The mysterious fire and staircase of honour at Palma town hall

The current mayor of Palma is Jaime Martínez. Short of anything untoward happening, Sr. Martínez can look forward to spending a four-year term as mayor. He may even get to be mayor for eight years, but don’t let’s speculate about that. It’s just to point out that mayors nowadays don’t undergo a rotation as rapid as was once the case.

In the first twenty years of the last century there were eighteen mayors of Palma; almost one for each year, therefore. It hadn’t always been like this. Following the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Nueva Planta decrees of the Bourbon king, Felipe V, eliminated the Kingdom of Mallorca and reformed institutions that had been in accordance with a Catalan and Aragonese model. Out went the ‘universitat’, the administrative body for the city, and in came the ‘ayuntamiento’ (’ajuntament’).

The first Palma mayor of the Bourbon era was appointed in 1718. Unsurprisingly, this was a mayor who was very much a Felipe man and of the highest noble order in Mallorca, to boot Marco Antonio Cotoner y Sureda de Vivot. His surnames alone were dripping with aristocratic blood. He was, if you like, a pro-tem mayor, one to establish this new ayuntamiento mode of operation. His successor, Diego Navarro y Jáuregui, only fleetingly held mayoral office, but then came Bernabé de Arce y Bustamante, who was mayor from 1719 to 1730.

Mayors of the eighteenth century, in general, had several-year stints, certainly equivalent to the present day. The town hall was a stable enough institution, one intended to embed the practices of Castile and thus supplant those of the one-time Crown of Aragon. The mayor was also the ‘corregidor’, a dispenser of justice. And this was the justice of Castile.

In the nineteenth century, the stability disappeared. Mayors came and then went soon after - seventy in all. A reason was the regular political upheaval, and towards the end of the century the system of the cacique had kicked in. The political bosses had a sham democracy under which posts were distributed as much by favour as anything else.

Through this revolvingdoor style of city government walked one Antoni Pou Reus. He was a member of the Liberal Party, with which - in Mallorca - businessman Joan March was associated, as was the several-times prime minister of Spain, Antoni Maura. His tenure as mayor was naturally short 1912 to 1913 - but there was sufficient time for Antoni Pou to set the wheels in motion for a legacy. This was a town hall interior design legacy: the grand stairway.

While the town hall building had some splendour, all those nobles from times past hadn’t seen fit to spend taxes on something as magnificent as the staircase. Or had they? There was a staircase, but it wasn’t as it was to be, which was perhaps just as well. This was because 130 years ago, on February 28, 1894, the town hall caught fire.

A report of the time was not complimentary. It read: “At around nine o’clock at night, the Figuera bell rang, alerting neighbours that there was a fire at the town hall. How the fire started, no one knows. But it once again demonstrated how poorly organised the municipal fire service was. During this fire, among other things, the painting of the Guardian Angel was burned.”

The fire had originated in the council chamber. In all, 62 portraits and paintings with religious themes were lost. Items of historical interest were destroyed, carved shields above the doors were damaged beyond any possible repair, walls, windows and balconies were affected. If it was ever established what (or who) caused the fire, then the records are silent.

In the years leading up to the incident, there was a project under the municipal architect, Manuel Chapulí, for a radical renovation. The nobles (and the subsequent mayors), or so it would appear, had not gone in for lavish interior decoration. It was the exterior that mattered - the view that the citizens had. Work had been carried out piecemeal, and so Chapulí was called on to give the interior a sense of harmony. But there were dissenting voices, in particular to the plan to eliminate the central gallery of the building’s facade.

The project was put on hold because of the conflict the proposals were arousing. And then there was the fire. Was it just an accidental coincidence or had there been more to it? If anyone knew, they weren’t saying.

In the end, the whole of the interior had to be rebuilt. This took several years, and by the time that Antoni Pou Reus became mayor, it was evident that access to his offices was unworthy of mayoral status. At a meeting in spring 1913, he apparently banged the table and said: “On Monday the work will begin.” Fourteen years later, the work was completed.

The town hall building had required a staircase of honour. Inspired by design of the Second French Empire, the town hall now had it.