Viewpoint: Agriculture abandons the fairs

Mallorca’s farming tradition requires agricultural presence at the fairs

"You wonder why it’s taken them so long" | J. SOCIES

Andrew EdePalma16/09/2021 10:41

It’s a number of years ago now - I can’t remember when exactly - that I concluded an article about Majorca’s fairs by asking what they actually achieve. Heretical this may have sounded, and it’s not as if I’m not a great supporter of the fairs, but having attended so many I was left wondering what benefit there was for some exhibitors. I could get, and do get, stuff like local products - wines, cheeses and so on - but what about, for example, all the agricultural machinery?

Mallorca’s farming tradition requires agricultural presence at the fairs. History demands this because farming, its produce and products were principal reasons for there ever having been fairs. And so the tractors and what have you have been taken along, as they would otherwise be conspicuous by their absence.

But now, they will be absent. Some fifteen companies have decided that they will no longer exhibit. Town halls have been informed of the decision. The daddy of all farming tradition fairs, Dijous Bo in Inca, is just one that will be minus the machinery of the land. The companies say that they’ve been present for decades but have got no financial returns.
You wonder why it’s taken them so long, and I doubt that I was alone in querying why they bothered.

Out of tradition, one has to assume. But tradition has moved on - the showrooms and websites are what counts.