Certain Sant Antoni activities earlier this week did have the necessary authorisation, such as the blessings in Pollensa and Puerto Pollensa and the demons setting fire to the church bell tower in Muro. Others did not have authorisation. But they gathered in Sa Pobla’s Plaça Major anyway for a spot of ximbomba playing and glosa reciting, despite the town hall having hoped that they wouldn’t.
And then there was the pine. The climb having been banned, a tree was nevertheless hauled through the streets to the Plaça Vella, the location for the event. By comparison with pines of the past, it was comparatively easy to manoeuvre. It wasn’t a twenty-metre pine, which is the required height.
Easy to manoeuvre, but even so, a pine tree of less than the required height being taken through the streets seemingly failed to attract the attention of “authorities” until it arrived in the square, where some one hundred people had gathered to look at it. The police finally arrived, asked everyone to move on and were then left with the problem of what to do with a tree lying in a square.
Could have been worse, I suppose. Someone might have taken a cockerel along as well. Cockerels for putting on top of the tree are not subject to a temporary ban; they are banned outright.