In the Cloister of San Vicente Ferrer we evoke the speech that Antoni M. Alcover delivered at the I International Congress of the Catalan Language, in 1906 in Barcelona.
Yes, we love the Catalan language; love for the language sets our heart ablaze, it makes us do all we do. No, it is not hate for anything or anyone that moves is, we are not a negative. It is love for our motive, we are an affirmation, not an irrational affirmation, in the air, mumbling, but rather an affirmation in full conscience, mature, categorical, radical, unyielding; an affirmation of the type that does not waver, that never gives in, that never retreats for anything, where the world may turn on its head. We are the affirmation of the existence of our language and its inviolable right that cannot be legislated against to live like any of the great Romance languages, its brothers and sisters, the right to a dignified life proper to free people, the right of a monarch to reign pacifically, without obstacles of any kind, within its own borders, with all of the honours, prerogatives and pre-eminences it deserves. Yes, we love our language with all our soul.
Discurs d'obertura del I Congrés de la Llengua Catalana, 1906
Translated by Richard Mansell. Performed by Enric Garcia.
(Manacor, 1862 - Palma, 1932). Antoni M. Alcover was born February 1862, on the Santa Cirga estate, in Manacor. At fifteen years of age, he entered the diocesan seminary for ecclesiastical study, and moved to Palma. At that time, he began to get to know the main intellectuals of the time, such as Tomàs Forteza, Marià Aguiló, Miquel Costa i Llobera and Joan Alcover. In 1896 he published the first volume of the Aplec de rondaies mallorquines d’en Jordi des Racó (Collection of Majorcan folk tales by Jordi des Racó), a collection of traditional Majorcan stories which ran to 24 volumes. He travelled around Europe to train in linguistics and literature, with the aim of creating a great lexical inventory of the Catalan language. He got thousands of people involved in the work of the dictionary, which allowed him to go on to publish the Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear (Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionary), a unique work in Europe, which catalogued the language in its entirety, from its most literary to most colloquial registers, and from its oldest to its newest forms. From 1901 he published the Bolletí del Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana (Bulletin of the dictionary of the Catalan language), the first linguistic journal in Spain. In 1911, he was named the first president of the Philological Section of the Institute of Catalan Studies.
Antoni M. Alcover delivered the opening speech at the First International Conference on the Catalan Language, which was held in Barcelona in 1906 and was a great success: there were more than 3,000 participants, including the leading European figures in Romance studies from the time. As a consequence of the conference, in 1907 the Institute of Catalan Studies was created, and in 1913 the Philological Section published the “Normes ortogràfiques”, the rules for writing Catalan.
Only two cloisters of Dominicans or "Preachers" remain on the island, in Inca and Manacor. The convent was founded at the end of the 16th century: in 1576 according some sources. The building is from the start of the 17th century, and the church has a single nave with side chapels. The Roser (rosary) chapel is worthy of mention: Baroque in style, opened in 1697, its altarpiece its dedicated to the Mother of God of the Rosary and it also has paintings of the procession thanks to the victory at Lepanto of Miquel Banús, from Felanitx. The convents cloister is a noteworthy piece of Manacor's artistic heritage. It has a double porticoed gallery with low arches supported by octagonal pillars which are beautifully decorated. The lower gallery is covered with a vault with arrises, whilst the upper level has wooden beams. The original stone floor has been preserved. It was begun in 1617, but after the sale of Church lands in 1835 it was owned by the state. It has had many uses: from a telegraph office to a hall for agricultural shows. In 1936 many Republican prisoners from the area were kept there, in deplorable conditions. It is now home to the public library and other council services.
