Women And The Joan Mas Militia

Ramon Picó i Campamar was born in Pollensa in 1848. An illustrious son of Pollensa, in 2016 the town hall held the Picó i Campamar Year. This was despite his having left Pollensa at the age of eleven. He went to Barcelona, where - over the years - he became an influential figure in Catalan literature and independence politics. His profile, it might be said, is very attractive to certain elements in current-day Majorca, though even he might have been surprised to know that a feminist group - La Mala Pécora - had used his works in helping with an alteration to the annual re-enactment of the 1550 Moors and Christians battle. It was Picó i Campamar who recorded the fact that women had once taken part in the simulation. He would have been ten, as this record was for 1858.

For an occasion that is as celebrated as the Moors and Christians for Pollensa's La Patrona fiestas, there isn't total certainty as to the origins of the re-enactment. The first documented account had come from 1860. Picó i Campamar has provided an alternative. It is believed that the 1858 battle was the second; it had started in 1857. And crucially, for the change being made to this year's simulation, he had witnessed the involvement of women.

The surprise is that it should have required the initiatives of a feminist group and others to have brought about this involvement. The scant information that is available for what actually happened in 1550 does refer to women, even if the suggestion was that they had been hidden away. Yet, the accounts and re-enactment of a different Moors and Christians battle, that of Soller, have placed women at the very centre of the efforts to repel the invaders; Soller honours its brave women each year.

It's reckoned that some seventy women were active in the original re-enactment. How many there were in 1550 is impossible to say. Indeed, arriving at something like accurate numbers of the participants on both sides is difficult. The sources of information were a notary, Joan Morro, and the sixteenth-century Majorcan historian, Joan Binimelis. They testify to the fact that the invaders, under the Ottoman admiral Turgut Reis (Dragut), numbered around 1,500.

There had been a squadron of 27 ships of different kinds. It had moved on from Ibiza towards Majorca; the governor of Ibiza, Jaume Salvà, managed to alert the viceroy in Majorca, Gaspar de Marrades. An attack by Dragut was imminent. This advice followed the arrival of Dragut's squadron off Ibiza on the 27th of May. Three days later, it was off Pollensa. The Morro and Binimelis accounts say that the landing - between the beach and Punta de Avançada on the Formentor promontory - was around half an hour before midnight on the 30th. It has been worked out that there would have been a full moon, though it is not known if there had been cloud cover.

The population of Pollensa in 1550 would have been something over 4,000. As to the availability of fighting men from this population, it is known that thirteen years after the invasion, the local militia in Pollensa numbered 502. Perhaps this number had increased; perhaps not. By 1563, the militia had 290 lances, 204 crossbows and some fifty lighter muskets - the arquebus. As well as the militia, and at the time of Dragut's invasion, the wealthy would have had arms. Furthermore, it is believed that the Pollensa captain, the hero of the times, Joan Mas, could call on 42 "cavallers". These may not have been knights as such and so just horsemen, but they would have been significant. When the Moorish invaders arrived, they were normally all on foot. Indeed, there isn't any evidence that Dragut had horsemen.

There were others who Mas had at his disposal - armed men drafted in from Inca and Selva and probably also Campanet. A picture emerges, therefore, which is different to the one portrayed in the re-enactment; the Christians' ranks were armed with rather more than a load of staffs. And as for women, it would seem that they had some sharp objects; or so the Picó i Campamar 1858 version suggests.

It has in fact been estimated that there were at least 1,000 men waiting for Dragut, who had divided his men into three units. Two of these apparently got lost on the route from Formentor. So when it came to the actual confrontation, Dragut was probably outnumbered. Could he have regrouped with those two units? Maybe he could have, but the Moors retreated and were forced to leave behind a good part of their plunder, including captives they had taken. Dragut had met his match.

Back to list