There’s an image of a newspaper page from 1844 that it is headlined ‘Tremenda Desgracia’. This ‘awful tragedy’ happened, the report read, “six leagues from Palma de Mallorca”. The Spanish measurement of a league had varied over the years, but by the middle of the nineteenth century they had settled on what, in today’s terms, was 6.353 kilometres. The ‘villa de Felanitx’, which the report identified as having been the location for this tragedy, was thus 39.12 kilometres from Palma, a distance which, by all accounts (or rather the lack thereof), merely heightened the tragedy and perhaps also explains why, with the exception of the people of the current-day Felanitx, the disaster of 1844 is so little known.
It was Palm Sunday, March 31, 1844. Hundreds of people had gathered for the Via Crucis of the twelve sermons, one for each of the stations of the Via Crucis. The fourth of these was at around five o’clock in the afternoon. It was for the meeting between Jesus and Mary. The priest in charge of the sermon was Simó Bordoy. It was by the church, Sant Miquel, by one particular wall which, and everyone was aware of this, wasn’t in the best of conditions. It was in fact being propped up. But, and fatefully enough, safety measures on the day were relaxed. People were allowed onto the top of the wall. Maybe the wall would have fallen down anyway, but the presence of those people made sure that it did. The death toll was staggering - 414; more than 200 others were injured. Awful tragedy it was.
People were allowed onto the top of the wall.
Simó Bordoy was among the dead. Others included the mayor of Felanitx and six councillors. They had only been sworn in hours before. Bordoy was delivering his sermon by standing on a high chair above those gathered. The procession had stopped in front of him. Four young men carried the image of the Virgin Mary. There were soldiers with spears. There was another priest, Bartomeu Oliver Capó, who was barefoot and carrying the cross.
It’s said that the sound was like thunder. The wall cracked. The next sounds were those of the awful tragedy. A local inn was converted into a hospital. The death bells tolled. Amidst the confusion and the shock, some order was applied. They began to dig in the cemetery. No one slept that night. On the morning of the first of April, the sun shone - wickedly so, as it merely illuminated detail of the tragedy. Carts were loaded with corpses. They buried them in lime in order to prevent any possible infections.
So, what happened next? It’s a very good question. While the 1844 tragedy itself was reported and documented, there is little about the response to the tragedy. It is known that, for example, there was fundraising in neighbouring Santanyi. Four people from Santanyi were among those who died. It would seem that there were dead from other municipalities - Manacor and Porreres were among them. It’s even been suggested that someone from as far away as Alaro (which would have been far away in those days) was killed.
While Felanitx was the location, this was a tragic accident that affected a much wider community - six other municipalities, it’s believed. But for all this, it would seem that there was virtual silence by way of response. Of the actions of both civil and church authorities, there is nothing on record. Bartomeu Mestre Sureda is a writer from Felanitx. Some years ago, he followed up on an article in the local press about a tragedy that occurred on November 25, 1895. There was an explosion at the munitions dump in Sant Ferran, Palma. Ninety-seven people, mostly women and girls, were killed. It was Mallorca’s worst workplace accident. Mestre didn’t disagree with that, but he wished to highlight the far greater tragedy in Felanitx. In his view, the 1844 accident was “deliberately hidden”. “It was so buried that it doesn’t appear in the majority of history books.”
The conclusion was that both Felanitx and Sant Ferran were the consequence of poor public administration. They were both failures in terms of safety. But then they were failures from the nineteenth century, when safety was easily compromised; readily, one might almost say. Safety measures at Sant Miquel Church had been relaxed. On whose authority? It was a scandal, and Mestre was surely right; it was “hidden”.
Felanitx 1844 was Mallorca’s greatest manmade disaster. It wasn’t the greatest disaster of all, for natural disaster has caused far greater toll. An estimated 5,000 perished in Palma because of ‘lo diluvi’, the great flood of October 14, 1403, though many of the deaths were caused when houses collapsed - some 1,500 of them. There again, and as for manmade disaster, there was a Mallorcan one that happened a long distance from the island. The women and girls of Sant Ferran died at a time when Spain was engaged in Cuba. The disaster of Cuba, one of the Spanish losses of 1898, claimed 600 Mallorcan lives.
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