On August 24, Sóller's normally placid square is transformed into a Breughelesque inferno, with fire pouring from the sky as a raucous legion of sharp-horned, frenzied demons – or dimonis – is unleashed upon the streets.

For a brief hour or two, the youth of the town have free run of the square, startling the populace with fireworks and flames, chasing after onlookers whose terror, feigned and unfeigned, only seems to egg them on.

It’s a scene repeated in town squares throughout Mallorca – in Alaró, Algaida, Artá and Sa Pobla and, further afield, throughout Catalonia on saints’ days.

Dimonis have also participated in folk dances since at least the Middle Ages in Mallorca, but they've been enjoying a revival since the 1970s.

Demon masks at the Dimoni Museum in the town of Sa Pobla. They escape from the confines of the colourful exhibition space when the town’s youth run riot during the festivals of St Anthony in January

Though the dimoni bears all the hallmarks of medieval iconography – from horns to tridents and thrashing tails – it would be wrong to associate the tradition with a purely Christian conception of the devil

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Go to Sóller in August and have a hell of a time as fire-wielding demons take to the streets.

"In the night they made such a din that the whole of that place seemed to be shaken by an earthquake, and the demons, as if breaking the four walls of the dwelling, seemed to enter through them, coming in the likeness of beasts and creeping things; altogether the noises of the apparitions, with their angry ragings, were dreadful.” So wrote St Athanasius of the torments visited upon St Anthony as the devil sent his minions to do their evil work to break the pious resolution of the popular fourth-century Egyptian hermit.

He could almost have been writing about the main square of Sóller in late August. For here, to celebrate the feast of the town’s own patron saint, Bartholomew, on August 24, the normally placid public space is transformed into a Breughelesque inferno, with fire pouring from the sky as a raucous legion of sharp-horned, frenzied demons–or dimonis–is unleashed upon the streets. For a brief hour or two, the youth of the town have free run of the square, startling the populace with fireworks and flames, chasing after onlookers whose terror, feigned and unfeigned, only seems to egg them on.

It’s a scene repeated in town squares throughout Mallorca–in Alaró, Algaida, Artá and Sa Pobla and, further afield, throughout Catalonia on saints’ days – most notably on the feast of St Anthony, but also during certain local festivals.

But, though the dimoni himself bears all the hallmarks of medieval iconography–from horns to tridents and thrashing tails–it would be wrong to associate the tradition with a purely Christian conception of the devil, say most scholars. According to poet and writer Alexandre Ballester, “the dimoni has nothing to do with theology. The dimoni is deeply rooted in Mediterranean society and is a picaresque trickster, and, like any good trickster he’s often a victim of his own tricks.”

Barcelona-born Mallorca resident Carlos Garrido agrees. “The Mallorcan dimoni springs from the belief in earth spirits who, with the arrival of Christianity, take on the form of devils,” he says in his book Mallorca Mágica. “The dimoni represents the most basic instincts, the bestial and the repressed. This is apparent in his deformed, grotesque face and the fact that he’s hairy and dark. Nature itself is seen as something demonic, unexplainable and threatening. His goat horns, his bat wings, his reddish colours (blood and fire), green hue (the colour of lizards) hint at this. He’s composed of all the animals we consider as inferior beasts.”

The phenomenon of the dimoni, then, like any good carnival, is a chance to give onself up, if only for a moment, to one’s own repressed nature, and challenge the strait-jacket of social convention. The public place is the arena where social and political hierarchies are briefly suspended or inverted. “The dimonis function as a social catharsis,” says Carlos Garrido, “allowing people to do things that might otherwise be frowned upon–running after young women, lifting skirts. It’s an effective and time-honoured tradition of shaking off social pressures for a short time.”

According to influential Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, who studied the origins and development of popular festivities from the Middle Ages onwards, all those participating are “considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age.” Bakhtin describes the carnival as when the standard themes of society are twisted, mutated, and inverted, and argues that popular culture in early-modern Europe, with its masks and monsters and feasts and games and dramas and processions, mocked those in authority and parodied official ideas of society, history and fate. Some see this as subversive; others as the elite’s cunning ploy to allow the masses to let off steam and leave the masters alone.
Another central aspect of carnival is its attitude to the body, which Bakhtin called the “grotesque”. Emphasis is placed on body parts that can reach out, “such as the nose,
the belly, phallus and breasts.”

Mallorca’s dimoni’s clearly fit the bill. Take Sóller’s devils and their monstrous pointed noses, or their cruel, curling horns. Or take a trip to the town of Sa Pobla’s museum dedicated to dimonis. Some have vicious tusks, others outstretched drooling tongues, some have superlative whiskers, yet others wicked teeth, towering horns, enlarged chins and ears. But for all that, they don’t particularly inspire dread.

“We’ve a great affection for the dimonis here in Sa Pobla,” explains cheery Margarita Rayó, who leads visitors through the colourful exhibition devoted to the tradition in this Mallorcan town. “Even if they do carry pokers and forks to stoke the fires and run after people,” she adds, before breaking into an eerie, melodic folk song.

“The dimoni is actually quite naive and simple,” says Carlos Garrido. “He’s less intelligent than a beast. Just like an animal, he’s a prisoner of his most base instincts, instints he’s incapable of repressing. So on the one hand, he inspires fear, but on the other hand, laughter. The dimoni is clumsy, ugly and a half-beast. Mocking the dimoni is quite easy.” For this writer, the dimoni’s origins “are to be found in elemental spirits who might have possessed great powers over the material world” yet like our ancestors “were prisoners of their instincts.

“Tradition may endow the dimoni with everything the people reject or consider inferior,” he goes on. “But not necesarily “bad”–which is why the people let the dimonis out for a few hours.” Mallorcan dimonis, he agrees, are related to their counterparts in Catalonia, and they appear on the island in historical records from the 15th century, accompanying St Bartholemew on the Corpus Christi processions. In Catalonia, mentions of the dimoni go back even further. For example, in 1150, they danced at the wedding feast of the Count of Barcelona, Ramón Berenguer, and the Princess Peronella, daughter of the king of Aragon. Catalan scholars trace their origin to medieval street theatre where spoken dances represented the struggle of good versus evil. Often the dimonis would recite stairical verses mocking figures from public life.

Dimonis have also participated in folk dances since at least the Middle Ages in Mallorca. One of the best-known celebrations is the Cossiers Dance of Algaida, a popular folk dance consisting of six men and one woman, accompanied by a demon, all dancing to the rhythms of the traditional flabiol wood flute. The dance is performed on the eve of the Feast of Saint James in July, and follows a strict route known as a quadrat. Throughout the medieval period dimonis were used to keep dancers in line, say some scholars, while others see the presence of the woman as representing the soul in battle with evil, personified in the dimoni.

Dimonis are also present in records of other religious festivities and state functions from the 15th century, gaining importance as the cult of St Anthony develops, right up to the 20th century when the tradition begins to wane, only to make a comeback in the 1970s.

Since then, dimoni groups have sprung up throughout Mallorca and Catalonia. In Sóller, locals spend three months preparing for their big night out dressed as devils on August 24, and sell t-shirts to raise funds. The group is linked to others throughout the island and in Catalonia in a network that helps other villages set up their own dimoni festivals. In 2002, for instance, the town of Santa Margalida welcomed its first dimonis, thanks to the help of the dimonis from the town of Alaró.

Whatever the origins of the dimonis–folk spirits, as an incarnation of evil, a mix of both or just an excuse for subversive carousing–they seem set to remain a part of Mallorca’s fun-filled fiesta calendar, with more and more participants every year. And it’s no surprise. As Margarita Rayó chuckles, at Sa Pobla’s dimoni museum: “There’s a little bit of a dimoni in all of us.”

When:	The Nit de Foc, or Night of Fire, takes place in Sóller on or around August 24
Where:	The Town Square
Web:	www.esclatabutzes.com/
	For details on the Sa Pobla Dimoni Museum see our Places to Go section
		Where