The poetic cavalcade in Palma

The Festival of the Standard has been described as Europe’s oldest national party, the nation being that of Mallorca.

This is a modern description, as 13th-century thinking wasn’t that of a nation. Mallorca became a kingdom, the standard bearer for which was Jaume I of Aragon.

The festival retains some sense of ritual from centuries past. Its most ‘modern’ element is less than one hundred years old. Pere d’Alcàntara Penya’s poem ‘Sa Colcada’ (The Cavalcade) tells how the festival once used to be.

First recited in 1935, it was to be thirty more years before it reappeared, since when it has come to be interpreted in dance and song. The Mallorca School of Music and Dance and Miquela Lladó of Música Nostra offer their representation of the poem and therefore of the old festival.