Where is the soul of Sa Pobla?
During the Spanish Civil War and the years that followed, the market square of Sa Pobla and a timber warehouse facing it were the scene of one of the harshest and cruelest repressions the town has ever experienced. Can Garroví—as the timber warehouse was called—and the entire square were surrounded by barbed wire to confine the forced labor battalion assigned to build a railway for military use that was to connect Sa Pobla with Alcúdia. In reality, we had a concentration camp made up of some two hundred soldiers who had been loyal to the Republic. More than prisoners, they lived there for nearly three years as slaves, and the market square was their world and epicenter.
A few years earlier, and well into the 20th century, the same square or esplanade had served as a market for the exchange of straw and livestock of all kinds. Carts from the Pla de Mallorca arrived one by one, just at dawn. For more than a century, the square served, and continues to serve, as a marketplace for all kinds of marshland products, livestock, and poultry. When a farmer had produce from the fields that he wanted to sell wholesale or retail, he would take his cart or tractor and go to the market on Sundays to sell what he could. The harvest was reserved for Sundays.
In the 1960s, early potato exports were booming, but we were required to undergo a fairly controlled and rigorous phytosanitary inspection of the tubers that the farmers harvested in the marshlands. Where were the machinery and scales placed that, for about thirty years, helped to carry out this control, necessary for export? In the Mercat square.
The stories, the people, the animals, the fairground workers, the poultry, the flowerpots and seedlings, the Can Eixut mechanical workshops, the mares at the breeding center, the secondary school, the current primary school, the enslaved prisoners… all of this has written beautiful and harsh stories. It has also created a genius lociA soul, or a link to the memory of the place. Spaces for meeting, working, and human interaction have great symbolic power, which—with current urban reforms—is often erased, forgotten, or undervalued. I write these words because at the 9th Tourism Conference, held in Sa Pobla on November 22nd, a project to renovate the Mercat square was presented, and this is the reason for this article.
The work presented and proposed for the future Mercat square will surely be functional, offering more space for pedestrians and residents, but after listening to the two architects who designed the project, my gut told me we were looking at an idea or project without its own personality, correct but cold, interchangeable with any town in Mallorca: it lacked identity. The thread connecting it to the stories I've written before had been broken. It had no element—neither symbolic nor material—that connected with the social history of the space. Once again, it seems that remembering the past or investigating the defining characteristics that have sustained us can 'limit' modernity and its practical aspects. I saw no connection anywhere. I recalled aloud in the room that people didn't just come here looking for sun and sand; what truly captivated them about us and Mallorca was our inherited authenticity.
There are many bibliographies and examples of what I'm trying to tell you. The anthropologist Marc Augé talks about how modernity tends to erase memories to create soulless and unloved 'non-places'. The architect Carme Fiol, in The memory of the marketsShe reflects on how old markets can inspire the design of squares and give them character and soul. I think we should rethink this renovation of Plaça del Mercat. It can have a better future. Personally, I don't like current public works because they tend towards homogenization and banality: benches, trees, paving, everything standardized and without symbolic references. The idea that kept running through my head on the day of the conference was: where is the sense of belonging and identity that makes us feel rooted and at home?
I was talking about the earlier genius lociThe Romans already spoke of the protective spirit of a place: a kind of 'genius' or spiritual presence that characterized a house, a forest, or a market. This is what it's about: preserving and conserving the deep character of a place, not only its physical and aesthetic aspects but also its historical memory, traditional uses, daily life, cultural values, and the stories lived there. Respecting, interpreting, and creating a contemporary yet deeply rooted space. A space that makes us proud.
In Norberg-Schulz's work, there are two central ideas that are relevant to what I've tried to share with you. First, that architecture should mean making the spirit of the place, of the space, visible. That is, the architect shouldn't create a site from scratch, but rather make visible what is already there and has always been there. And the second idea, which I understand as meaning that to inhabit is to belong to a place.
We still have time to improve the proposed project to remodel the Mercat square. And other projects that are underway as well. We will not erase the spirit of our ancestors.
