The Majorcan apostles of liberation theology

PalmIn 1968, the world would be governed. It was the year in which the mobilizations against the Vietnam War, begun 13 years earlier, intensified. In May, in Paris, hundreds of students took to the streets with slogans as resounding as 'Be realistic, demand the impossible'. In Czechoslovakia, Soviet forces repressed an attempt at reform called the 'Prague Spring', which advocated 'socialism with a human face'. The United States, while witnessing the rise of the hippie movement, was dismayed by the assassinations of two defenders of the rights of the Black population, the Reverend Martin Luther King and the Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy – the same tragic end had befallen his brother five years earlier, who had arrived in Mexico. He had machine-gunned university students who were demanding more democracy on the eve of the Olympic Games. At that sporting event, the anti-racist 'Black Power' movement was made visible by two African American athletes who accepted their medals raising a black glove and bowing their heads.

From Lima, Peru, observing such a turbulent world, was Father Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, 40 years old. In 1968, it had been a year since the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had executed Ernesto Guevara, better known as [unnamed], in Bolivia. CheIn 1959, in Cuba, the famous Argentine guerrilla fighter had participated with Fidel Castro in the uprising against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. With his death, the US, in the midst of the Cold War, defused the spread of armed revolution against capitalism in favor of communism. Gutiérrez was aware of the oppression and underdevelopment plaguing Latin America. To reverse this situation, he immersed himself in Marxist class struggle and the reformist spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) of Pope John XXIII. It was at a meeting of theologians in the town of Chimbote that he coined the term for his new idea of ​​social justice: Liberation Theology.

Episcopal concern over the migratory avalanche

One of those attending that meeting was Bartomeu Bennàssar Vicens, a missionary from Felanitx. At 31, he had just arrived in Peru, a country that, along with Burundi, was part of the area of ​​influence of the Diocese of Mallorca. "Gutiérrez's message," he recalls today at 88, "reaffirmed the essence of Christianity. However, it wasn't very well received by a segment of the Peruvian ecclesiastical hierarchy. Two years later, I and other committed priests encouraged us to leave the country." From Brazil, the Catalan Pere Casaldàliga (1928-2020) would remain steadfast in his support of the cause, advocating for landless indigenous peasants.

Back in Mallorca, Bennàssar wanted to apply those revolutionary principles to the hidden underworld of boom tourist. To get to know it better, he spent his first summer working as a chambermaid in a hotel in Calvià. In 1964, the man from Felanitx had already become interested in the changes the island was undergoing with a doctoral thesis entitled Tourism and pastoral care. A synthesis of the theology of vacations.However, six years later, the new reality was shocking: the labor exploitation of more than 130,000 people from the Iberian Peninsula who arrived between 1960 and 1970 from the poorest rural areas. Employers were obligated to provide them with accommodation. However, they complied with the law by giving them the completely unsanitary basement rooms of hotels, the so-called 'llorigueres'. In 1971, Bishop Rafael Álvarez had already expressed concern about the inability to manage this influx of immigrants. This was stated in a letter dated November 27: "There isn't enough work here for so many, nor are there any positions available, even in hotels during peak tourist season [...]. To spare the emigrants themselves suffering and to avoid putting the official and ecclesiastical bodies concerned with these matters in a compromising position. As an eloquent example of what I am writing [...], in just four months, the Diocese of Mallorca [...] has distributed more than 400,000 pesetas in ferry tickets or travel allowances to reintegrate hundreds of immigrants to the Peninsula who could not find work in our hospitable towns."

A year later, Álvarez's successor, Bishop Teodor Úbeda, added a new dimension to the debate in another letter: "Let us all ask ourselves—you and I first and foremost—dear Mallorcans: What is our attitude toward our immigrant brothers and sisters? Do we welcome them—perhaps with remuneration for jobs [...]? Do we ensure they have adequate housing?" The answer to those questions came on April 2, 1973, from Carmel Bonnín, Bennàssar's colleague in Peru. In a letter, Bonnín, born in Palma in 1942, reminded the bishop that it was not a problem of xenophobia but an economic one: "I mean that Mallorcans, many of them salaried employees, generally occupy privileged positions within companies compared to those that immigrants have to accept."

Support from secular Christians

With the support of Bishop Údeda, Cáritas Mallorca, a diocesan social action organization founded in 1961, intensified its campaigns to assist immigrant hospitality workers, who had become the new marginalized population. "This change in attitude," says Bennàssar, "was partly fostered by Liberation Theology, which we brought from Peru to a whole generation of Mallorcan missionaries." In 1971, a pioneering initiative called 'Acolliments' (Welcoming) was launched in a hotel in the Arenal district. It would later expand to Cas Català (Palma) and Palmanova (Calvià). Its founders were Carmel Bonnín and another follower of Gustavo Gutiérrez, Jaume Santandreu (1938-2025), from Manacor. It was a meeting place where staff had a bar and, in some cases, a daycare center for the children of working mothers. Literacy courses and legal consultations were also offered with the first labor lawyers, Ferran Gomila and Catalina Moragues. In 1972, Bennàssar, together with Bonnín, published a booklet with legal information entitled Hospitality worker's guide“Our work,” she asserts, “made more than one Mallorcan businessman who went to Mass uncomfortable. They were perfectly happy for their workers to live in precarious conditions.”

The ‘Acolliments’ (welcoming groups) would become the cradle of trade unionism on the island. They also had the help of a group of secular Christian women. One of them was Sinfo García, who arrived at the port of Salamanca and started working in the hotels. The same was true for Maena Juan Marqués (1932-2019) from Palma. From a well-to-do family, she spent much of her working life at the Bellver Hotel, where, in October 1973, while she was assistant head housekeeper, the first demonstration of chambermaids in all of Spain took place, led by the CCOO trade unionist Maria Bonnín, sister of Carmel, the priest – today they are known as in ' those who cleanJuan became deeply involved in that struggle: he financed the rental of apartments for immigrant workers to prevent them from sleeping in the dreaded "llorigueres" (shacks) and set up a support center for them, the School of Social Training. The organization, known as Mar Seis because it was located at Calle del Mar, 6, in Palma, also organized recruitment campaigns for seminarians to work in hotels during the summer and experience their reality firsthand.

Night Hospital

In 1973, the international oil crisis left thousands of hospitality workers unemployed. For those unable to return to the Iberian Peninsula, Jaume Santandreu opened the Sapiencia reception center in Palma in 1976. Two years later, he opened another, Can Gazà, in Secar de la Real. In 1974, Bennàssar and Bonnín encouraged Bishop Úbeda to create the Justícia i Pau (Justice and Peace) organization—Bonnín himself would be its first president. Among other things, he promoted the first conferences on Immigration, Racism, and Xenophobia, and in 1982, the first 0.7% campaign in various countries. In 1979, to better coordinate all the Church's third sector activities, the bishop also created the Diocesan Delegation for Social Action, appointing Bennàssar to head it. That same year, Cecili Buele, the first Mallorcan of mixed race, son of a Guinean man and a woman from Aragon, joined the cause. "I," he recalls at 81, "had just spent four years in Peru and before that, three in Burundi. I also felt the need to put Liberation Theology into practice. I did so from the parish of the Incarnation in Palma, which was assigned to me." In 1981, Buele didn't hesitate to lend a hand to Santandreu in setting up another of his social projects: the Night Hospital, in the then-ruined Misericordia building in Palma. "Today," he laments, "70 years after the tourism boom and with rampant capitalism, hospitality workers live in even more precarious conditions. There are no more 'llorigueres' (a derogatory term for people who sleep in the hotel rooms), but outside, people rent rooms at exorbitant prices, where entire families sleep."