The Other Capital Of Majorca

You would expect a mayor to express his or her pride in the municipality; to highlight the virtues and the qualities. Virgilio Moreno, Inca's mayor, is therefore not unique in this regard. But he goes somewhat further than other mayors might typically do. In the programme for this year's Dijous Bo fair, the mayor refers to Inca having "recovered the distinguished position that it deserves by having become the true capital of the Part Forana (anywhere but Palma)". Specifically mentioning Dijous Bo, Moreno says that, as each year, the streets and squares of Inca will be full. "For a few hours it is the nerve centre of Majorca."

I don't know that the mayor would go so far as to claim that Inca is the most beautiful place in Majorca. But he shouldn't need to. Inca's greatest attribute lies with being what it is - representative of a Majorca that visitors certainly would tend not to associate with the island. It is a living and working town, one that symbolises elements every bit as important as the beaches and the mountains - industry and commerce.

Such an assessment does, however, diminish what lies within and indeed outside Inca. There is, for example, the spiritual patrimony of Santa Maria la Major and the hermitage of the Puig de Santa Magdalena. The industrial base is matched by the ruralism, itself of significance for having fostered the very industry for which Inca is famed in Majorca and beyond - leather.

Inca is a regional administrative capital, a distinction it shares with Manacor, its main rival to claiming to be THE capital of the Part Forana. But Inca's role in the scheme of things is more embedded in the history of Majorca for different reasons. The oldest has to do with location. Inca was on the old Roman road that connected the two cities of Roman Majorca - Pollentia (Alcudia) and Palma.

Its name, it has been argued, is derived from one dating back to the obscure pre-Roman era - "Qariat Inqar" - although the more common explanation comes from Muslim times. "Inkan" was a word to mean hill in the north African Berber languages, and Inkan was at the heart of what was the most dynamic of commercial centres during the three centuries of Muslim occupation: the most dynamic away from Palma, that is, and therefore in the Part Forana.

The modern-day rivalry with Manacor, such as it is, didn't exist in the mediaeval centuries following the Catalan conquest. In those days, Inca vied with Sineu. The well-chronicled fact of Inca and Sineu having been the only places with the royal privilege to hold fairs - before Llucmajor was granted the privilege in the mid-sixteenth century - is testament to this rivalry and also to Inca's importance as a capital outside Palma.

Inca's pretensions to being the Part Forana capital were evident in the tensions which existed between Palma and the rest of Majorca and between noble landowners and ordinary citizens, merchants and artisans. Inca was to the fore during the "Revolta Forana" between 1450 and 1453 and then again during the Germanies Revolt of the following century.

The tensions in the fifteenth century owed a good deal to Inca's privilege for fairs and to its market. Although the revolt was put down, ten years later in 1463 there was a plot to assassinate members of the island's administration who were planning to attend the Inca fair. For several decades there had been a dispute because of the taxes Inca was expected to pay for the fair and the market.

Dijous Bo, as it was to become, is therefore intimately linked to an historical assertion as to Inca's importance. Although the exact origins of Dijous Bo are subject to debate, the fact of it being held on a Thursday does have something to do with the market. And for that, there is documentary evidence of an ally of King Jaume I, Pere I d'Urgell, having in effect created the market (in its Christian form) in 1258. Pere gifted Inca, among other things, an animal pen, a cellar for wine and a storage space. These were for the market, and the market was on a Thursday.

Nowadays, Inca has Majorca's biggest and most important fair - Dijous Bo - and also the island's most popular market. Excursions are made to the Thursday market to an extent that they are for no other market, and reasons for this lie with the market's antiquity and the leather industry and therefore the making of shoes, which has its origins even before the Catalans arrived.

The capital of the Part Forana. A capital created from rivalry, from industry, from a market, and from a fair. Bon Dijous Bo!

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