From les Verges to Tots Sants, Mallorca's sweetest season

In mid-October, on a street corner in your neighbourhood, a small stall appears overnight with an enormous pot of oil. By mid-afternoon there is already a queue. The air smells of fried dough and sugar, and people ask for «mig quilo» without even glancing at the sign. If you have only just arrived on the island, you may not know what is being celebrated. Your neighbours do: les Verges is coming.

The two weeks between 20 October and 1 November have a flavour all of their own in Mallorca. First come the bunyols, then the chestnuts, the panellets and the rosaris. It is a small calendar of sweets that never makes it into the guidebooks, yet any local will happily explain it to you in detail.

The night of les Verges

On the eve of 21 October, the feast of Saint Ursula, the island celebrates the revetla de les Verges. The festival recalls the legend of Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, and for centuries it followed a very particular ritual. Young men would sing serenades beneath the balcony of the girl they were courting, and she would reward them with bunyols and sweet wine.

Today the serenades survive in only a handful of villages, usually performed by a student tuna that never spares anyone a rendition of «Clavelitos». The gesture itself, however, has found a new home: the school. Boys give their classmates a red carnation, and the girls treat them to doughnuts. There is no balcony, but the idea is just the same.

Bunyols de forat and bunyols de vent

The bunyol of les Verges is not like the doughnuts you find elsewhere in Spain. It is a ring of dough with a hole in the middle, made with flour, potato or sweet potato, yeast and egg, fried in oil and rolled in sugar. It is eaten warm from a paper cone and bought by the kilo. Many families order theirs days in advance so as not to miss out.

Alongside them, the bunyols de vent have been gaining ground: closer to a profiterole, and filled with whipped cream, custard or chocolate truffle. Purists stand by the ones with a hole. Children, almost always, prefer the others. The busiest days are the 20th and the 21st, although the stalls open a few weeks earlier and the season stretches on until Tots Sants.

A tip from a resident: if you see a stall with a queue on your street, join it. The best bunyols are fried to order, made by someone using their mother's recipe, and hardly ever have a website.

Tots Sants, chestnuts and rosaris

Ten days later comes Tots Sants, All Saints' Day, on 1 November. It is a day of remembrance: families visit the cemeteries and fill the graves with flowers, chrysanthemums above all. But it has its own table too. In the days before, the castanyeres appear on street corners with their braziers, pastry shops fill their windows with almond and pine-nut panellets, and the most Mallorcan sweet of the season returns: the rosari.

The Tots Sants rosari is a necklace of sweets. Traditionally it was given by godparents to their godchildren and by grandparents to their grandchildren: a string of candied fruit, boiled sweets, chocolates and little marzipans, finished with a medallion of candied pumpkin. These days it shares shelf space with jelly-sweet versions in any supermarket, but some of Palma's artisan bakers still make it the old way, with panellets, aniseed biscuits and panets de mort. If you have children at home, or grandchildren coming to visit, it is a gift they will remember.

An island that changes pace

For those who live in Mallorca all year round, these weeks are more than a calendar of sweets. This is when summer truly says goodbye, the villages reclaim their squares and the corner bakery becomes a meeting point once again. The conversations in the queue for bunyols tell you more about a neighbourhood than any property brochure ever could.

That is why, when people ask us where to buy, we tend to talk about the Palma neighbourhoods residents keep choosing for the way of life they offer, and not just about square metres. We have written before about how Mallorcan food starts at the market, and about how autumn begins in Binissalem with the Festa des Vermar. Les Verges and Tots Sants are the next chapter of the same story: that of an island to be enjoyed 365 days a year.

This year, on 20 October, join the queue. Ask for half a kilo. And eat the first one right there, while it is still warm.