The postEaster parties more popular than ever

There is a greater concentration of the pancaritat pilgrimages/fiestas in northern Mallorca than elsewhere

on the island. Alcudia, Campanet, Muro, Pollensa and Sa Pobla all have a pancaritat, the pilgrimages being to religious sites such as the oratory in Crestatx.

Sa Pobla’s celebration, always on the Tuesday following Easter, is the biggest of all, the participation growing year by year, as it is for the others. In Pollensa, where the pancaritat is always at the Puig Maria sanctuary on Easter Monday, the Obreria, the entity that is responsible for maintenance, had reckoned

on needing one hundred rations of arròs brut. By the Saturday, 180 tickets had been sold; proceeds are for work at the sanctuary.

The pancaritats are simple affairs - pilgrimage, followed by mass, folk dance, lunch and some entertainment for the kids. Riotous occasions they are not, though in the past there have been some issues in Muro. The ‘quintos’, who this year are the ‘06’ quintos because they were born in 2006, caused

some problems a few years ago. The police and town hall had to give them a stern talking-to; the pancaritat is not an occasion for drunken antics. When is?

These celebrations have more and more become events for all ages, with the quintos having been given an increasingly central role. This is so in Campanet, where the pancaritat is over two days Easter Monday and Tuesday - and in effect starts and finishes with the quintos: they sing the ‘goigs’

(songs of joy) prior to the procession on Monday morning and take up the challenge of the pine climb late on Tuesday afternoon.

The word quintos now applies to young people when reaching the age of majority. The origin of the word, which translates as a fifth, refers to the discriminatory system of recruitment to the army first initiated during the reign of Juan II of Castile in the fifteenth century - one in every five males had to serve in the army.