An other incomprehensible Majorcan eccentricity are siurells. These are small clay figures, just a bit bigger than a hand span, that can be a demon, a musician, a man standing or on horseback, which have a whistle incorporated on their base, also made of clay.

Siurells are white and have coloured spots: green, blue and red. Experts are able to know where a siurell has been made just by seeing how the colours are distributed around the figure.

Their use today is purely ornamental, nobody uses them to blow the whistle even though in the country they’ve always been used for controlling herds.

Part of the figures’ charm is that they are incredibly simple, generally handmade up to the point where you can sometimes even see the artisan’s finger-marks. The origin of siurells is unknown. The only thing that can be said is that there are figures with similar shape in various places of the Mediterranean, such as Sardinia or Crete, where in the Palace of Knossos a kind of siurells have even been found.