Gustav von Estorff, Hanging the sausages / Colgando las sobrasadas, Can Joan Rieró, San Vicente, 1933

Gustav von Estorff, Votive sausages / Butifarras de ofrenda, San Agustín, 1933

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Images pp. 43/46 of Eivissa-Ibiza: Island Out of Time / La isla de antaño (Barbary Press, 2005) 

Image/text published in Pacha Magazine no. 29, August 2010, p. 49

These rare photographs taken in very different parts of Ibiza bear witness to little-known aspects of the annual matanza, a pig-killing feast held in each and every farmhouse. Family and neighbours would come together on such occasions to enjoy a lordly spread, unstopping wine flagons and sharing stories and laughter around the winter hearth, with disguised youths providing mummer-like entertainment. Ses matances, as they are known in the Balearics, lie at the heart of traditional life and, like Christmas elsewhere, were eagerly awaited, each house having its own set day between Martinmas (November 11th) and February. Proceedings commenced at first light with the sharpening of knives, followed by blood-curdling protests and hours of hard work as the carcass was singed, scraped, dismembered, and transformed into cuts of pork and mincemeat. The latter was mixed with paprika before being stuffed into entrails (rinsed twelve times, three with a lemon-and-orange mix) to produce the characteristic red sobrasadas. These were then suspended from long canes or nails hammered into rafters, still visible in many farmhouses, to complete the natural curing process. The rest of the pork was used for the frita de matances (matanza fry-up), one of the many emblematic dishes of the day – breakfast was buñuelos and fried fish. A second kind of sausage, the somewhat thicker, near-black botifarra, was made from blood drained off at the sacrificial hour. In former times the best of these highly-prized, curly sausages were auctioned off in front of the church, proceeds being directed to masses for departed family members. A rich and splendid feast, including ancestors who, in the words of a visiting German journalist, ‘gave life to all and brought the land under the plough, planting olive trees and digging wells.’