![Toni Bosch Mas, de can Foc, de 93 anys és dels darrers carboners de Mallorca.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 16 9"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The Llucmajorer Francesc Adrover Fullana, Floquet, is the son and grandson of shepherds. At 55 years old, he still follows the family tradition at the head of a farm with animals, including 120 sheep. He also dedicates himself to the cultivation of nuts and cereals. He defines himself as a farmer. “Today, however, this word is frowned upon. The few people who are dedicated to the land prefer to present themselves as farmers or businessmen”. Adrover no longer keeps the sheep as they used to. “Now the farms are fenced and no one needs to watch them anymore. Nor do I practice transhumance. When the sheep finish the grass in one area, I take them to another next door”. The ritual of shearing when the heat strikes has also changed. “A professional takes care of that. However, today Majorcan wool is worth nothing anymore and is no longer used for the textile industry. For the wool of 100 sheep they can give you 50 euros. Besides, many times you have to burn it because it is full of dirt”.The business of having sheep continues to be meat. “Every two years they breed three times. I sell the lambs of three or four months to a person who takes them to be slaughtered at a slaughterhouse. Then everything goes to the butcher shops. From each lamb you can get 16 kilos of meat”. Adrover considers that the old figure of the shepherd is totally contaminated by nostalgia. “It is part of pre-tourist Mallorca, where a different way of understanding life prevailed. In Llucmajor, Miquel Tomàs, ‘Pastoret’, who is 75 years old, twenty years older than me, is the last representative of a trade that still survives in some parts of the Peninsula. Here, we farmers get in the way”.Adrover speaks with knowledge of the facts. “Sometimes I have accompanied Pastoret during his transhumances towards the old road to Cala Pi. When we occupy the road, cyclists and cars look at us badly. It is clear that we are the great outcasts of society. Politicians only want us as gardeners of rural areas that can be photographed for tourist promotion campaigns of the island. With the subsidies we receive, we can only survive. Mallorca is pure urban speculation at the service of tourism”.In the era of turbo-capitalism, the largest of the Balearic Islands already has almost a million inhabitants, triple that of the beginning of the 20th century, before the tourist boom. The Llucmajorer laments the lack of strategies from the ruling class. “If livestock farming were promoted, a certain food sovereignty could be achieved. The meat that comes from our lambs is very good, since they are not fed with feed. Much of it, however, does not stay here. It goes to North Africa. In Muslim countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria, a lamb represents almost 70% of their diet and is a ‘delicacy’. It costs 400 euros, while here, 100. We, however, prefer to eat chicken, hamburgers, kebabs, sushi...”.
The last shepherd in old Mallorca
From his farm in Llucmajor, Miquel Tomàs ‘Pastoret’, 75 years old, takes stock for ARA Balears of a trade that has become an anachronism in today's tourist-driven society
PalmaLlucmajor still retains vestiges of the pastoral Mallorca. Four times a year, a flock of 100 sheep crosses the center of the town towards a farm on the old Cala Pi road, nine kilometers away. They do so under the watchful eye of Miquel Tomàs Garau, Pastoret, 75 years old, and his dog. “Everyone takes pictures of me,” he says with a cheerful demeanor. “It’s something that attracts attention. When the grass runs out on my farm, I take them there.” The Llucmajorer is one of the last traditional shepherds practicing transhumance, an activity that consists of the seasonal movement of livestock in search of better pastures. Traditionally, the sheep flocks from the large estates spent the winter in the plains of Migjorn on the island and the summer in the mountains. On the paths, there used to be cisterns, underground reservoirs, and ponds that allowed the animals and shepherds to drink.
Tomàs receives us early in the morning at the Son Marió estate, located at the exit of the Llucmajor to Algaida road. He appears with a sports cap pulled over his head and holding a shepherd's crook in one hand, while with the other he doesn't stop petting his dog. From a distance, the bleating of the sheep can be heard, which he has just herded into the pen. The dog, overexcited, runs back and forth. Suddenly, it stops with a single shout from its owner. “Without him,” he assures, “I am nobody. I love him madly. The sheep are my workers and the dog, my foreman. He understands me perfectly. From a distance, he knows how to manage the sheep just by me saying a word or making a gesture or a whistle. Some people bring me their dogs to train.” The Llucmajorer speaks with resignation of a Mallorca that has already disappeared. “Before, in the municipality, there were about forty shepherds. I was the youngest and now I am the only one left. At eight years old, I was already herding 120 sheep alone. I learned the trade from my father, who learned it from his. My sister, on the other hand, started working in a shoe factory in town.”
![The shepherd Miquel Tomàs Pastoret with the sheep.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 6000 4000"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
“I never got bored”
At 16 years old, Tomàs was already emancipated. “I stopped being under my father’s orders and was hired by a gentleman who had 190 sheep. I stayed with him for 17 years. That’s when they gave me the nickname Pastoret. Afterwards, I took charge of 450 sheep on another farm.” In the summer, sleep was always shifted. “I rested during the day and guarded the sheep at night, which is when they graze to escape the heat. Sometimes I met up with friends from other farms to have a meal of bread and cheese. We chatted and played the flute. Then we went back to guarding.” Under the starlight, the responsibility was immense. “I couldn’t fall asleep because I had to be very careful that no sheep jumped from one farm to another in a time when there were no fences. Otherwise, I would get two scoldings from the owner and my father would punish me.” Despite everything, the young shepherd found his calling in that bucolic environment. “I enjoyed being alone with the sheep and hearing their bells. I had a lot of time to think. I was never bored. I could sense the time by the position of the sun.”
Tomàs also cared about breeding with a good ram, the male sheep. In May, when the heat begins to press hard, it was time to shear, to remove the wool with scissors. “We had a big party. It was time to have a good snack with the other shepherds. We sold the wool at a warehouse in Llucmajor”. The sheep were sacrificed at six or seven years old. “We took them to the slaughterhouse. The butchers in the village also asked us for them. They could offer up to 2,000 pesetas for a sheep”.
The immobility at the time of guarding and the calm life of the shepherds would be associated with laziness, which was reflected in the expression ‘shepherds pee lying down’. However, as attentive observers of the cycles of nature, they were also seen as repositories of an extraordinary popular culture, with which they dressed their illiteracy. They even dared to predict the weather. “I know the weather that will be / just by taking a look / and being able to see the clouds”, says a glosa.
The pre-tourist Mallorca that Tomàs knew was very austere. “At night we used an oil lamp. After dinner, we entertained ourselves by doing a few things. Soon, however, we went to bed. We got up at five in the morning with the rooster's crow”. A frugal and local diet then prevailed. “I didn't suffer from hunger. There weren't as many things as now, but we ate well: soups, stews, rice... It was seasonal produce. Today, on the other hand, you can eat anything at any time of the year. We hardly knew meat”. There were also moments for small pleasures: “The slaughter days were eagerly awaited. Very early in the morning, before slaughtering the pig, we drank mistela and had chocolate with ensaïmadas. In winter, when it was cold, it was very pleasant to sit by the fire and toast a good sausage, which I accompanied with a small bottle of wine. And in summer the only luxury we had was eating an ice cream every two weeks”.
To the sound of cowbells
The soundtrack of those slow-paced times was the sound of cowbells. “Once a week, at the Sunday fair, Master Miquel used to come and sell them. He was from Búger, known as the ‘town of cowbells’. All the shepherds in the municipality would gather around him to choose the best one.” Tomàs also misses the old human warmth of the countryside. “Now you bump into someone and they don’t even greet you. Before, that was unthinkable. We all knew each other and when we heard the sound of a horn, we would gather to eat and chat. In the evening, we would also spend the night together. Each person did their own work, knowing that there was a feeling of companionship and solidarity”.
The shepherd. The poetry, music, customs and traditions of the Majorcan shepherdTomàs declares himself a man of dry land. “I don’t like swimming. When my children were small and my wife told me to go to the beach, I always sulked. And if I had to drag things, I sulked even more”. The fashion of going to the sea gained strength with the tourist ‘boom’ of the 60s, which also marked the beginning of the end of a whole world. “In Llucmajor, everyone fled from outside. People sold their animals and went to work mainly in the hotels of s’Arenal. The same happened with many workers from the shoe factories in the town”.
‘Beatus ille’
The shepherd did not succumb to the siren songs of a modernity that made one forget the calluses on the hands with piecework, eight hours a day with a fixed salary. “Being a shepherd was enough for me to live on, although without excess. The problem is that the current consumer society means everyone constantly has expenses. I was able to contribute to Social Security thanks to a contract the owner of the farm for whom I worked as a sharecropper made for me. When he died, I was able to acquire it. Now I would be incapable of living in an apartment. I need to be free.”
At 75 years old, Tomàs feels privileged to have retired in good health. However, he cannot stop paying attention to his flock of sheep, aware that he is the last representative of three consecutive generations of shepherds. “My two sons work in other fields. I understand. Farm work is very hard, very sacrificial. Besides, there is more bureaucracy now than ever to slaughter animals or sell anything.” The shepherd feels overwhelmed by the new digital era. “I carry a mobile phone to be located. However, it is very simple. It only works for calling. It doesn't have any of those applications with which people are so engrossed today. Now everything is noise. I, on the other hand, have learned to be silent.”
The current owner of Son Marió is the living image of the Horatian cliché of beatus ille (‘happy is he’), a whole apology for a quiet life in the countryside. “I am very happy with the sheep. I don't envy these people who travel all the time to the other end of the world. I have no need for it. I would go back. I don't like the current times at all, nor the Mallorca we have.” In 1981, the Inquer folklorist Bartomeu Ensenyat managed to document this entire pastoral world, now lost. He did so in the book El pastor. La poesia, la música, costums i tradicions del pastor mallorquí.
