Nostalgic fans of Portocristo's 'Cara al sol'

PalmIn 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."

The chosen date referred to the day in 1936 when Captain Bayo's Republican troops re-embarked for Barcelona. Almost three weeks later, their mission to recapture the island from the insurgents had failed. This was due to poor planning, the incursion of the Italian air force supervised by the boastful and bloodthirsty Count Rossi, and the lack of real interest of the Republican government. According to the calculations of historians Gonzalo Berger and Manuel Aguilera, in the famous Battle of Mallorca, around 5,280 Republicans encountered a resistance of around 4,000 men. On the anti-fascist side, there were 972 casualties (with 372 fatalities) and on the other, 1,025 (with 116 fatalities).

A year later, the Manacor City Council declared September 4th a holiday to replace Corpus Christi. For the occasion the Falange of the Marquis Alfonso de Zayas promoted Portocristo (popularly contested as Puertorojo) a monument in memory of "those who died in the campaign against the invading Reds." It was erected at the tip of Pelats, next to the Yacht Club. It was a set of two pieces of stone from Porreres, resembling two columns, 17 meters high. The upper part was crowned by the figure of a double-headed imperial eagle, holding the coat of arms of Spain. It also contained the emblems of the Falange and Requeté (a Carlist paramilitary organization) and Renovación Española and Acción Popular, the two republican parties that joined the 1936 coup d'état. The design was by Antoni Parietti, then an engineer for the Provincial Council. The work was partly subsidized by the sale of stamps, which quickly sold out.

Monument War

That memorial was born amidst fierce controversy. This is according to historian Antoni Tugores, author of the book Manacor. The war at home (Documenta Balear, 2006): "The military were outraged to see that the monument had no reference to the army and that all the prominence of the 'victory' of September 4 was for the Falangists. They felt excluded. The captain general even imposed two fines on the day of the inauguration; and the other was for thespeaker, for having offered the microphone to another speaker after the final speech given by the same captain general."

In 1958, twenty-one years later, the military made up for their anger. They erected their own monument to Portocristo in the form of an imposing concrete cross. Pins, Joan Amer Avenue and Son Servera road. The place, which would become known as Monument Square, had a strong symbolic meaning. acts of commemoration. The sidewalks of Avenida dels Pins were packed with neighbors eager to see the uniformed men parade down to the other monument at the tip of Els Pelats. People, however, were already slowing down, probably to avoid the capamuntes on the way back."

This woman from Manacor was one of the few who, with her family, would walk the entire route. "At the tip of the Pelats a mass was said and the hymn of the Falange was sung Facing the sun, with his arm outstretched. I didn't know what that was about. My parents didn't give me any explanations either. Still, I was happy because, at the end of the events, the people from the Yacht Club gave us lemon popsicles." As an adult, Perelló discovered the meaning of those festivities. He read Twenty days of war, by Tomeu Ferrer (Documenta Balear, 2005). "September 4th," he notes, "was the opportunity for the old glories of Franco's regime to make their presence felt and to make their status clear to everyone."

Exaltation from 'Above'

Since its inception, the Manacor weekly Arrives, the regime's propaganda organ, conducted exhaustive coverage of the day's celebrations. In 2013, art historian Lourdes Melis Gomila made a cast of thirty copies for a study entitled The fascist victory festivities in Portocristo (1938-1960). "Arrives –she states– she was concerned with giving instructions to those in attendance. The Falangists had to march dressed in the appropriate uniform." For the Women's Section, the orders were clear: "The bouquet of flowers you place at the foot of the monument to the fallen [at Punta de los Pelados] must be accompanied, Mallorcan woman, by a prayer for the prayer for the."

From August Arrives had already announced preparations for the festival. Initially, these were austere events given the general poverty of the time. But things changed starting in the 1940s. "For several days," Melis notes, "there were parades of trumpets and marching bands, various sporting activities, a maritime procession with torch-lighting, folk dances, fireworks displays, and even air displays." The weekly magazine never tired of recalling the official narrative of the event, tinged with Spanish nationalism. "They speak of the Republicans in very derogatory terms, considering them barbarians and accusing them of being criminals, murderers, and atheists."

The landing site of Bayo's men had been founded in 1888 as an agricultural colony in El Carmen. Over time, it would become known as Portocristo, based on a 13th-century legend that spoke of the arrival, after a storm, of a ship carrying the image of the Holy Christ, which was eventually offered to the parish as a votive offering. "His figure," the researcher affirms, "was claimed to be responsible for guiding the insurgents in expelling the 'reds'. There were years when a collective pilgrimage was made to transport the Holy Christ of Manacor to Portocristo. For the occasion, the streets were decorated with flowers. That spectacle was presided over by Bishop Josep Miralles and all the authorities. Among the attendees were also people from other towns in Mallorca."

Terra Lliure Attack

After Franco's death in 1975, the commemorations of September 4th began to decline. However, in 1984 the magazine Full page It included a photograph of a hundred Falangists wearing blue shirts and raising their arms to the sound of Facing the sun in front of the Club Náutico monument. In 1986 the publication Manacor region also echoed the celebration, which on that occasion was led by Juan Bonet Colomar, better known as Comrade Bonet. A native of Ibiza and a former member of Franco's Guard, he had been appointed territorial leader of the Falange in 1978.

In the early hours of May 23, 1989, the gigantic concrete cross on Avenida dels Pins was detonated by Terra Lliure, an armed pro-independence organization founded in 1978. This was the second attack the group had carried out in Mallorca. The first was on February 27 at the Palma Tax Office. In both cases, there were no injuries, only material damage. The explosion in Portocristo was in response to the attack on the TV3 repeater in Alfàbia, carried out on April 22 by Jaime Martorell Mir (1924–2009), a former member of the Blue Division and founder of the anti-Catalanist group Centro Cultural Mallorquín in 1978. Two months later, the young independence activist Macià Manera, from Montuïri, was arrested and tortured, accused of belonging to Terra Lliure (a free-market party). He would later serve three years in prison.

Journalist Sebastià Sansó confirms that the September 4th celebrations continued until the early 1990s. The removal of the two Francoist monuments in Portocristo began before the first State Law of Historical Memory, passed in 2007 by the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. "In 2003," says historian Antoni Tugores, "at the suggestion of the parish priest, another monument that had stood in Manacor's Plaça de Weyler since 1939 was demolished. The mayor at the time was Miquel Riera, from the Liberal Alternative of Manacor (ALM), who would be replaced that same year by the... the board supported an initiative by the PSM (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) to also take over the port memorials and did not hesitate to push it forward." In 2005, the Els Pins Avenue complex was demolished, and in 2006, the Yacht Club was demolished. A plaza was built in the former, and an anchor was placed in the latter. "Those municipal decisions," Tugores concludes, "didn't generate any controversy. Today, with the far right unleashed, there would be clashes."