Accommodation - Mallorca - page 368

In the Part Forana the farmsteads came to be known as possessions and were the focal
point of the agricultural economy upon which the island would largely come to depend.
The possessions were run by local managers faithful to their (frequently absentee) noble
overlords and were often well-off farmers themselves. They employed missatges (per-
manent farm labour) and jornalers (day wage labourers), both of whom generally lived
on the edge of misery. Small farm holders frequently failed to make ends meet, ceded
their holdings to the more important possessions and became jornalers .
Mallorca's connection to the seafaring trade routes of the Mediterranean ensured that it
was particularly vulnerable to the ravages of the plague, which hit the island repeatedly,
decimating the population in the process.
Crown of Aragón
On Jaume I's death in 1276, his territories were divided between his two sons, Jaume II
and Pere II; in the years that followed Mallorca was tossed between the two, a process
continued under their heirs. By 1349, the previously independent kingdom of Mallorca
was tied into the Crown of Aragón, although it retained a high degree of autonomy.
The fortunes of Mallorca, and in particular Palma, closely followed those of Bar-
celona, the Catalan headquarters of the Crown of Aragón and merchant trading hub. In
the middle of the 15th century, both cities (despite setbacks such as outbreaks of the
plague) were among the most prosperous in the Mediterranean. Palma had some 35 con-
sulates and trade representatives sprinkled around the Med. The city's trade community
had a merchant fleet of 400 vessels and the medieval Bourse, Sa Llotja, was an animated
focal point of business.
Not all was rosy. In the Part Forana farm labourers lived on the edge of starvation and
crops failed to such an extent in 1374 that people were dropping dead in the streets. Fre-
quent localised revolts, such as that of 1391 (the same year that furious workers sacked
the Call in Ciutat), were stamped out mercilessly by the army. A much greater shock to
the ruling classes was the 1521 Germania revolt, an urban working-class uprising pro-
voked largely by crushing taxes extracted from the lower classes. They forced the vice-
roy (by now Mallorca was part of a united Spain under Emperor Carlos V) to flee. In
October 1522 Carlos V sent in the army, which only reestablished control the following
March.
By then Mallorca's commercial star had declined and the coast was constant prey to
the attacks of North African pirates. The building of talayots around the island (many
still stand) is eloquent historical testimony to the problem. Some of Mallorca's most col-
ourful traditional festivals, such as Moros i Cristians in Pollença and Es Firó in Sóller