Today, giants are the protagonists of many civic celebrations. Their origin, however, was religious, within the context of Corpus Christi. The most important ancient feast of Christendom was instituted in Europe in the 13th century. It was set on the calendar 60 days after Easter Sunday to venerate 'the body of Christ,' personified in the consecrated host. Initially, it took place inside churches, but from the 14th century onward, it moved into the streets in the form of a procession. Attention then turned to men in costumes and on stilts who recreated episodes from sacred history with the aim of making it known to the illiterate population. Very soon, those actors became giants. The first one in the West dates from 1424 and was built in Barcelona. It was a replica of Goliath, the Philistine giant whom David, the future king of Israel, captured with a powerful slingshot. It already had the characteristic rigid shell that encases the man wearing it. In the Balearic Islands, the appearance of enormous anthropomorphic figures occurred two centuries later. The first is documented in Sóller in 1630 and the second in Sineu in 1653, the latter already integrated into a local festival, that of Sant Roc. The first Mallorcan giant whose name we know, Puput, dates from 1762 and is from Sant Llorenç. And in Menorca, the oldest giants are those of Maó. They arrived rented in 1934 from Barcelona to liven up the festivities of the Virgen de Gracia – the City Council would eventually buy the figures, which would not be given names (Tomeu and Guida) until 1992. In the Pitiusas Islands, however, the giant tradition was entirely nonexistent.

Francoism did not disappear with the dictator's death. The fact that around fifty names of Francoists remain on the streets of the Balearic Islands is not a worrying legacy. Nor is it—although it is striking enough—that one can still see the occasional yoke and arrows symbol.

In Mallorca, during the Civil War, the joy of the business owners was summed up in the phrase, "If this is war, let there never be peace." In July 1936, the island suddenly fell into the hands of the insurgent forces, who did not hesitate to take advantage of its factories to cope with the war effort. At that time, all the important industrial areas of the State (Basque Country, Catalonia, and Valencia) were under the control of the legitimate government. In the first months of the conflict, Mallorcan factories suffered significant difficulties due to the disruption of communications and the lack of raw materials. However, by the end of 1936, trade relations were revived, and on January 19, 1937, the Balearic Industry Mobilization Commission was created. This body decreed the militarization of Mallorca's secondary sector for military production. The measure affected factories producing footwear, leather goods, and textiles, as well as metalworking foundations and mechanical engineering workshops.

"Spaniards: Franco... is dead." With these words, amidst tears, the then-president of the regional government, Carlos Arias Navarro, announced on television what everyone already knew: the dictator's death, in the early hours of November 20, 1975. It was the 'biological fact' of his passing, as it was called then. We remember how that event was experienced in the Balearic Islands 50 years ago.

This October marks 20 years since a historic event: the start of the demolition of Portocristo's first Francoist monument, during the term of Antoni Pastor (PP). Around noon on October 7, 2005, workers from the company Melchor Mascaró SA began erecting scaffolding to gradually dismantle the coats of arms and figures with some heritage value, before proceeding to demolish the stone structure of the monument located next to the Yacht Club. At 2:00 PM, the first hammer blows began to sound.

It was October 1975. Franco was dying, and so was his regime, although it would take almost two years for it to give way to a democratic system. Precisely at that moment, like a kind of swansong, Franco's regime took its final steps, with demonstrations against Europe protesting the death sentences imposed on two members of ETA and three from the Anti-Franco Revolutionary Front (FRAP). It is now fifty years since the mobilizations, also in the Balearic Islands, that were fostered by the "búnker," the most intransigent sector of Franco's regime.

In 1972, Franco was still alive, and Catalina Perelló, from Manacor, was 10 years old. One of her fondest memories of the end of that summer is the celebrations at the two fascist monuments in Portocristo on September 4th. "They were just another attraction, entirely folkloric. They became more important than the Sant Pere or Carme festivals. Most people came not for ideological reasons, but to enjoy the pomp of the uniformed parades."

It was the final blow to Franco's censorship—the dictator died only a few months later—although it continued during the Transition and until the consolidation of democracy. Fifty years ago, in August 1975, the Mallorcan magazine Court It was seized under a law—the Fraga Law of 1966, named after its author, then-Minister Manuel Fraga—that supposedly granted greater freedom to the media. However, it also provided for repression if they published anything the regime disliked. It was the only case of a Mallorcan publication seized by the dictatorship, and the incident resonated throughout Spain.