Axel Blazejczak, Saliendo para cazar/entresacar cabras / Off to fetch wild goats (with cameraman Brian Pollard), 1977 

 

p. 298 in Eivissa-Ibiza: Island Out of Time / La isla de antaño (Barbary Press, 2005) 

Image/text published in Pacha Magazine no. 31, July 2010, p. 68

 

In recent decades Es Vedrà has become the essential icon for New Age Ibiza, but long before tourism and hippies came along, local farmers had found a rather more practical use for the offshore colossus. Here we see it as the looming backdrop during the filming of a scene in Nacer y morir en Ibiza, a 15-minute documentary shot by Canadian photographer and screenprinter Brian Pollard. The film, whose title echoes Elliot Paul’s Life and Death of a Spanish Town, explores various aspects of island folklore, and in this scene we witness a group of fishermen about to set off for the annual cull of Vedrà billy-goats. During three visits each year (two over Easter and one in early August) about two dozen older bucks would be removed from the semi-wild herd that grazes the rock-strewn slopes. The island’s name derives from the Berber word for mountain (wadrar), and scrambling round its vertiginous cliffs is not perhaps the easiest of herding tasks. Those sent to represent the ten families who share this unusual pasturage were also filmed solemnly counting their rosary beads during the crossing. In this black-and-white still by German-born resident Axel Blazejczak the fishermen are cleaning and folding away their nets to provide room in the tiny llaüts for the live cargo, a tableau which combines the new, the old and the shadowy enigmatic. The still photographer was also a keen drummer, and wrote his musical escapades up in a spirited memoir entitled Ibiza Jazz Quartet (2005, Spanish version only). Pollard’s colour documentary, with a script adapted from Joan Marí Tur ‘Botja’, can be viewed later this year at the fully-restored Can Curt in the centre of Sant Agustí. It will form part of a wide-ranging exhibition of photographs and artwork organized by the Es Vedrà Nature Reserve (Reserves Naturals des Vedrà, es Vedranell i els illots de Ponent, 11 Dec. 2010 to 9 Jan. 2011). 

 

 (Martin Davies, with thanks to Brian Pollard and Helena Ribas Marí.) 

 

(Comment added in 2021) Since 2010 this extraordinary short documentary, among the finest ever made about traditional Ibiza, has been available for viewing on YouTube at -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvPbFPQaRWU