Bunyols and the Nit de les Verges: 21 October in Mallorca
In mid-October, an awning appears on certain street corners in Mallorca's villages and in the neighbourhoods of Palma. It wasn't there the week before. Beneath it sit a wide pan of oil, a floured table and a pair of quick hands. They pinch off a piece of dough, push a thumb through it and drop it into the oil. The smell arrives before the stall comes into view. In Mallorca, that can mean only one thing: les Verges are on their way.
Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins
On 21 October, the church calendar remembers Saint Ursula. According to medieval legend, she was a British princess who made a pilgrimage to Rome with a retinue of maidens. On the journey home, all of them were martyred. Tradition settled on the figure of eleven thousand. One of the most often repeated explanations is that there were eleven, and that the number grew through a misreading of ancient inscriptions. In Mallorca, the feast ended up taking its name from them: les Verges, "the Virgins".
What the island has kept of that story isn't found on altars. It's out in the street, on the night before, and in a paper bag with sugar at the bottom.
The Nit de les Verges: serenades beneath the balcony
The night of 20 to 21 October was the revetla, the eve of the feast. Groups of young men set out with guitars and bandurrias to sing serenades beneath the balconies of the girls they were courting. If the serenade went down well, the door opened. Inside, bunyols and a glass of vi dolç, sweet wine, were waiting.
In some towns it became almost a competition. Manacor Town Council has gathered in a study local press reports from much of the twentieth century, describing musical groups vying to be the most listened-to of the night.
Few serenades remain today. The custom, however, has found a new setting. In many schools, boys give their classmates a clavell vermell, a red carnation, and the girls return the gesture by treating them to bunyols. The form has changed, but the exchange is the same.
Bunyols de forat: potato, sweet potato and a hole
The bunyol de les Verges is not the light, choux-style fritter known elsewhere in Spain. The dough is made with flour, boiled potato, moniato (sweet potato), baker's yeast and egg, and in many homes a little saïm, Mallorcan lard, too. It is left to rest until it rises. Then comes the gesture that defines it: a pinch of dough, the thumb opening the hole, the hot oil. It comes out golden and irregular, and is rolled in sugar.
Its origins probably lie in Arab cuisine and its tradition of fried dough with honey. In Mallorca, the earliest references date back to the sixteenth century.
Patisseries also offer versions filled with custard, cream or chocolate truffle, which gain ground every year. But the bunyol of les Verges, the one that has always been made, is the bunyol de forat: the one with the hole, and no filling.
By the kilo, from stalls that only open in autumn
Few people still make them at home, much like figues seques, Mallorca's dried figs. Mallorcans buy them by the kilo from bakeries and seasonal stalls that open in October and disappear in November. This is not just a village tradition. In Palma, neighbourhoods such as Es Fortí and Coll d'en Rabassa have their long-standing stalls, and the queues on the 20th are as long as in any square in the Part Forana, as the rest of the island is known. Many are family businesses, with recipes passed down from mothers to daughters. Schools and offices order trays for the 21st.
They are eaten hot, ideally standing up, right next to the stall. An hour later, they're not quite the same.
Les Verges from Port d'Andratx
October in the island's south-west keeps a calendar of its own. The sea is still warm, and the llampuga boats return to the quay every morning. The afternoons grow shorter, but the cold has not yet arrived. On afternoons like these, a bag of warm bunyols fits in naturally: a stroll along the waterfront as the sun sinks over the harbour mouth, then the Mon Port spa to round off the day.
Les Verges has no procession and no official programme. It lives on in a custom repeated every year without anyone announcing it. As the little rhyme still heard in schools goes: "Avui són les Verges, bunyols a menjar", or "Today is les Verges, time for bunyols."
