Feast on the streets of Binissalem

Binissalem came alive last weekend as locals took to the streets to celebrate the festival of Vermar.

Last weekend, residents and neighbours of Binissalem celebrated the annual festival of Vermar. The festival is a celebration in which locals get together with family and friends to dine al fresco and honour the end of the yearly grape harvest and the production of the very first barrels of wine of the season.

A feast is enjoyed as the residents of the town cook a traditional dinner of Fideus de Vermar, Majorcan noodles in a spicy broth with tender chunks of lamb, and the town council provides wine, which is served on tables organised and decorated by local families in the streets outside their homes. One bottle of the locally harvested wine is provided per four people, and tables can seat groups of up to sixty people at a time. The feast is completed with a dessert of unique Mallorcan delicacies, sugary homemade pastries brought to the table by the guests themselves.

A huge part of the event is the decoration of the tables, as each family brings their own elements to the dinner in order to ensure every table looks unique. After dinner, the beautiful `cançons de verema´ are sung, a deeply moving tradition that transports many villagers back to the past, as the songs have been sung for centuries by Mallorcans working on the wine harvest.

Prior to the feast, the streets were filled with a different kind of merriment entirely, as the Binissalem Vermar floats paraded by.

During the afternoon before the evening´s sumptuous feast, the 42^nd edition of the Binissalem Vermar enjoyed a parade of 72 floats, all very colourfully decorated. The floats were divided into 3 categories, and 27 participated in the category for most traditional Mallorcan dress, with five prizes ranging from €100 – €900. Other categories included Original (which had the same prizes on offer), and Small Floats, where prizes ranged from €100 – €500. Participants in the parade all donned traditional Mallorcan outfits, which added to the fun and bustling atmosphere.

The feast itself may seem decadent, but wine production on the island, as in other regions along the Mediterranean coast, is an integral part of the culture and is a millennial tradition which has stood the test of time, even making it through the Phylloxera epidemic in the late 19th century, in which plagues of insects fed on the vines and leaves and caused the plants to  become diseased, wiping out almost every vineyard in Europe. Despite the epidemic having occurred only 150 years ago, the Mallorcan vineyards have recovered and flourished, and are now a thriving part of an ever growing market for quality wines.