Traditions industry: Mallorcan food is cultural heritage

Let me quote the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Its website has a section dedicated to Gastronomy, and this section starts thus: “Gastronomy is much more than food. It reflects the culture, heritage, traditions and sense of community of different peoples ... Gastronomy tourism is emerging as an important protector of cultural heritage.”

Ok, so Tesco must have felt a need to treat culture as being characterised by the likes of monuments, but the findings from those surveyed - a desire to immerse themselves in authentic flavours; seeking out local street foods - indicated that they were obeying the general principles for what the UNWTO classifies as gastronomy. And I’m not in the least bit surprised. Food and culture go together. They are intermeshed, indivisible. For God’s sake don’t try and tell the French that they aren’t. Or the Spanish. Or the Italians.

Mallorca has an increasingly strong traditions industry. Curiously, given that many traditions faded into the background during the Franco epoch, the regime was instrumental in the industralisation of traditions, and primarily for the benefit of tourism. There was, as an example, a promotional leaflet from the 1960s which had as its cover a drawing of Algaida and its Cossier folk dancers.

The current-day industry, most certainly not confined to tourists, is no better represented than the island’s gastronomy, something which the regime had little interest in promoting. Of course it didn’t. Those were the days when the dominant British tourist market demanded as much British as possible but was prepared to be enticed by something known as ‘international’, so long as it preferably included prawns drowning in Thousand Island dressing.

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For Franco’s tourism ministers such as Manuel Fraga, there were traditions that were useful and ones that were not. Into the former category fell a bloke dressed as a demon together with a group of other blokes in traditional garb who were prancing around a square in Algaida and performing dances that weren’t a million miles away from those of Morris Dancers. The British could get their heads around that, whereas they couldn’t when it came to the not-useful traditions, e.g. food. Why would you smother tomato on some toasted bread when there were baked beans available? Oh, and with butter, please.

We have moved on. A Bulletin website survey can therefore find that getting on for 30% of respondents favour frit mallorquí above other Mallorcan dishes, with around a quarter opting for pa amb oli and 15% tumbet. Food is island cultural heritage. They amount to the same thing. They are part of a traditions industry which has been made easier to develop because much of it continued to reside in the collective memory or just never went away but needed intervention in order to ensure its survival and indeed to allow it to flourish. The skill of the dry-stone workers, the ‘margers’, is an example.

But above all, there is the food which, on occasion, can clash oddly with modernity. I recall, for instance, there having been a flyer in the letter-box for a restaurant that was promoting “traditional Mallorcan cuisine” (well before the pandemic, I might add). This wasn’t just for the restaurant but for a home-delivery service. “We will cook for you and bring our specialities to your home.” Which is sort of what you expect with a home-delivery service, but traditional Mallorcan cuisine being ferried around in cardboard containers covered with aluminium on the back of a Honda 125 didn’t sound all that traditional. Was the delivery person going to do a spot of ball de bot outside the front door prior to handing over the pork and cabbage?

The crux of all this is how contemporary society handles and manages its traditions and its cultural heritage - and not just food. Politically, the Balearics are about to have culture grafted onto tourism (and sport). This will be a ministry in the new government. On the face of it, a combination of culture and tourism make sense. But an argument for not doing so is that tourism has the capacity to debase culture, to mould it to its needs. That was often how it was in Franco’s days.

I don’t buy this argument, especially not when the island’s traditions industry has been as resurgent as it has been, when it has resurrected and established a fabulous wine trade, when it has been insistent on maintaining architectural features, when it has spawned a gastronomy that values a peasant cuisine of old. The island’s culture is doing just fine, with or without tourism.