Rough Guides - The Rough Guide to Mallorca & Menorca (Travel Guide eBook)

Contents

Introduction to Mallorca & Menorca

As he wandered Mallorca in the 1860s, the British traveller Captain Clayton couldnt help but exclaim that the island Presents to the delighted eye a charming blend of savage wilderness and fertile cultivation. In no part of the world can one behold a more complete picture gallery of all the varieties of natural scenery. Very few English-speaking travellers ventured to Mallorca and Menorca in the nineteenth century, but those who did were suitably impressed by the beauty of the landscape if not by the islanders themselves, who were generally disparaged as disagreeable and unruly. The same conflicting attitudes survive today: millions of tourists count Menorca and Mallorca as favourite holiday destinations, though surprisingly few know much about the islanders. In fact, this easterly section of the Balearic archipelago which also includes Ibiza and Formentera has a rich cultural history, and many of its inhabitants still live in the most charming of country towns Sineu, Art and Ciutadella to name but three at a (safe) distance from the teeming resorts of the coast.

The islands image today embraces extreme ends of the spectrum: on one level, Mallorca is a popular haunt of the rich and famous; on the other it has an unenviable reputation for tacky tourism built on sun, sex, booze and high-rise hotels. The truth is that Mallorca manages to be both at the same time: at 5pm you can be carousing with the Brits in Magaluf and half an hour later you can be sipping a coffee in a quiet mountain village. The good news is that the ugly development of the 1960s, which submerged tracts of coastline beneath hotels, villas and apartment blocks, is essentially constrained to the Bay of Palma and a handful of mega-resorts notching the east coast. For the most part Mallorca remains handsome and frequently fascinating, from the craggy mountains and medieval monasteries of its north coast to the antique towns of the central plain.

To the east of Mallorca lies Menorca , the second largest and most agricultural of the Balearic islands, with a population of just 99,000. Menorcas rolling fields, wooded ravines and humpy hills fill out the interior in between its two main but still small towns of Ma , the islands capital, and Ciutadella . Much of Menorcas landscape looks pretty much as it did at the turn of the twentieth century, though a lot of the fields are no longer cultivated, and many but certainly not all of its beguiling beachy coves have been colonized by villa complexes. Nor is the development likely to spread: the resorts have been kept at a discreet distance from the two main towns and the Menorcans are keen to avoid overdevelopment. Indeed, they have created a chain of conservation areas that protect about half of the island, including the pristine coves that count among its real delights.

Fact file

• The Balearic islands have a population of just over 1,200,000; Mallorca weighs in with 948,000, Menorca with just 99,000. Foreign-born inhabitants account for around twenty percent of the population; the largest group are from Germany, with an average age of 48.
• The Spanish parliament the Cortes Generales sits in Madrid, but many of its powers have been devolved to seventeen autonomous regions, one of which the Comunidad Autnoma de las Islas Baleares covers the Balearics, whose capital is Palma.
• The mountains of Mallorca are home to the islands ornithological star turn, the rare black vulture ( Aegypius monachus ), a dark and solitary bird of striking proportions, standing 130cm tall, weighing anywhere between 7 and 14kg and with an adult wingspan of nearly 3m. They almost died out in the 1970s, but a well-executed conservation scheme seems to have saved the day there are now about 130 birds.
• Spain is a Catholic ).

Where to go

In Mallorca , the logical place to begin a visit is Palma , the island capital, which arches around the shores of its bay just a few kilometres from Mallorcas busy international airport. Palma is the Balearics one real city, a bustling, historic place whose oligarchic mansions and magnificent Gothic cathedral serve as a fine backdrop to an excellent caf and restaurant scene, from the hipster hangouts of the Sa Gerreria neighbourhood to the chef-led, chichi restaurants of the Old Town plus everything in between. Add to this lots of good hotels and youve got a city that deserves at least a couple of days. Indeed, many visitors spend their entire holiday here, day-tripping out to the rest of the island an easy proposition as its only a couple of hours drive from one end of Mallorca to the other. To the east of Palma stretches Es Pla , an agricultural plain that fills out the centre of the island, sprinkled with ancient and seldom-visited country towns, the most interesting of which are Sineu and Petra . On either side of the plain are coastal mountains. To the north, the wild and wonderful Serra de Tramuntana rolls along the entire coastline, punctuated by deep sheltered valleys and beautiful cove beaches , notably Cala Dei and the Platja de Formentor. Tucked away here in the mountains is Sller , a delightful little town of old stone merchant houses that is best reached from Palma on the antique railway , an extraordinarily scenic journey. The mountains also camouflage a string of picturesque villages, most memorably Estellencs , Banyalbufar , Dei the long-time haunt of Robert Graves and Fornalutx , as well as a pair of intriguing monasteries at Valldemossa , where Chopin and George Sand famously wintered, and Lluc , home to a much-venerated statue of the Madonna. For walkers, the range is crisscrossed with footpaths and makes for ideal hiking , particularly in the cooler spring and autumn. Beyond Lluc, the mountains roll down to a coastal plain that holds the lovely little town of Pollena and one of the islands most appealing medium-sized resorts, Port de Pollena , which is itself just along the bay from the sprawling but well-kept resort of Port dAlcdia . In the north, Mallorca finishes with a final scenic flourish in the rearing cliffs of the Pennsula de Formentor .

Stone-built houses of Fornalutx

Jon Arnold / AWL Images

Mallorcas second mountain range, the gentler, greener Serres de Llevant shadows the coves of the east coast and culminates in the pine-clad headlands and medieval hill towns of the islands northeast corner. Many of the east-coast resorts are overblown, but the pick are Cala Rajada , close to several fine beaches, and pint-sized Porto Petro . There are also a couple of easily visited cave systems the most diverting is the Coves del Drac and the comely, artsy hilltop town of Art , close to the substantial prehistoric remains of Ses Paisses . Different again is the south coast , where a long and rocky shelf jags out into the ocean though this part of the island is redeemed by the charming resort and seaport of Colnia de Sant Jordi and its accompanying beaches.