Mancor de la Vall: A quiet village with a big heart for art, music, and endless festivities!

Mancor de la Vall springs to life at the end of a gently winding road, which, if you continue on your journey, eventually leads you steadily onwards and upwards to the ‘Sanctuari de Santa Llúcia’, offering salvation along with a wonderful vista across the countryside from its lofty, parochial perch.
Peaceful and quiet it may well be, yet the local community of Mancor de la Vall is far from retiring or remotely boring. With literally no passing traffic, the village is indeed by its geographical location alone, the very end of the line, with no constant caravan of passing traffic to distract or detract from the big, wide world beyond! Mancor is not somewhere you might pass through by chance, it’s a definite destination!

Being such a small, somewhat isolated township, you might be tempted to think the local community is perhaps starved of culture and entertainment. Well, think again - you couldn’t be more wrong! To compensate for its ‘off the radar’ location, the entertainment, arts and cultural committee of Mancor de la Vall specialises in creating its own endless programme of amusement and entertainment, with extensive and imaginative events rich in both traditional and contemporary activities. The locals just love their football along with their art, possibly in that precise order, and encourage all forms of opportunity for self expression and life enriching pursuits at every turn. In fact, Mancor de la Vall probably holds more fiestas than any other municipality in Mallorca. They’re seriously known for it! And locals even joke that they would more than likely throw a party each time an airplane flies over!

With their own personal fiestas celebrating everything from the humble snail through arts and crafts, to olives, mushrooms and recently artisan beer, to almost anything else you could possibly think of, Mancor de la Vall has picked up on another island wide tradition – the Nit d l’Art (night of art) which it celebrated with it’s own particular twist, on Saturday 19th October.

The church square was bustling with various stalls displaying home-made jewellery and an assortment of various artisan crafts. Photographic exhibitions, showcasing local talent, featured the twirling of traditional dancers along with an innovative, highly creative insight which explored village architecture, brilliantly highlighting ancient doorways graced with the bounty of interesting knobs and knockers!
Notably, being such a small municipality, the ‘art’ part was a bit thin on the ground compared to Palma and some of the larger, more celebrated towns across the island who specialise and power-up their artistic prowess to the max. Yet the natural talent on display in the village was out and proud!
Children’s activities were also super popular with a retro play area set up encouraging vintage, wooden toys, a far cry from the digital dream-play scenarios so currently seen these days on i-pads etc. A refreshing nod to the past. And the kids seemed to love the nostalgic take. So different!

However, to compensate for the obvious downscale on the art front, Mancor de L’Art 24 rather cleverly switched up the vibe and turned the occasion into a cultural celebration to include all forms of ‘the arts’, creating an event which exhibited throughout the entire village with a passionate nod towards its much-loved music. Performers from an eclectic genre were given the opportunity to shine, with a programme of performers, singers, and enthusiastic bands who got louder and louder as the evening progressed, not surprisingly turning a nit de l’art into a mini music fest.
But then that’s Mancor de la Vall for you. They really do love a party!