Saint Anthony, to re-edge in order to revive

Now that we're back from the sweet and festive Christmas celebrations, we're entering the big week of Sant Antoni. I took the opportunity to ask my students at IES Portocristo what songs they knew... And they knew quite a few. "Yes, teacher"Sant Antoni, for rain, inside you're making plants and clappers, to earn a few coins to make new shoes." "Very good, Yerai," I agreed. The Sant Antoni festival has taken off so much that even in a place of such impressive cultural diversity as Portocristo, the children of the newcomers... do they know what a "lova" is? Nobody in the classroom has the slightest idea, despite having heard and sung the song dozens of times. "And a claper?" Nobody knows that either.

It's as if the party has reached its peak, amidst all this revival. As if it were the price we pay for that unprecedented success. However, these aren't the only examples. In Manacor itself, the proud capital of Mallorcan Catalan identity, messages are circulating on social media these days to get things rolling: "They can already smell it." to "burnt," "Manacor begins to smell to "Smoke"... some are writing on social media. They won't remember that giant who kept repeating in exasperation, "He smells."of' "Human flesh, we'll eat it this week," nor the words they themselves sing every year in Artà... "And I could smell that smell of "the steak that was burning." Right in the Plaza del Convento in Manacor, the youth, always ready to stir up rivalry between towns, sing, wearing the ancestral white shirt of Artà under the modern black Manacor sweatshirt, "boti, boti, boti, artanense "Whoever doesn't throw," in a clear example that those who have known how to impose their law are the artisanswhich is what we've always called them in Manacor. And when they sing "Saint Anthony made soup," today's youth say, without any shame, that the devil "they "ate them all," whereas in Mallorca, the direct object pronoun had always gone before it, and we used to say, and still say to the most die-hard Mallorcans, "the "She ate them all."

However, all of this pales in comparison to the grotesque absurdity unfolding inside the large church, packed to the brim, more so than at any of the most massive funerals we could possibly recall, which is when there's actually more traffic inside churches. Thousands of young people are ready to sing the Gozos. They carry a sheet of paper to help them remember the lyrics. Most already know them, or at least they know where the verse will begin as soon as they read the first word. "Opponents of Lucifer," they sing, "this superb "demon." 1,000 pubescent voices singing from the heart, authentically, sincerely, in true Manacor style, agree to say, without any hint of blushing, that the devil is "superb"The devil, in the original Gozos that the young singers from Manacor carry photocopied, is superb...another way of saying "superb." In fact, these Gozos date, more or less, from the mid-19th century. Sometimes such innocence from the most youthful ages returns. If your father and mother don't know what "six-seven" either "bro", as his godparents could never have said"superb"We have preached it as much as we could, but it is a losing battle: the greatest representative of evil in Manacor today is superb.

In any case, everything I'm telling you, kind readers, are nothing more than the musings of a charming philologist approaching sixty. Nearly thirty years ago, in the late nineties, the San Antonio festival in Manacor, like so many others throughout the country, was revived in a way that few of those who had failed to revive the tradition could have imagined. For me, Artà will always come first when it comes to Sant Antoni. The people of Pobla also have a good festival, but I don't dwell on it anymore, because it's not my territory. And yet, it is admirable, remarkable, and important that Manacor, with its aspiring capital city airs, its diverse and multicolored population, its thriving economy, and all the languages spoken there, keeps alive the flame of a rural festival that was dying half a century ago.

The youth know the songs (knowing half a dozen is enough to feel like you're part of the party). The people of Manacor are proud to be from there, at least on that day. Outsiders want to come because they find it amazing and exceptional that, being the town we are, we can have the kind of party we do. The young singers perform with an undeniably Manacor-like choral sound, with a who that captivate, and without a hint of anything fishy. As if it were possible to be many, and new, and modern, and young, and diverse, and from here and there, a true dean, without ceasing to be ourselves.

It's true we still have many holes, even today, but there are no bird trappers in the village streets. Luckily, bird hunting with snares is naturally prohibited. We carry the snares glued to our hands all day, and we can watch what others are doing, what the commentators are saying, or ask the chatgepeté what color the feathers of a ropito are or what the word means. claperLife goes on, friends, and time inevitably changes the world and its people. And if we have to write new songs that speak of the things and people of today, let's make sure that, just like the festivals, the world of the glosa (a type of improvised song) is revived. Let's sing, then, with joy these days, because a people that sings cannot die.