar that have continued to this day were in place. For example, the figures of the vermadores were established. There was also the "pregó"; an opening address is an essential ingredient for all fiestas. Llompart was invited to make this address in 1968. The pregó is literally a prayer, but the religious angle morphed long ago into the address being pretty much whatever the person (or people) delivering it want it to be. Religion has ceased to be a requirement.

But Llompart, in what was an extraordinary presentation, concluded the address with a prayer. His great friend Llorenç Moyà, a worshipper of Nostra Senyora de Robines (the name of Binissalem's parish church), wished there to be a prayer for Binissalem's Mother of God, and this was exactly what Llompart provided. "Oh Maria," he started. "Blood is the wine that alleviates souls ... Blood from the earth that sustains us ... Make, oh Santa Maria de Robines, the glorious harvest of the blood. That the amphora of generous wine is not spoiled by the harsh stubbornness of human misery. The future harvest, the verdict of the definitive spring of our Father who, in the unity of the Son and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for centuries."

Llompart's prayer thus made an allusion to the millennia - the amphora jugs of the Romans - but above all it was an expression of appeal to a holy force to sustain the harvest, the people and the wine that runs through the veins of the land and which has done over the centuries. A tradition, an invented tradition for the Vermar, was to be the offer of grape must to Our Lady of Robines. And so it will be on Sunday. The vermadors and vermadores make the offer.

There was way more to Llompart's address, which was why it was so extraordinary. In part it was a gentle manifesto for the Catalan Renaissance (this was 1968), but above all it was a philosophical analysis of the Majorcan spirit, littered with historical reference points, that made great play of the German concept of "Weltanschauung", literally the world view. The Majorcan Weltanschauung, he said, can be observed "through the transparencies of a glass of red wine".

In a sense this was a jocular remark, but the point he was making was that wine was an "enigmatic metaphor" for a way of life, one which, as he was to note, faced "serious challenges" in 1968. As such, one wonders to what extent these challenges remain the same.

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