Hamburguesería Napoli

The rain is pouring down on the eve of St. Sebastian. Why should we go into the city, for the fireworks, the barbecue-roasting on the squares, if the storm will wash it away anyway? We climb up to the former St. Catherine district of fishermen and sailors, which recently a growing number of bars and restaurants are trying to convert into Palma’s bohemian quarter. On the corner, a coffee shop is alive with light, and in front of it, on large braziers, they are roasting large pieces of meat, as is done everywhere in the city this evening. We go in for a drink. Behind the counter there are styrofoam packs, each having three slices of meat, a sausage with marjoram, two slim chorizos. “Can we also grill it?” “Of course.” Tibor is turning the meat over the embers in the rain, and I hold the plates under the eaves. The coffee shop is packed with local families, the charming children play at a small table of their own. Tibor enthusiastically photographs the patriarch sharing a long string of sausages on plastic plates. In the end he puts three pieces on a special plate, he brings it over to our table. “Bon profit, enjoy it.”



The eve of St. Sebastian in the Hamburguesería Napoli, Palma, 19 January 2014. Recording by Lloyd Dunn, photos by Tibor Nagy.

San Sebastián

This little card was found in an old Mallorcan book. The script – based on the experiences of the publication of the Santacilia archive of Mallorca – can be dated perhaps to the 17th century.

J[esus]+M[aria]
January 20
feast of Saint Fabian and Saint Sebastian martyrs
to do every day the seven acts of love towards the neighbor [= seven good deeds]
to drop the wine once
to pray for the keeping off of famine, pestilence and war

I do not know whether this card is a list of penitences given by the confessor (in some Mediterranean regions this was a custom) or a list of ascetical tasks compiled for one’s own use which two hundred and fifty years later would have been sticked with a magnet on the fridge door by the Christian striving after the more serious living up to his belief.

It is probably the latter, for the practices are not very penitential, but rather festively mild if compared to the customs of the period. In fact, they do not include any fast, only the omission of wine once a day (which of course sounds a very great penitence to one who knows the majestic Mallorcan wines). The reason probably is that this day is a high feast in Mallorca, on which fast is prohibited. Saint Sebastian is the protector of Palma de Mallorca, and his feast is celebrated by three days of open fires and cooking, concerts, spectacular processions, and monumental fireworks.

Judging from the handwriting and the tone, as well as from the book in which we have found it, the note may have been written by a 17th-century Mallorcan cleric for himself. This engraving, representing contemporary Mallorcan clerics, was published in the great summary Die Balearen by Archduke Luis Salvador de Austria.

The prayer refers to Saint Sebastian, too. Famine, pestilence and war, called on the basis of verses 5-6 of Psalm 91 as “tria mala Davidica,” “the three plagues of David,” were the main terrors of the age, and on the votive columns erected from the late 17th century to keep them off we always see, in the company of Saint Roche who died in pestilence, also Saint Sebastian who was killed by the very arrows mentioned in the psalm.

Holy image protecting from pestilence, with the figures of the Holy Trinity, St. Mary the “Star of the Sea,” Saint Sebastian, Saint Rosalia, Saint Roche and the so-called Zachary Cross. Győr (Hungary), c. 1710. From Zoltán Szilárdfy, Barokk szentképek Magyarországon (Baroque holy images in Hungary, 1984).

However, the Phoenician blood of the island was revealed even on this festive-ascetical occasion. On the reverse of the card we find an addition, where – even if we do not count the script at the upper bottom which does not look like numbers – 15 is missing from the correct total of 495.


On the occasion of the nearing feast of San Sebastián we hereby wish all the best, plenty of blessing, a sober quantity of asceticism and always enough wine of Binissalem to all the Phoenician merchants, Punic pirates, Balearic slingers, Jewish goldsmiths and Arabic vinegrowers of Mallorca, not forgetting either about the descendans of the Chinese sailors of Zhen He who got stuck in Sineu in 1421.

Sant Sebastià

Hemos encontrado este papelito en un viejo libro de una biblioteca mallorquina. La letra tiene toda la traza de ser del siglo XVII.

J[esus] + M[aría]
Día 20 de enero
festividad de los santos Fabián y Sebastián, mártires
hacer cada día los siete actos de amor al prójimo
dejar de una vez el vino
rezar para alejar el hambre, la peste y la guerra

No sabemos si esta nota es una lista de las penitencias impuestas por el confesor o un recordatorio de tareas ascéticas para uso personal que, de haberse escrito hoy, tal vez iría a adherirse con un imán en la puerta de la nevera.

Debe ser más bien lo segundo, pues no se trata de obligaciones claramente penitenciales —y menos teniendo en cuenta las costumbres de la época—. La más dura, ciertamente, es «semel relinquere vinum», pero suena como un vago deseo de dejar de beber demasiado y, de hecho, también podría traducirse por «dejar de beber vino una vez al día». Mal momento ha elegido este buen hombre para enunciar sus propósitos, pues la fiesta de san Sebastián en Palma significa beber vino para acompañar todo tipo de carne a la brasa, hecha en los fuegos callejeros. ¿O quizá la escribió al poco de acabar la fiesta, al dictado de su mala conciencia?

Por el libro donde la encontramos y el tono general que tiene, esta nota pudo haber sido escrita, para sí mismo, por un clérigo mallorquín del s. XVII. Sacerdotes mallorquines. Grabado de Die Balearen, del Archiduque Luis Salvador de Austria.

Con todo, las oraciones (contra las tria mala Davidica —las tres plagas de David—, Salmos, 91.5-6) sí que cuadran con la fiesta del patrón de Palma que una vez libró a la ciudad de la peste. San Sebastián suele estar presente en este tipo de rogativas, y en las columnas votivas de las ciudades de Centroeuropa, normalmente en compañía de san Roque.

Estampa protectora de la peste, con las figuras de la Santísima Trinidad, santa María «Stella maris», san Sebastián, santa Rosalía, san Roque y la llamada Cruz de Zacarías. Győr (Hungría), c. 1710. De Zoltán Szilárdfy, Barokk szentképek Magyarországon (Imágenes sagradas del Barroco en Hungría, 1984).

Pero la sangre fenicia que corre por Mallorca también se revela en esta nota. En su reverso alguien ha hecho una suma apresurada donde se diría que el 15 ha sido hábilmente escamoteado de un total que debería dar 495 y no 480 (ignoramos los signos de arriba, pues no parecen formar parte del cálculo).


En ocasión de la fiesta de san Sebastián, deseamos felicidad a todos, todo tipo de bendiciones, una conveniente dosis de ascetismo y que haya siempre abundante vino de esta isla para todos los mercaderes fenicios, piratas púnicos, honderos descalzos, orfebres y cartógrafos judíos, curtidores árabes, sin olvidar a los chinos descendientes de aquellos marinos de la flota del almirante Zhen He que recalaron en Sineu en 1421.

Rodin in Mallorca

The Caixà Bank has brought from the Rodin Museum in Paris to Palma, and installed on the promenade leading to the seaside cathedral seven masterpieces of Rodin, the six figures of the Burghers of Calais and the Thinker. A gesture of grand seigneur, the more so because at this time, in January there are hardly any visitors in Mallorca: this gift is addressed to the city. As on the way from the airport at the cathedral we wind upwards on the Passeig des Born, the seven statues are standing there on the promenade, so naturally as if they had been intended for here, mingling with the burghers of Mallorca. Their black surface that after moulding had been polished to mirror-like finish through weeks by Rodin, comes into such a new life in the light of the early spring Mediterranean sunshine that has never been suspected in cloudy Paris.

At four o’clock in Saturday morning I cut across the promenade on my way to the fish market in the port. As a guest coming from a country without a sea, I am irresistibly attracted by the spectacle as the boats arriving from the night fishery sail in on the oily black water, the dripping cases are taken out on the quay, and in the building of the wholesale fish market the early rising commissaries of the restaurants and supermarkets survey the catch spread out, the greatest part of which has even no name in our language. The only bar of the city that is open at this time is the sailors’ pub in front of the fish market where the exhausted fishermen draw up the balance of the night while nursing a drink. Disciplined sailor dogs are lying at the feet of some of them, wiry creatures with weather-beaten skin like their masters.

The city is still sleeping, the statues stand solitarily on the promenade. Lampions have already been stretched out between the trees and stages have been erected at the two ends of the esplanade for the three days feast of Saint Sebastian, the saintly protector of the city. This night light softens the statues, their surface becomes oily and slippery like that of the sea and of the freshly caught fishes.

Sunday evening, at five o’clock the parade begins. The burghers of Mallorca who in the previous night lit a bonfire on the main square and roasted meat at the free braziers set up throughout the city, and kept eating, drinking and dancing until early morning while each square gave home to a different concert, have already had a rest in the morning, and now they gather with renewed strength for the continuation. The crowd swarms onto the square and is looking forward with excitement to the arrival of the flaming charriots.

From the whole Mallorca, but even from continental Catalonia several groups of dimoni who usually play the role of tempters at the feast of Saint Anthony of the various settlements have come together in Palma. Each of them marches with their fire-vomiting monster-charriots, drummers and dancers from the center of the city to the cathedral on the sea-front where they will launch the festive fireworks.

The nearly five thousand dimoni march for four and a half hours through the host of a hundred and thirty thousand spectators. The square illuminated in a ghostlike manner by the fires and torches is dominated by the dark marble obelisk topped by the bronze bat with outspread wings, the heraldic animal of King James I who had conquered this island from the Arabs. The Thinker – the figure of Dante looking in the gate of Hell and the 19th-century icon of rationality – is sitting sunken into himself in the middle of the crowd.