'Saint George, the night of fire in Mallorca'

As it is commonly said nowadays, the phrase that gives title to today's writing is “is real”, “literal”, if you will. Written on June 23rd in the evening, and not on April 23rd in front of a bonfire of burning books. And the “saint” is clear, transposed into English, which is sometimes how one feels close to the difference of the Catalan language.In no case can we speak of an anecdote, but rather of a massive, delocalized, and acultural way of experiencing the Sant Joan festival. The images of Palma beach packed as if we were in Ipanema on any given carnival day have gone viral. Just as the perreos (a type of dance), reggaeton, barbecues, and the ineffable flying lanterns that fill the sky with the sumptuous light of future forest fires have also gone viral.All this happened around midnight, the shortest night and the longest day... A few hours earlier, at two o'clock, Sebastià Salort was climbing the stairs of the Olivar house in Ciutadella, in the Cathedral square. There, still dressed for the street, in a shiny pearl-grey suit, Ignasi Saura Sánchez greeted him: —Mr. cashier, dear Ignasi Saura Sánchez, do you give me permission to begin the collection? —Good morning, Sebastià, with great pleasure, you can begin the collection. —I will do so.What follows is an explosion of joy, an immemorial burst upon hearing the first touch of the flabiol. Thousands of people have waited in silence for the first touch, hundreds of Majorcan bachelors who don't know what a flabiol is or have ever seen one up close. Thousands of visitors who drink in Ciutadella's bars for Sant Joan, but who don't know that at two o'clock, at that hour, everything begins, proud to make ointments without knowing that Ciutadella is a particular escape from Quíbia where they drink gin with lemonade. It is a different Menorca, as ancestral as it is conservative, as old as it is Catalan, as medieval as it is harmonious.The hours of Saint John's Saturday will pass. At the port of Ciutadella, the rissaga will now be human. On the cobblestones, hundreds of young people drenched in juice, delighted by love, leave their plastic cup with a little bit of cuba libre so it doesn't fly away... At dawn, silence will still be unable to make its way. On the street corners, some couples will give their all to their bodies. The smells will mingle with the music of the revelry still bouncing inside the brain...A little less than 65 kilometers in a straight line, the early song of robins and blackbirds peeks through the vegetation that has taken over the racecourse. It has been almost a decade since, in the houses of the Correu orchard, in Manacor, children affected by rickets do not pass through the magical branches of the quince tree. Tradition is no longer an exciting alternative to the operating room. History has faded, just as darkness fades when day breaks. The cries of naked children in their mothers' arms are not heard. Nor the encouraging laughter of the owners of the property. The lords are now looking for someone to buy it from them... We are looking for someone who wants to buy the houses, the lands, the paths from us. Even the language, we have for sale.They are two Saint Joans and one Saint George, three examples of a prostituted territory, of a sold-out people who only show their heads with some folkloric whimpering, or when the waterline of dignity is hit. We were a paradise. We are heading towards hell. Meanwhile, there are those who, instead of collaring the hoteliers and the builders, instead of prohibiting holiday rentals, instead of seeking alternatives to mass tourism, instead of promoting the worship of capital and rapid enrichment, fix their gaze full of hate on the population that has arrived in Mallorca from North Africa, South America, and the world in general.Enough, of looking at the finger to avoid looking at the moon. Those who sell what we have, who prostitute what we are and what we have been, are those who are full of money and provincialism, those who come for good, to put their heads under the yoke of those who want to join us. Enough of blaming those who come so as not to have to think about who it is that truly makes us put our heads underwater...