Palma.In a few weeks, the dome of the steeple of Palma Cathedral will need to be dismounted. At almost 50 metres high, work will be performed to remove the bells. Five of them - named na Picarol, la Prima, la Maitines, n'Antònia and n'Eloi - will be taken to the Lachenmeyer restoration workshop in Nördlingen in Germany. The other bells - na Bàrbara, la Mitja, la Nova (or na Pizà) and la Tèrcia will be restored here in Majorca. From May until September, therefore, the city will be without the sounds that have governed life for centuries.
The work, which will require the use of an enormous and powerful telescopic crane, is part of a broader restoration scheme that will also include part of the steeple and the cloister and which will run to a cost of 1.6 million euros. According to Enric Taltavull, the Cathedral's architect, the bells are some of the most important in Spain, and the aim of the restoration is to ensure that the bells' original sound and chime are reproduced as faithfully as possible and that the Cathedral itself is returned to its original state.
As Taltavull and the surveyor, Bartomeu Bennassar, have explained, the bells have been subjected to various changes, such as the addition in the 1950s of an iron yoke. This will be removed and a wooden one, in keeping with the original, will replace it. Meanwhile, the bells' system of electrification will be upgraded to one controlled by computer.
The most famous of the bells - n'Eloi, which rings during Corpus Christi, when a new pope is elected and appears on the Vatican balcony or when there is the death of the bishop - weighs 4'700 kilos.
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