Felanitx Market Sunday, 7 January 1996.
This story is about a visit to Felanitx market years ago. Nothing special, almost verbatim as I wrote it at the time, it gives me something to compare then and now.
I parked in Felanitx at midday down the hill just before the junction to Palma. Mallorca has been conquered by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Moors, Aragonese and Bourbons. Now it had us, the new EU invaders from the north.
It was drizzling fine rain as I entered Plaza España. I waved to Jaime filling a car at the small petrol station, he responded with a characteristic “Wurp”.
I walked to the Tabacos at the far end of the plaza. The tiny shop was full of people buying Sunday papers and cigarettes. The shelves were stacked with Spanish and foreign cigarettes, Cuban and Canary Island cigars. I squeezed between stands of plastic toys, audio cassettes and chewing gum, to the stationary section in the rear. An old lady emerged from the gloom to help, commenting on the weather,”Muy fresco” she complained even though it was over 15º C outside. I told her it was snowing in England.
I bought a notebook and a copy of the English language Mallorca Daily Bulletin. Headline, ‘Di and Charles to split’. Bosnia was on the second page.
I walked up towards the church where the market starts. Sheltering under a balcony to scribble a few notes I was slapped across the back. I looked up into a beaming, black-bearded face of a man, with a Ducardo smouldering from the corner of his mouth. José Maria was our children’s teacher at Juan Capo primary school when we came to Mallorca in 1986. He’s been a friend ever since. We hadn’t met for some time, so he asked for news of the children. I told him our daughter Tayrne, now seventeen, was studying hard as usual at the high school. She wanted to go to Palma University to study European law. She was courting Javier, a boy from Establiments near Palma, who was training to be a pilot. He moved to the flying school in Madrid because the administrator in Palma absconded with the school funds. Tayrne flew to Madrid the weekend before Christmas, but Javier was now back on the island for the holidays. Rohan our son, now sixteen, was working in the office of our architect friend Rainer in Bochum Germany. He was living with Rainer’s family, leaning German and the Teutonic work ethic. Rohan was also on the island for the holidays but hadn’t come home last night, as usual finding a bed for the night somewhere in Felanitx. We shook hands, and Jose Maria went off into the crowd, his new pigtail flapping against his collar.
I passed the Africans, their wares covered with polythene sheets against the rain. As I rounded the side of the church, I bumped into Tony. Dark and thick set with bushy grey sideburns, he is a ‘forastero’ from the peninsula who helped us to renovate our farmhouse, working for cash. He has hands like shovels but lost his index and middle finger in an accident years ago in a meat-pie factory on the mainland, the fingers were never found. Tony left his family because of problems with his children. His son and daughter both died of heroin overdoses. He looks villainous, but is one of the most trustworthy and hardworking people I know, even though some Monday mornings he didn’t turn up for work because his moped wouldn’t start. Tony’s moped mostly malfunctioned on Monday mornings. Tony was in a hurry and disappeared into the crowd.
I pushed on up the hill towards the market hall, noticing most of the shoppers were Mallorcan. The difference between Mallorcans and tourists is the way they dress. Islanders wear jumpers, thick coats and scarves, tourists walk around in shirts and even shorts in January, I did it myself once.
Halfway up the hill, I met Akim, a German in his mid-forties who lives close to us. Akim’s a bit of a philanderer, but his women don’t seem to stay for long. Speaking in Spanish, Akim said he was off to meet a German friend on holiday from Australia where he teaches aboriginals. I asked why aboriginals wanted to learn German. He replied that they didn’t and to come to Bar Mecardo (Café Mecat), and his friend would tell me all about it. I said that I would see him later.
At the corner by the Banco Bilbao, it stopped raining, the sun shone through so strong I had to put on my sunglasses, and you could see the pavement drying. Below the wall, I saw the man selling animals. It reminded me of years ago buying the little chicks to put under Ethel who sat for weeks on unfertilised eggs and wouldn’t come off her nest. I remembered the sad pup in the cage, our first Spanish dog. We named him ‘Domingo Cinco De Octubre Mil Noventa Ochenta Seis’ (Sunday The Fifth Of October Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Six) the day that we bought him. We called him Domingo for short.
By the Town Hall, two policemen were sitting chatting on the terrace outside the police station, where some local kids were playing football, the ball smacking into the wall perilously close to the station window. Another policeman was in the bar on the other side of the street taking a brandy. The Felanitx police voted not to carry guns.
I went on down the hill. On the door of the new computer shop, next to the ‘Windows 95’ advert was a death notice, an A4 sheet, black cross at the top with words inside a black border.
‘Francesc Mamo Caldenty. Died 6 January aged 90 years.’
I continued down the hill and around the corner to see my 85-year-old friend Jose Ferrer at the pensioners club where he teaches the members English. Sometimes, Sandy and I drive Jose to the hospital or the tax office in Palma. He tells us about his exploits in the civil war, how he escaped to England and trained the British Home Guard in WWII. He talks about his Irish wife who he divorced when, at seventy, he returned to Mallorca because he couldn’t live with her any more. However, he still loves her and telephones her every night from Felanitx.
Jose wasn’t at the club, so I went on around the side streets to Bar Mecardo. The bar was full of people, chatter, and thick black-tobacco smoke heavy in the air. I ordered a beer from Maria, the blond Mallorcan nationalist who owns the bar. I couldn’t find Akim, so I never did find out what his friend taught Australian aboriginals.
That was 1996. Twenty-three years on much has changed. The market is bigger and more crowded. Instead of the tourists being bused in they now come in hire cars, at midday you’d be lucky to find a parking space anywhere.
The petrol station in the plaza is gone, so has Jaime, one day he just went off and hung himself. I don’t know why he did that, he was a really nice guy and I miss him.
The Tabacos had a makeover, it’s now organised, I preferred it when you had to hunt around for things. The British Royals still make the headlines, not always for the right reasons, and the world is still at war on a regular basis. Tony is retired, one weekend he permanently damaged his arm and wrote off his moped, his moonlighting days are gone. I see Akim around occasionally, but alone, his philandering days seem to be over. Bar Mecardo is still open, but now it’s smoke-free, on Sundays it’s full of tourist, the first wave diaspora having either settled down or moved on. Domingo got himself shot for persistently breaking into a pedigree dog pound and shagging all the long-haired dachshunds. At least the laughing dog of Son Barcelo died doing what he loved best. The police station has moved to bigger premises, all the cops carry sidearms, a sign of the times, but we still have a great police force. The death notices are still posted every day, but now there’s probably an app to get them by mobile phone. Old Jose died in December 2008, six months before his 100th birthday, so we never had a street party.
Tayrne and Javi are married and living in Establiments, and Rohan lives with Silvia next door to us. Between them, they have given us six grandchildren. Sandy and I are still living on a Mediterranean island, we’re not complaining.