Mary Boyd - The Fortunate Isles - Life and Travel in Majorca, Minorca and Iviza

Fresh figs gradually declined in flavour as they rose in price. And towards Christmas the country folks, who come in on Saturday mornings to the smaller market that is held in the Plaza de Mercado, began to bring in rush baskets of the home-dried figs that have been ripened in the sun and packed between fig leaves.

The continued drought raised the price of vegetables, though small cauliflowers were still only a halfpenny each, and a good sized bunch of carrots could be bought for the coin that is rather less in value than a farthing. Most Majorcan carrots are purple in hue, so deep a purple as to be almost black. They have to be partially cooked alone, before being added to anything else, as their colour dyes the water black. It is their only fault. Their flavour is excellent.

Early in February we began to use the green peas and turnips that in November I had sown in our garden; but for the lack of rain they would have been ready a month earlier. And an occasional sowing of spinach yielded a quick and unfailing supply throughout the winter.

The question of firing in so genial a climate is an easy one to answer.

For cleanliness, coolness, convenience and economy in cooking there is no fuel that compares with charcoal. As a charcoal stove has no flue, the lighting is attended with a certain amount of smoke from the resinous sticks that are sold specially for the purpose of kindling. But once the charcoal is lit it gives no further trouble. It will cook slowly or quickly, as desired, scarcely soiling the outside of the vessels used in the process: and will stay alight, without much attention, as long as the cook requires. Further, it has the exceptional merit of keeping its heat concentrated within a small area, so that the temperatures of both the kitchen and the cook remain normal.

Our favourite sitting-room – the one that opened directly to the veranda – had the unusual advantage of an open hearth, and a few chilly days that occurred in November made us hasten in search of logs for burning.

Inquiry in the neighbourhood directed us to a large saw mill in the Calle de la Fábrica, where we ordered what to us was an unknown quantity of firewood. The price paid was less than five shillings. When the wood was delivered we were amazed to find that it half filled a cart; and that, in addition to an abundant supply of both logs and rough wood all cut into convenient sizes, the kindly saw-miller had included four little slabs of the resinous wood used for kindling.

The wood was built up on the floor under the lower shelves of our roomy larder, and there, all through November, December, and the first half of January, it lay untouched.

We had got to the point of discussing what we would do with it on our leaving for England, when the weather turned chilly enough to afford us excuse for indulging in the luxury of a log fire. But though we had a fire on every occasion when artificial heat was necessary, there were still logs remaining when at the end of April we quitted the Casa.

A prominent feature of our district, which lay just without the walls of Palma, was the elaborate system employed to guard against the smuggling of contraband goods into the city.

The boundary of Son Españolet, which joined the country, was heavily guarded. In addition to high walls and much intricate zigzagging of barbed wire, wherever two roads met there was a little station-house, or, to be more exact, a shanty, for the shelter of consumeros , both male and female, whose duty it was to examine all goods entering the city limits. And at frequent intervals all along the boundary roads was a species of sentry-box, usually containing a chair and a water-jar, in which for sixteen hours a day a consumero was supposed to keep watch over his own bit of boundary, and to be ready, if anything suspicious attracted his notice, to warn the others, by a series of shrill whistles, to be on the alert.

During the long hours passed in enforced idleness at their posts, many of the men had contrived to give their surroundings quite a home-like appearance. A pleasant man, whose location was at the end of our road, always seemed to have his children playing about him; and often his wife used to take her knitting and the newest baby, and the family goat and a big earthenware pan of amber-tinted rice, and make quite a picnic under the trees near his watch-box.

Another consumero had a stripling vine that he was carefully training up the trellis over his shed. We sometimes saw him watering it. And one, a tall silent man, whose station abutted on a piece of vacant ground, had gradually erected quite a long range of hen-coops along the base of a warm wall; and there he would stroll in the sunshine attended by a flock of flourishing poultry, chiefly of the Plymouth Rock breed.

But these were exceptions. The majority of the consumeros seemed content to lazy away their days and doze away their nights as comfortably as possible. When the early winter darkness had fallen, it was picturesque to see them lighting a brazier, or sitting huddled up in their warm brown blankets beside its glowing embers fast asleep.

When we had been spending the evening in town and were coming home late, we sometimes enjoyed waiting until we were close upon one of these muffled figures, and then, in chorus, saying politely "Buenas noches."

Then we would see the comatose form galvanize into a semblance of life, and hear a drowsy voice from the midst of the enwrappings reply "Buenas noches tengan."

The discovery that the monetary recompense for the sixteen hours that the consumero worked or played was only two pesetas – or about eighteenpence of English money – showed that if he was not overwrought neither was he overpaid.

At nightfall these guardians of our district were reinforced by the addition of two active young carabineros who carried loaded rifles. So between the police, the armed soldiers, the sleepy consumeros , the elusive sereno and the ornamental vigilante , the residents of Son Españolet ought to have gone to bed with a feeling of security.

The question of language is a somewhat grave one in Majorca, where the inhabitants naturally, but inconsiderately from our point of view, insist upon speaking their native tongue, which is neither Spanish nor French, but sounds like a corruption of both.

Majorcan, which is said to be much older than Castellano , the official language of Spain, is closely allied to Catalan . And though many words suggest French, Spanish, and even Italian influence, the islanders seem, by an ingenious chipping of terminations and the addition of weird sounds entirely their own, to have evolved a tongue which goes far towards outdoing all others in unmelodious sounds. A peacefully animated conversation in Majorcan suggests impending bloodshed. To overhear a quarrel would be horrific. Happily discord is rare in Majorca. As far as our six months of experience showed, a better natured or more harmonious people never existed.

The dialect in use in Minorca and Iviza, though practically the same as that of Majorca, varies in each island. So it is not surprising that the visitor to the Balearic Islands is strongly advised to confine his efforts to the acquirement of Spanish, not even to attempt to learn Majorcan. And indeed the facilities for doing so are few. We could find no Majorcan dictionary, though a weekly paper in the language, Pu-Put , is published in Palma.

All the educated classes speak Spanish fluently. Yet in most of the shops, even in Palma, and in the country districts, the native language prevails.

Very few of the working women understand Spanish. Their lives having been passed on the islands, they remain ignorant of any but their mother tongue; though it is common to find their menfolk speaking Spanish well, owing to their having been in the army, or to their having passed the period of voluntary exile that most of them serve almost as they do the demands of the State.