Some of My Opinions About Mallorca…

All taken from The Bloody Bokhara, a mystery novel set in
Scott's Townhouse Hotel.

If you want to download a full copy of the book, there's a link below.

Click on an opinion to jump to it

Avoiding blame in Spanish…
Taking the back roads from Inca to Pollensa…
And why early in the year is a good time to visit …
The secrets of Binissalem (Location of Scott's Hotel)…
A museum or two worth a detour…
About Santa Eugenia, in the middle of the island…
Something on the Mallorquin character (or characters)…
Keeping secrets…
The charms of Palma…
A city rife with palaces full of functionaries…
In the post office, or indeed any government office…
Reflections on the local language…
A bureaucratic culture of “No” and about bribes…
We’re just “foreigners”…
Don’t go to a government office around 11 a.m. …
Or to bakeries when they’re crowded…
On the back roads, off-season…
A time warp to old-fashioned values…
A nice central spot in Palma from which to explore…
Winter visits…
Village restaurants – usually bars that also serve food…
A destination for a lovely drive (or a walk if you’re up to it)…
About Mallorcan addresses…
Back on the road to Orient…
Soller – one place everyone visits…
Land values and the inheritance system…
About Mallorcan telephone numbers…
Spanish brandy…
A Palma gallery to visit…
A word about some of the roads less travelled…
An overhyped Mallorca road…
Tourist areas outside of Palma, a few general observations…
The Valldemosa elder-tourists…
A take on Deiá (or Deya if you prefer)…
A sweet detour into Mallorca’s interior…
The public money effect, found everywhere…
On Mallorca they do it for themselves…
About notaries in Spain…
A typical Spanish bar…
Banks in Spain…
A few words about Puerto Portals…
Mallorca in winter – hot or cold?
An opinion about Rolex watches…
A Mallorquin’s view of property values and tourism…
The Cinderella story of Es Vergé…

Avoiding blame in Spanish …

There's something about the Spanish language that makes the avoidance of personal liability or responsibility very easy. You will never hear anyone ever say, for example, 'I broke it.' The phrase is, Se ha roto, 'It has become broken,' as though there had been no human intervention in this process of the thing arriving at a state of permanent dissolution, merely the manifestation of some divine wish somewhere that this thing not continue to remain intact. I've a bet registered with William Hill to the effect that if ever a workman anywhere in Spain ever claims personal responsibility for the breakage of any tool, tile, windowpane or other frangible item on any building site anywhere in the country, the Hill Organisation will instantly pay me a thousandfold return on my £1 bet. Regrettably for me, they sleep sweetly in their beds unworried that they will ever have to pay up.

Taking the back roads from Inca to Pollensa …

If you go in this direction, and have the time, I recommend the hillside route. You don't take the main road, which is fairly straight and boring, but rather cut up in the direction of the mountains and follow a network of smaller roads that move generally, disjointedly but inexorably, towards the coast. One has to weave about a bit, sometimes guessing the direction in which the next appropriate road may be found, but after all, that's half the fun of it. Although signage has improved since the old days -- anything longer than three years ago qualifies as the old days -- it is still the case that on the really small roads very little is marked, for we all know where everything is, don't we, we who live here? And it's our island, isn't it, not yours, and if someone puts a sign up in horrid Spanish we'll tear it down or replace it with one in unreadable Mallorquin, won't we?

And why early in the year is a good time to visit …

Anyway, the views are wonderful from these roads, looking up to the mountains on the left and down to the pla, the flat bit with lumps, on the right. Along here you get two crops of wildflowers every year, and two crops of lambs, and lush flowery fragrant foliage most months of the year, save of course that it all goes brown and dusty and desiccated during the months of July and August when all the tourists come to the island. But what do they know? We were in late January segueing into February weather and the blossoming almond trees gave the whole countryside a confectionery dusting of white sugar interspersed with patches of pink.

The secrets that make Binissalem special (Location of Scott’s Hotel) …

As it was a lovely day -- it's virtually always a lovely day on Mallorca -- I decided to walk to the Guardia Civil headquarters. They're located up along the strip of the old main road between Palma and Alcudia, less used now that the autopista has gone through beyond Inca, and by far the least salubrious part of the town. There are those of us who are grateful for this ugly strip, for it seems to have protected the town against an excess of investigation by tourists or developers. People have just seen the long ribbon of rundown factories, seedy apartment blocks, Mafia-front-looking improbable wholesale fish food stores or nondescript bars, and have assumed the rest of the town to be more of the same. Not so in reality. We have the second largest number of 18th-century palaces and seignorial houses after Palma itself, and the town is regarded by cognoscenti as an architectural gem, even described as a 'symphony in stone' in one of the more lyrically fanciful Mallorquin history books. We are the wine centre for the island, the focus of the stone and carpentry trades, but an as yet undiscovered haven of tranquillity only twenty minutes from the bustle and noise of the capital.

Long may we continue to flimflam passersby with our unappealing and charmless facade.

A museum or two worth a detour …

The next two hours were all business-zip up to Pollença and then down to Alcudia, those pleasant Roman towns, along to the wildlife preserve at Albufera – very much worth a visit – and then a quick nip along to Muro, still keeping to the little roads. Muro's not much to look at, but it has a cracking museum, El Museo Etnológico, which provides a genuinely professional look into Mallorca's history, and which is head and shoulders above the overtouted touristy and commercialised La Granja. Of that ilk, Es Calders, near Sineu, is better.

Some words about Santa Eugenia, in the middle of the island …

So off Balthasar and I set, along the road to Santa Eugenia, which is next to one of those lumpy escarpments I mentioned that stick up from the plain. It's another of those timewarp towns that pock the middle of the island, largely unaffected by the ten or twelve million visitors who descend on the coasts every year. As late as two years ago Santa Eugenia still had a street named after General Franco, who has been largely consigned to the dustbin by the rest of Spain in the third of a century since his demise. In fairness, I have the feeling that the name was kept on in Santa Eugenia more out of inertia than any lingering loyalty to the Caudillo's memory.

Santa Eugenia isn't not pretty, if you know what I mean, but isn't long on character either, though that just may be a prejudice on my part since I think it's too close to the flight path to the airport. In the summer months this island can get up to 800 flights a day -- that's almost one plane a minute during all the hours of daylight we get. If the wind blows the noise in the direction of the town, it's not peaceful.

I also think of Santa Eugenia as a deeply Mallorquin sort of town of the interior, and that notion set another train of thought in motion. As one cliché has it, there are two kinds of people in the world-those who divide all the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't.

Glibly speaking, one may divide Mallorquins into two main varieties: those of the coast and those of the interior, and one needs to distinguish between their vastly different characters.

Something on the Mallorquin character (or characters) …

Every couple of weeks, I write a travel and commentary column for a publication called The Mediterranean Travel Newsletter, run by a feisty, grumpy little man named Hector Blankenship. I'm not sure any more how I got myself roped into this commitment though at the time it seemed a relatively painless way to promote our hotel whilst simultaneously inflicting my opinions on a faceless audience of fifty or sixty people, as I judged the circulation of the magazine to be.

Regrettably for me, I'd reckoned without Hector's dedication to the form of anodyne, fact-laden, boosterish travel writing, and his intolerance of sloppy, slipshod, off-the-cuff opinion, the very kind of journalism at which I excel.

He continually badgered and harassed me, prodded and -- yes, hectored me -- and now had me cringing and cowering to his whip to the point where I actually tried to write him something acceptable -- acceptable to him, that is -- to put in his tiny rag-mag. So, the thought having been triggered, I began, in my head, to write about the differences I'd observed among and between the Mallorquins on the island. I began to crank up my modest byline, the tone impersonal and objective, as dry as I am capable, but of course omniscient. 

Lurking Around Mallorca
by
Will Stock

The Mallorquins of the interior might be generally described as rural conservatives, with traits in common with farmers all over the globe. They are phlegmatic, hardworking, reluctant when confronted with novelty, circumspect and prudent, honest, incurious, and acceptant of foreigners in an unexploitative way. Family is of paramount importance, as the interconnectedness of the web of relationships among and between the inhabitants of the interior sets the tone for all social life. Every Mallorquin born in the interior begins life with a patrimony of aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, et. al., who may serve as network, bush telegraph, entrée, information base, or safety net for a lifetime. If a rural Mallorquin can't do something himself, he has a cousin who can.

The Mallorquins of the littoral are different. Their blood has mixed with traders, invaders, conquerors and visitors for thousands of years. One epithet dismisses them as the result of thirty centuries of commerce between sailors and whores, but that is to undervalue the essential courage, flexibility, persistence and endurance those two ancient vocations require. It is also an observation that could be made with equal truth about every other port town around the Mediterranean. The coastal Mallorquins have resisted, capitulated to, but eventually profited from, invading Phoenicians, Venetians, Romans, Moors, pirates, and now tourists. An impressive track record over the centuries.

Coastal Mallorquins, therefore, more readily demonstrate the traits of opportunism, ambition, and an eye for the main chance that were bred into them by the circumstance of being vulnerable to raiders and assailants from the outside. They can charm you, but in treating with them you might want to count your change carefully, perhaps even your fingers. They can at times promise much, deliver little, and then take offence if you complain.

In sum, I've found most Mallorquins to be warm, though sometimes distant; mainly straight, though with a few curves along the coast; supremely uninterested in outsiders as people, though generally helpful; unaggressive save on the road; and paradoxically generous in spite of the seeming inwardness of their family-orientated society. They can be very considerable people, worth investing time in cultivating. They may open up slowly, but often as not there are pearls inside.

Keeping secrets …

One thing you can count on about Mallorca: there are few secrets. Think of a small town writ large, and not even writ so very large at that. There are, after all, less than a million permanent residents, more than half of them in Palma. So the rule is, if you don't want it to be found out, don't do it, or at least don't do it here.

The charms of Palma …

I have to admit I'm a sucker for Mediterranean cities about the size of Palma. You can walk from one side of Palma to the other in less than an hour, drive the whole, mostly beautiful, length of the Paseo in half and hour, gawking at the several billionsworth -- you name your currency: pounds, dollars, euros – of yachts in the marinas, ogle the cathedral, which I find lovely on the outside and disappointing on the inside, and nip up for a restful few minutes to Castell de Bellver, a singular round castle dating from the early 1300s, vertiginously situated over the city and looking down on the bay, the inner patio now a worthy venue for the concerts held there. For me, Bach has never sounded better than in the acoustically-beneficent arched circular central open cobbled courtyard.

Palma's old town, too, is impressive if you don't mind having to step over a few drogadictos in your wanderings, and there is a whole array of sophisticated restaurants, soigné shops and smart boutiques for those who like that sort of thing. The commercial galleries tend to be a bit modern for my taste, but then I'm a fairly fusty sort. Once I got to be forty I decided I didn't have to pretend interest anymore in most modern art or music, experimental poetry, avant-garde theatre, or haute couture. It was wonderfully liberating not to have to be intellectual and fashionable and just grow my middlebrow straight across.

Mostly I like Palma, I think, because it's a city, a real city, but on a human scale. And despite its pocket size, it supports opera and ballet seasons, an abundance of concerts and exhibitions, and -- I think the cliché term is 'a host' -- of other diversions, cultural and otherwise. The gratifying advantage to having all these things happen more or less sequentially is that I actually go to them. When I lived in London the sheer plethora of opportunity was so great I ended up not going to very much at all. Oh, what the hell, there's so much to do that it can always wait until tomorrow. In Palma it's easier to bite the cherry of opportunity, grab the brass ring of diversion, and carpe the diem today instead of tomorrow.

Palma suffers from one particularly abominable and abhorrent affliction: its drivers. Streets that should have at least two lanes of traffic flow in both directions generally only have one because they are lined with double-parked cars. One inconsiderate driver can thus inconvenience hundreds and hundreds of other drivers, and he will -- he does -- seemingly at every opportunity.

And because a bad example seems almost irresistible for many people, the double-parkers proliferate, thus somehow conveying a sense of legitimacy to what is patently an uncivilised practice. It's like the 'one-piece-of-paper-thirty-minute-rule' promulgated by the folks who take care of the greenswards around the monuments in Washington. As long as the lawns stay pristine, nobody throws trash on them. If one piece of paper is left for more than half an hour, it gives permission to everyone to throw their trash down, and they do. I've long thought that if we could simply summarily hang the first double-parker of the day from the nearest lamp-post in Palma, the problem would go away fairly quickly.

I'd even volunteer to hold the rope.

Or, as a somewhat less extreme option, I'd love to have one of those James Bond cars with, I don't care which, the laser beam or the Boadicea-style extendable revolving scythe blades. When a sufficient number of drivers returned to their double-parked cars to find two mutilated tyres on the traffic side, eventually they might catch on to the notion that someone, maybe even a whole city full of someones, was trying to send them a message.

Palma, a city rife with palaces – many now full of functionaries …

Some of the government buildings in Palma are sumptuously opulent palaces dating mostly from the 18th century, and I've always supposed simply having the chance to be in them every day must constitute some small perk to the workers as an offset against the drabness of their pencilpushing jobs.

My imagination overtakes me each time I enter one of these ornate edifices agleam with polished sculptured marble, magnificent pendant chandeliers poised overhead as though awaiting only the lighting of the thousand candles that will illuminate the grand ballroom and set the turned brass balustrades glowing gently alongside the wide curved staircase seemingly constructed expressly to show off the broad trains of the silken gowns worn by the raven-tressed obsidian-eyed porcelain-skinned swellingly-bosomed Señoritas as they descend to extend diamond-dappled hands to their equally dark-eyed and handsome, dashing and sabreclad escorts.

You can tell I spent a large portion of my youth in cinemas.

So it comes as a slight jolt, even shudder, to have that vision, that dreamlike ghostly evocation of bygone splendour, dashed by the reality that now stands behind the lustrous portals -- a drab brown metal desk personed by a slight, balding man in a nylon shirt, polyester tie, and an ill-fitting uniform above scuffed synthetic leather shoes. The void of discrepancy between what was before, what must have been so scintillatingly brilliant, and what exists today in these palaces -- a reality so flat and pedestrian and dull -- depresses and unnerves me.

In the post office, or indeed any government office …

Once inside, I tried every single window, even waiting for the surly sub-manager to finish with his consequential tasks of smoking his cigarette, rooting some wax from one hairy ear, inspecting it at length and then wiping it in the fold of his trousers behind his knee. In due course he lit another cigarette -- the Spanish smoke all the time and everywhere -- grudgingly trudged over to me, inspected me up and down before I could speak, and then opened his mouth, pointed to his tongue, and shook his head. This was meant to signify that he didn't speak my language, regardless of whatever language I might speak.

Reflections on the local language …

I spoke to him in Spanish, called Castellano on this island, as distinct from Mallorquin, which is allegedly in turn distinct from Catalan, though there are many who will argue the toss. He answered me in Mallorquin. No doubt he'd have done it the other way around had I essayed my question in Mallorquin.
Virtually all Mallorquins are bilingual, the middle-aged ones having been educated in Spanish under Franco, who suppressed all regional languages, and the younger people having access to all the national radio and television programmes in Spanish. But one thing that drives me wild is their nationalistic -- regionalistic, to be correct -- tendency to deprecate Spanish, a noble language spoken by almost 500 million of the people on the globe, this condescension from the fewer than six million people in the Catalan language region, who can't even agree on the names of things from village to village, much less on a common grammar. From time to time I'll hesitate over the gender of a word, and ask a local whether it's a la or an el. Maddeningly, the answer is as often as not a shrug and an ‘es igual’, -- it doesn't matter. But for a foreigner attempting not to sound terminally maleducated it of course does matter. In any event the sub-manager and I did not get very far towards success, as he claimed never to have seen such a person as Ninian, though I suspected he might have been saying that simply to be obstructive. There are those people in every walk of life, and we all know them well, who are uncooperative just out of spite

A bureaucratic culture of “No” and about bribes …

If you ask permission to do something in a government office in Spain, the chances are you'll be refused, at least at first, just as a kneejerk bureaucratic response. In practice, things are different. With a bit of gentle persuasion, it will turn out that in spite of the obstacles, many of them in the form of paper, a solution can be found, and this does not necessarily imply any under-the-table grease, though it can. A bit of quiet dosh seems to go a long way on the coast, or so I'm told, but in the interior things can be positively sanctimonious. I once acquired, as part of a job lot in a local auction, some chairs in the Alfonsine style -- that sort of bastardised imitation art nouveau -- and decided to donate them to the town art collection because they weren't in keeping with our general decor, were consistent with the periods represented in the museum, and because -- well, mostly because they were manifestly ugly. But we also happened to have a small planning application pending at the time and in the ripeness of bureaucratic time I was called before the mayor to be questioned as to whether I saw any connection between the possible approval of our planning application and my donation. Frankly, it had never occurred to me that anyone might consider chairs of such surpassing unsightliness as candidates for a potential bribe, but in the end I had to write a letter to the town hall disclaiming any intent to subvert the council with woodworm-ridden Alfonso XIII furniture.

We’re just “foreigners” …

Mostly as regards being queried about my interest in Ninian's box number, I simply counted on the deep lack of interest with which most Mallorquins regard us. We are, by the way, generic extranjeros -- foreigners. There is usually little or no distinction between and among Germans, Swedes, Swiss, English, or whomever; we're just foreigners, though that perception changed a bit just before the euro came in under the pressure of German money that flooded onto the island. Now, if the natives are selling, they may hope you're German, or at least hope for what they call a 'German price.' And even they eventually began to show some signs of resentment towards the Germans for snapping up so many of their properties, albeit that resentment is an emotion largely not to be found in the Mallorquin psyche.

Don’t go to a government office around 11 a.m. …

At any rate, when I arrived at the door, the post office was locked. It wasn't a holiday and I was well within working hours. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was coffee-break time. Whole national offices will lock up like this. Regardless of what it says on the door about opening times, when break time comes the staff close up and troop out for half an hour, sometimes locking the door right in the face of an incoming customer. This drives northern Europeans wild, though the locals don't seem to mind. Either they are simply used to being downtrodden and abused by petty officialdom -- a fair bet given Spanish history -- or else they are just more acceptant than we are. Or resigned. Whichever it is, they tend to live longer, so there must be something to it.

Or to bakeries when they’re crowded …

The same thing can be said, by the way, for bread queues at the bakery. Foreigners must learn to accept that the bakery is not only a place to buy bread, it is also the central gossip exchange, and the process of buying a loaf of bread would not be satisfying and complete without the retailing of the latest information and speculation, sometimes even about us, the foreigners, though as I have noted previously, we are usually regarded with a deep lack of interest by the locals.

On the back roads, off-season …

I drove slowly back to the hotel, using the back roads. There are usually sprinklings of wildflowers at most times of the year, but early spring and late autumn there can be whole sweeping billows of them, like multi-hued kaleidoscopic surf breaking in slow motion over the fields. One of the positive by-products of the local farmers' mean reluctance to use pesticides is that they don't kill off all the flowers. You do see insensitive practical philistines ploughing under whole fields of poppies from time to time, but at least you know that in six months the field will again be an impressionist's dreamscape. And you can eat the fruit and vegetables here without having either to wash them like a hygiene-obsessive raccoon or suffer those nasty pencil-prick pesticide headaches over the eyes. And of course the local honey is marvellous.

A time warp to old-fashioned values …

Trundling back across the square I was almost mown down by a very small girl on a kamikaze tricycle, who moments later hit an uneven patch in the cobbles and tipped over, landing in a heap with a thump, pause, wail. I picked her up, dusted her down, wet a forefinger in her tears to wipe away a smudge, and sent her cheerfully on her way again within a minute.  One of the joys of living in a town which is a throwback to more innocent times is that one can respond naturally and spontaneously to children in need without pause for consideration as to how it might be viewed. Here, one sees small children playing more or less unsupervised at all hours of the day and surprisingly late into the night, roaming free on their parents' assumption that any adult in their vicinity will function in loco parentis if necessary.

And they do. Children not only are comforted on occasions such as the one I had just experienced, but at times you will see a surrogate parent scolding a child for errant behaviour. Contrast that with the experience I had in an international airport a few years ago. As had happened today, a small child had fallen over close to where I was standing. As I instinctively reached to pick him up, a pompously stentorian voice boomed out, 'Don't touch that child!' I looked up to see myself advanced upon by a human version of a Volvo eighteen-wheeler lorry, who bent over -- with some difficulty I observed unkindly -- and unceremoniously, even roughly, snatched the child from the floor. Pitiful, what we're coming to, and it seems to get worse all the time. We're becoming one vast suspicious, litigious, alienated, cynical, greedy antheap. It's part of the reason I love this old-fashioned town. People here haven't got that way yet. Yet.

A nice central spot in Palma from which to explore …

I parked in the underground car park near the Teatro Principal and walked the couple of hundred yards back to Plaza Weyler where there is the recently renovated and restored art deco Gran Hotel, which is no longer a hotel, but houses an excellent art bookstore, a public gallery, and a stylish modern bar.

It's a splendid building, of its genre unmatched in Palma. Passing the Forn de Teatro bakery, with its swirly art nouveau front and artistic displays of toothsome hojaldres -- baked savoury quiche clones -- I negotiated the busy zebra crossing where you play dodgem with the drivers who are apparently stripe-blind, walked along to the Borne, a long ramblas where you’ll find stalls and street vendors, and which is occasionally home to events like the annual book fair, worth a visit even if you don’t read Spanish.

Winter visits …
 
I've never been able to figure out why there aren't more visitors to the island in the stretch from the end of October to the end of January. Yes, it's true there's rain during that trimester, but the light can be enchanting with the sun low in the sky, the most enjoyable attractions aren't crowded, one gets more attention and better service in restaurants, and the temperature is usually up to shirtsleeve weather during the day and at light jacket level in the evenings.

And toward the end of that stretch, the almond trees come out, and you even see the first crop of lambs. Truly, a long weekend makes a glorious short break.

Village restaurants – usually bars that also serve food …

For those who are not familiar with Mallorquin village restaurants, let me detour into a quick disquisition on their merits and their failings, very generally speaking. Maybe, whilst noshing and ruminating, I could work something up for Hector's travel journal. Like this:

First of all, regardless of where you go, in general terms you will    probably find the food excellent, and the decor, ambience, and aesthetic sensibility -- well, local. Or let's call it 'authentic.' Most village bar/restaurants are open at least six days a week, virtually all hours, and the lunch 'Menu' served from 1 p.m. (and almost never before) is usually an absolute bargain. Entree, main course, dessert, water and wine for less, it seems, than it would cost you to buy the ingredients. Coffee is extra. The listing, often on a blackboard outside the front door or just inside, usually offers two or even three choices of each of the courses. You may need a translation, but at those prices you can at times afford to be adventurous.

Apart from the daily Menu there are often tapas, which are arrayed behind the bar in flat chafing dishes. This is a sort of point and nod operation, though there are some basic recommendations: croquettas are the little lumpy oblong cylinders of what looks almost like pastry dough, deep-fried. One type is ham -- or chicken-flavoured -- it varies depending on what they have, and is lighter in colour; others can be slightly greenish and are spinach-based. Both types are usually excellent and filling. A few of each is normally plenty if taken with other items. Then there are albondigas, spicy little     meatballs. Generally very good. Frito is a famous local dish and widely on offer. Not to everyone's taste as it's basically potatoes and some vegetables fried up with lots of oil and a variety of unmentionable animal innards. For those who can ignore the ingredients and concentrate on the flavour, a treat is in store. Frito is a tapa for the broadminded, as are callos, or tripe, also good. There are various other tapas that resist ready description and identification,  but any of the deep-fried vegetables are wonderful, and usually recognisable.
Especially to be recommended are the sliced and deep-fried calabacines, courgette, or berenjenas, aubergine. Just point. And to round things off, a bit of ensaladilla is always a blander  foil to the concentrated flavours of the fried tapas. It's the white potato-salady sort of thing and is made with home-made mayonnaise, capers, and hints of lemon around the other veggies they throw in.

One tip. Don't order the house wine in the local restaurants. It's almost always poor quality, and I've never understood how the owners of these restaurants, who are generally discriminating when it comes to food, and who buy only first-class ingredients, can offer their clientele such bad wine. Sometimes it's because a brother-in-law makes it, which is how the Mallorquins operate, but that can't always be the case. No, order the best on offer. It won't cost much by international standards. The local rosé, rosado in Spanish, is excellent and easy on the head the next day. The tinto, or red, is also good. The white wines from the island are improving,  and although there are some outstanding ones – try the crianza white from Macia Batle -- there are still too many not worth drinking and even some of those can be overpriced because of misplaced pride.

So don't be put off by local restaurants simply because they lack kerb appeal. Hygiene standards are high, since one tourist bellyache can translate into nine columns of space and two pictures in The Sun or News of the World. The authorities are stringent about storage, cleanliness, and freshness of ingredients, and most of the time the food in local restaurants is reliable, tasty and affordable. If you're just hungry, you'll rarely go wrong.

A destination for a lovely drive (or a walk if you’re up to it) …

You reach Orient by driving up to Alaró, a few miles above Consell, then skirting the town, ignoring the mostly unmade road up to the Castell de Alaró and continuing into the gap between the two towering puiges. Another five or so winding minutes will bring you into the long valley leading to Orient, passing fields full of apple trees, which do well in the cool moistness at this altitude, and which create a picturesque foreground for Orient itself, a candidate for the title of prettiest hamlet on the island. Sadly, it's a dead village now, as the houses have virtually all been sold to wealthy Palmesanos as weekend retreats, or to foreigners who come out to Mallorca for a few weeks of the year. There's not even a bakery, which on Mallorca is the death knell for any town. But the tumble-down-the-hill houses are staggered together in pretty clumps, and the church is attractive, all in a bijou setting with decorative cats.

About Mallorcan addresses …

As in all good Mallorquin towns, many of the houses don't have numbers, either because they have names, sometimes indicated, but generally not, because identification isn't deemed necessary -- after all, everyone knows where Jaime and Cati live.

Of course in other towns, like our town of Binissalem, houses can have two numbers on show: an old one, often left over from Franco days, and a new one, assigned in recent years. They did it in spades in our town some years ago; not only did the authorities change all the house numbers, they changed most of the street names too, just not all at the same time, lest it become too easy for the burghers. And as an extra little fillip to the puzzle, you must bear in mind that many houses go through to the next street, and so have double frontages, or, more accurately, a frontage and a backage, which means that up to four different addresses can apply to the same house.

But older inhabitants often don't use numbers at all, since they remember the days when there were no numbers, only a designation based on the owners' nicknames: 'Pedro's House', or 'Anna's Cottage'. There are thus --since our house goes through to the street behind and had the nickname: 'Ca'n Ximmaró -- Jimmy's Manse,' -- five address designations that will get a letter to us, though I knew we'd really finally arrived when we received a letter addressed simply to 'Scott's Hotel, Mallorca'.

As to the new one-way system, I won’t even go there – not that I could if I tried, using the one-way system. 

Back on the road to Orient …

If you carry on through Orient you come out on the road to Bunyola, not to be confused with bunuelos, the tasty deep-fried doughnuts you often see being prepared during religious holidays by elderly ladies who stand over a half oil drum full of almost boiling oil flicking little nuggets of dough into the oil, letting them puff up and brown and then fishing them out with a wooden paddle. Rolled in sugar -- usually too much sugar, so shake some off -- they're delectable. 

The narrow road from Orient to Bunyola is little trafficked and meanders through the valley that parallels the 3,000-foot Sierra de Alfabia range. It transits some of the prettier parts of authentic old Mallorca, as it's just inconvenient enough in terms of access, and just close enough to the mountains, to have been protected from overexploitation. It passes ancient farms, possessiones, that have been operating since Roman times, and one still sees the vestiges of the irrigation networks created by the Moors in the 10th century.

Snuggled against cliffs at the end of a long valley, Bunyola is picturesque and just about worth a detour, though there isn't much of touristic interest inside the town itself. A couple of miles south of the town are the Jardines Raixa, gardens laid out in Moorish times but with a generous sprinkle of Renaissance statuary. I turned the other way, though, and headed up the busy road towards Soller.

Soller – one place everyone visits …

There are two basic ways of reaching Soller --road or train. The restored 1890s train from Palma can be a fun journey and worth the investment in time, though the timetable is odd, giving you the option either of turning around almost immediately to go back, or else having to spend the whole of the afternoon in Soller and Puerto Soller, which come to think of it isn't really a hardship, as Soller is one of the most pleasant towns on the island and is located at the head of an exceptionally attractive valley.

If you are touristing, and decide to go by road, take the old, free, serpentine road up over the 500 metre sidehills to the valley, curving back and forth more than thirty times before reaching Soller itself. Coming back, when you're tired out by walking around, the new toll tunnel is probably a better option, as it cuts under the hills and saves time and driving effort.

There is a old-fashioned Toonerville trolley down to the Port of Soller, but unless you get on at the starting point, up left from the train station, you'll have to strap-hang as it's almost always full. The port, which was built much later than Soller itself, isn't as interesting, nor does it have much history.

Why didn't they build down by the water to begin with, people ask. 'Well,' answer the Mallorquins, 'would you like to build your house where it might be vulnerable to the next set of pirates who happen along?' We moderns tend to forget details like that when we visit the cities of the Mediterranean. We simply ignore a couple of dozen centuries of history, oblivious to the reality of how exposed the coasts were back then, and how much safer it was to fortify oneself up in the rocks behind the coasts, shelter in the hills where there was protection, or away in the interior where it was the invaders who were more vulnerable.

Land values and the inheritance system …

As recently as a few years ago one could observe the stresses inside Mallorquin families when the whole system of inheritance went awry because of economic forces from outside the island. For generations the Mallorquins had followed a variation on the tradition of primogeniture, with the eldest son inheriting, not all the land, but the choicest land, the next son the lesser choice, and so on down to the least arable or conveniently-positioned fields, which were allocated to the daughters, who, it was presumed, might marry a man with better land, but who in any event were not equipped to work the land by themselves. An unfair genetic lottery, perhaps, but one that had been the norm in many countries around the Mediterranean for as long as history records, and presumably beyond.

But on Mallorca, in the late Sixties and during the Seventies and Eighties, everything went topsy-turvy. The best land had always been, of course, the land in the interior -- more valuable as it was more protected, closer to sweet water, and more fertile. The land along the coast was rockier, harder to till, thin and partially scoured away by the sea winds, exposed to invading pirates and therefore generally regarded as less desirable.

Then the tourists came, first in their thousands, later in their millions. Land along the coast began to skyrocket in value as tourist facilities were built --hotels, restaurants, shops, and an infrastructure of roads, water lines and electricity cables. The youngest sons and the daughters of the great Mallorquin landed gentry, those who had inherited the dregs of their parents' estates, suddenly found themselves heirs to land worth five, ten, even twenty times more than that of the first-born sons, and as they sold off their rocky patrimony with sea views to big hotel chains and developers, the intrafamilial jealousy and tension caused feuds that still go on today.

Ah, such sad stories there were. My heart is always sorely taxed by the pitiable problems of the very rich.

About Mallorcan telephone numbers …

As a digression, I must remark that I usually try to get Semiramis, someone who grew up on the island and knows the system, to look up numbers in the phone book. I can never find anything. The alphabetical listings are by town -- common practise and not unreasonable save that the island is so relatively small -- and so you need to know not only the names of the people you are ringing, but where they live. But that's not all you need to know, as it may be that the listings are in the name of whomever originally contracted for the telephone back in 1958, or whenever. It's inconvenient and costly to change a listing, and since everybody knows Paco is actually listed under his mother-in-law's maiden name -- at least anyone who possibly might want to get in touch with him -- there is clearly no point in Paco taking the trouble to have the listing put in his own name.

And just to confuse things further, the towns on the island may or may not be listed under their own names; they may in fact be listed under the nearest larger town in the district. So the result of all this is that sometimes when you need to call a mechanic to fetch your broken-down car, an experience I've had more than thrice, you need to know that Tomeo's Garage isn't listed under Tomeo, or even Garage, but rather under Pedro's Tyre Repair Centre, which it was originally, some years ago. Of course all the locals know these things, and they look at you with some degree of incredulity when you complain. Why would anyone even use the phone book, they no doubt ask. Why not just ask Miguel next door who has it all written down on his calendar because he, too, has a dodgy old rustmobile and needs to call Tomeo regularly? Drives me crazy and enchants me in equal measure, depending on how urgent is my need. Semiramis knows the system, however, and always gets the number.

Spanish brandy …

Spanish brandies are yet another example of what I was referring to earlier --underrated Spanish products. In my view the majority of Spanish brandies, star for star, are superior to their French competitors, and cost about half as much. And like their Greek counterparts, they are easier on one's head the next day, too, as they seem to have fewer congeners, those wicked trace by-products formed during fermentation that cause, or exacerbate, hangovers.

A Palma gallery to visit …

I stopped at the Casal Solleric museum in the Paseo del Borne. It's an intriguing building, combining as it does some typical 18th-century Mallorquin architecture with strong influences from the French and Italian Baroque. Well worth a visit when you're seeking tranquillity. I find it an antidote to some of the other museums here that concentrate so relentlessly on the contemporary, or rather the contemporary as it was circa 1928. Call me a fogey, call me a fuddy-duddy, but at the cost of risking my invitation to the fashion review of the emperor's new clothes I must admit I have to take a pass on much of Miro's work, adopted son though he may be. It's not that I don't like some of his work, but a steady diet of it, like a constant exposure to Renoir or Roy Lichtenstein, Olivier Messiaen or Mike Oldfield -- or pistachio crunch ice cream with marshmallow toffee topping -- exhausts the senses and palls after awhile. As an alternative, it's good to have cultural centres like the Sa Nostra foundation, which doesn't have a permanent collection as such, but gets in consistently high-quality temporary exhibitions.

A word about some of the roads less travelled …

One way to get from Palma to the north coast is via Sineu, the old capital under King Jaume II. There is a long straightish road built by the king for his convenience, as he had to ply back and forth to Palma at regular intervals.

It's the only road on the island that goes from Palma to the centre of the island without going through any other town. No doubt this road was created the way the Romans used to build their famous roads -- simply by taking a straight line, or as straight a line as the topography allowed, and putting the road down, regardless of whatever previously existing serfs' hovels or other buildings might be in the way. Smallholdings were clearly less of a problem for monarchs back then, as the concept of private property was pragmatic enough to support the proposition that the gentry who owned the land also owned the people on it. 

Even so, I can recommend the journey, taking you, as it does, parallel to some of the lesser travelled byways of the island. It is along the lightly trafficked twisting narrow roads here that one can sometimes become blocked behind donkey carts still in use, though regrettably a fading practice.

An overhyped Mallorca road …

And the roads hereabouts certainly have to be an improvement on some of the more touted scenic routes. I recently saw the north coast road from Pollensa to Soller described in a guidebook as one of the most beautiful drives in Europe. Rubbish. It's constantly curvy, vertiginous in places, sunk deep in pine trees for great portions of the way, affording, save in the stretch at one end, only occasional and fleeting glimpses of the sea. The driver dare not raise his eyes from the road lest he miss a bend. His passengers are hardly better served as they hang onto their seats and fight off incipient carsickness while the car sways from side to side through the endless curves, their enjoyment reduced either to contemplating pine trees -- a dismal occupation -- or trying to catch the ephemeral vistas of sea or purple mountains' majesty that appear and disappear in instants from between the trees. No, really, don't bother.

Tourist areas outside of Palma, a few general observations …

For such a lovely city, Palma's approaches, save on the west side or from the sea, are unprepossessing. Arenal is pure tourist land, in summer a roiling, seething mass of sunburnt flesh, smooth or hairy, flabby or firm, arrayed lumpily on the beach or else decoratively buffet-style around the sapphire pools of the concrete block hotels.

Many of these hotels are surprisingly good at what they do, which is to process tourists and give them what they came for: efficiently-organised clean basic accommodation and ready access to sun, sand, sea, alcohol, and sex if they're lucky. There are endless bars, fast food outlets, souvenir shops, car rental enterprises, restaurants, restaurants, and more restaurants.

These days, this area has mainly been taken over by German tourists, and one sees signs everywhere in German. Pre-euro, there were even prices posted in German marks until the Spanish authorities put a stop to it. As Magalluf is to the English, so are Arenal and Peguera to the Germans. We once had a German guest who asked me about a recommendation to a good fish restaurant. As I knew of one in Arenal I mentioned it to her. 'Oh no,' she cried, 'I don't vant to go zere. It is voll mit Chermans!' I suppose I might react similarly if anyone tried to send me to a restaurant in Magalluf.

The Valldemosa elder-tourists …

Outside Valldemosa we had to slow and crawl past several bands of frighteningly fit senior citizens heading on walking tours up into the mountains, their brown and wizened faces turned towards the sun, their knobbly knees rising and falling as their sinewy legs drove them vigorously upward. There seem to be whole tribes of them that gather around Valldemosa -- English, Germans, Dutch, and Scandinavians. You don't seem to see them elsewhere on the island, but I never pass that town without being awed by their robustness.

A take on Deiá (or Deya if you prefer) …

Deiá is arguably the most famous small village on the island, and certainly one of the better known hamlets in the Mediterranean.

Long the haunt of artists and writers, Deiá has suffered an unfortunate influx of tourists in recent years, largely compromising the very qualities that made it so attractive in the first place. I recently saw the town described as 'unspoilt' and 'untouched,' in a travel brochure, but clearly whoever penned those words hadn't been in Deiá recently, hadn't seen the tour buses inching their way nose-to-tail through the town. Not that the place is ruined or compromised exactly, but 'untouched' is not a word one could use to describe it any more. Still, there are some lovely eateries there, though in my view the one that recently lost its Michelin star is overpriced, especially as now they've added more tables and pushed them so close together you don't have much privacy anymore. Try Sebastian's instead, or El Barrigón for tapas. Both good, as of my last visit.

A sweet detour into Mallorca’s interior …

Daughter Chessie had to go to a party near San Joan and so I drove her over, getting lost in the process in the wrinkles of tiny tracks between Sencelles and San Joan. This is an area I can commend to anyone to get lost in; shallow bowls of fields alternate with angular stands of dense trees, mostly pines, and there are prominent rocky outcrops that -- wonder of wonders -- crop out rockily from time to time, as though designed just to break up and lend interest to the view.

As a general tip, don't take any way that is signposted, but as a subcommentary to that advice, do be prepared to turn around in small spaces when the road narrows and finally feebly peters out in a farm entrance or against one of those picturesque rocky outcrops. Practise your seventeen-point turns. And on one of these roads you'll see a wonderful local example of the triumph of form over function. There is one track that's hardly wider than the width of a normal car, but nevertheless has a white line painted neatly down its centre. Or maybe I'm daft and it's for bicyclists.

Adding to the chocolate-box picturesqueness were the wildflowers. At this time of year, early February, the almonds hadn't yet shed their blossom, the orange trees were beginning to drop their fruit to the ground, and the early pioneers of the first crop of wildflowers were busily edging all the green lines of transition with colour-dark orange, bright yellow, and the soon-to-be ubiquitous carpet of tiny white flowers overlaying the grass. Some people actually know the names of these flowers. There are even some superhumans, English people usually, who know their Latin names, though I sometimes wonder if they just make them up when they talk to me. I've always been, to the despair of my more knowledgeable family members, a blue-flower, yellow-flower, white-flower person. Just can't retain their names in any language, especially Latin.

The public money effect, found everywhere …

Mallorquins are hard workers, but a cursory study of most public works projects would give the opposite impression. It seems to be the effect of spending public money. Everything is bigger, more expensive, less well organised and overstaffed. For some time now, our local town hall has had the intention of pedestrianising the narrow street alongside the plaza immediately in front of our hotel, a project in which I encourage them, as it would do away with the noise that can at times be heard in our downstairs front rooms. I've put double glazing on, of course, but those damned motos make a horribly penetrating noise and you hear them anyway. In any event, the project has been delayed for awhile, and I asked the mayor one day when it would be done. 'Oh, we're a bit short,' he said. 'We need another ten million or so to get the work started.' (This was back in the days of pesetas, so we was talking about 60,000 euros or so.) I was aghast at hearing a number like that. Ten million short? I am utterly convinced that my own small construction crew could do the whole job for less than three million.

Regrettably, that's not how public projects work, though it seems a worldwide affliction, hardly specific to Spain.

Nevertheless, I've commented previously on how hard Mallorquins work, and they do, especially the women. During the Napoleonic wars when the French were in occupation here -- one of so many nations to have held possession of this island -- they had a phrase to describe how the Mallorquins worked: 'The children work like women, the women work like men, and the men work like titans.' That well may have been the case then, but things have obviously improved for the men since then and I've only ever noticed the women working like titans these days. And they're the ones who never ever get a day off. There is no puente for women's work.

On Mallorca they do it for themselves …

In any event, while such idle thoughts were running through my head, a troupe of dancers were having a merry time gyrating in our church square. They were a group from another village visiting for the day, and wore the regional costumes of black and white with red sashes and cummerbunds.

With the triple-glazed windows closed, I couldn't hear the music from here, so they seemed to wheel and circle in graceful silence, making elegant shapes against the stone flagging of the square. Only a few people were actually watching, none of them with cameras. I recalled that shortly after we'd opened we'd had some big-wig head of a brace of airlines or chain of steel mills staying with us and something similar had been going on out there.

'Where are the tourists?' he'd asked. 'I don't see anyone taking pictures.'

'They don't do it for the tourists,' I'd explained. 'They do it for themselves. It's an expression of local history, local custom, local pride. Something real.'

'Ah,' he'd said. 'Not a show for tourists then. I understand.'

But after watching for another ten minutes he couldn't stand it any longer and got his camera and went down to take pictures of them.

About notaries in Spain …

In Spain you use a notary for everything. Virtually every transaction of consequence you'll ever undertake will need to be countersigned by a notary, and of course they take a fee for doing so. It's another one of those closed-shop ripoffs that abound in the Spanish bureaucracy. You buy a house, sell a house, take a loan, pay off a loan, start a business, wind up a business -- you name it and it involves a trip to the notary, more often than not a long period of sitting around, and then a five-minute clown routine of the notary reading the legal papers out loud and then signing as a witness.

These days you can pay an absolutely enormous amount of money for this totally useless ceremony, as the notary's fees often seem to be calculated as a percentage of the face value of whatever document is being processed. As inflation and property value increases have multiplied these sums, the notaries of Spain have become some of the richest people in the country.

A typical Spanish bar …

In the morning I decided to have my second cup of coffee at the  Sportsman's, the bar on the corner opposite the side of the church, between the shop -- and this is no foolin' true – that sells birdseed and men's underwear and the shop that sells cigarettes in the left half and health products in the right half. The bar isn't actually named the Sportsman's, but we call it that because it is peopled almost exclusively by the senior seniors, at least seventy-five years plus, who spend the day watching sports on the mega TV in the corner -- football, always football, but also skateboarding, dog racing, ski jumping, mud wrestling, sumo, three varieties of hockey, basketball, you name it. Some of the faces are there all day long every day, save for one week in the year when they go out to shake their olive trees and harvest their year's income. I like going there because I am invariably the youngest man in the place, which feels odd, but cheering.

Banks in Spain …

After coffee I went to the bank to do my daily battle with the green-eyeshaded sharks. In the absence of freedom under Franco, I'm convinced that all of the creative energy that might otherwise have been concentrated into making films or writing books or creating other works of art became focused on designing ways for the banks to screw their customers. I've simply never -- and I've lived in six countries and dealt with a variety of financial institutions worldwide -- encountered organisations so singularly and zealously dedicated to separating the customers from their money. My most recent theory is that all those pirates who fell overboard during coastal raids simply swam ashore and started banks. And the awful thing of it is that the Spanish have been exploited for so long they don't know anything different. They lie down and accept the most outrageous hammerings without a whimper. I pray there is that eighth ring of Hell where the Devil will consign the bankers together with the lawyers and -- oh, I have my list.

A few words about Puerto Portals …

We arranged to meet in Puerto Portals, a posh little marina port down on the southwest coast. Portals is one of the primary arenas here in which to play spectator. There are boutiques that sell the kind of clothes one otherwise only ever sees on the ambulatory sticks who walk the runways at clothes shows, and moored along the interior of the marina are the kind of boats that normally sit on chocks at boat shows to impress the plebs like me.

And then, at least for the edification of all the men within sighting range, there are the apparently escaped showgirls -- ah, such improbably cartoonly curved women – who adorn the yachts owned by the grizzled guys my age who've had tummy tucks and hair transplants and sport gold medallions, Rolexes, and bronze lamé thongs. I can't think of a more delightful way to spend a late afternoon than to find a ringside seat at one of the outdoor cafes and indulge my inner voyeur. And do I envy the dueños of the yachts their delectable quail? Well, I'd have to admit that an expandable part of me certainly does. But afterwards you'd have to talk to them, and that's a daunting prospect. So would I really want to be like those guys, trade lives with them? Most emphatically not. There is something pitiful about that anxious grasping after a season of life now past, a search for spring when the sun is already low and descending. Not me. Autumn has always been my favourite season -- the bright crispness of it, the pungent overripeness and the cool threat of winter yet to come. It makes you savour what you've got, and reaching back to try to roll back Nature's Law is a fool's undertaking.

Mallorca in winter – hot or cold?

As I was eyeing the port I saw one of those vivid snapshot vignettes that add dimension and ironic humour to life here. Shuffling along the front were two elderly Mallorquin widows all in black, muffled up to their ears with scarves and mittens and wool hats, hunched against the icy 60-degree 10 mph wind, clearly suffering from incipient hypothermia.

But right behind them, overtaking them, was a young German couple in matching lederhosen and thin T shirts, striding along, beaming and gesticulating, soaking up the sun and reveling in the semi-tropical 60-degree 10 mph wind.

An opinion about Rolex watches …

I figure that anybody who is pseud enough to pay £5,000, or whatever they ask, for a watch as ugly as a Rolex, deserves to be upstaged by his gardener wearing a cheap copy. That company can spend any number of millions advertising those things as fashion items, but they'll never convince me that they are anything other than seriously unsightly. They do have my admiration, however, for having had the gall and the balls to promote those watches as something more than an accoutrement you wouldn't want to be caught dead wearing, save underwater and thus safely out of sight of the rest of us.

A Mallorquin’s view of property values and tourism …

‘Foreigners pay us monumental sums of money for houses that a few years ago we couldn't even give away, land that we hadn't used for anything but grazing or as orchards. They support our restaurants, our bars, our whole service industry, every kind of infrastructure necessary to keep them, and us, fed and housed and happy.

And every time they buy something, however small, we make some money. Are we going to complain about that? You have to be a pretty blinkered nationalist to work up much enthusiasm for slamming down the portcullis.

No, it's a more than fair trade. In fact, I think we've had the better of it all along. I will say that I like the idea of places like yours bringing the image more upmarket, and yes, I recognise that as the numbers of tourists increase we'll reach a point where the island can't support more visitors, but I think that's a self-limiting mechanism and that tourism can take care of itself. If we get too crowded, people will stop coming. If we get too expensive, people will stop coming, and if we get complacent and stop offering a good product, people will stop coming. No, I don't worry.'

The Cinderella story of Es Vergé …

I went along to the front left of Es Vergé and banged on the kitchen door. It's a rustic farmhouse restaurant with a history that reflects in microcosm what's happened over the whole island. Located only a few hundred yards below the Castell de Alaró, that Mecca for walkers, and accessible to cars only via a long, rubble-strewn unmade road that twists in a series of hairpin curves between terraces of pines, carob, and olive trees going back to Roman times, Es Vergé serves, lunchtimes and into the evening every day, absolutely scrumptious shoulders of lamb, braised for hours in a huge oven with garlic and herbs. (Skip the bought-in desserts, but do have a cognac quemada with your coffee, letting the alcohol burn off well.) The restaurant is run by a seamed and twinkly woman named Francisca, now in her eighties, helped by members of her family, most of them well into their seventies.

Some years ago, walkers used to stop at the farmhouse to beg a glass of water, and that was no trouble at all in the days when walkers were few. Later, however, the numbers increased, and some would smell the family's Sunday roast lamb and knock on the door to ask if they might buy a meal. And so Francisca took up the habit of cooking a few extra joints and serving them on a trestle table set on the dirt floor of an adjoining barn.

After that, simply by word of mouth, a fame of sorts began to spread, and twenty or thirty or forty people might turn up of a Sunday. Lunch was still served in the barn, more trestle tables were added, plus a rough wine and a few other items, like snails. The family prospered, and for those of us who knew of the restaurant it was a delightful outing with some of the aspects of a jolly catered picnic. Then, to the regret of many of us who live here and are protective of the few secret places still left untouristed, a guidebook wrote up the restaurant in such glowing terms that now one can hardly get up there weekends because of all the expensive 4 X 4s and rental cars
cluttering up the stony track.

Still, we're happy for Francisca and her family, and hope they are making a bundle.

This has been a sampler of comments about the island, taken from The Bloody Bokhara. There are many more observations and recommendations regarding Mallorca in the full book, which sold well in the UK a few years ago, and which was Book of the Month for Germany’s largest book club last year. You may download it free by clicking HERE.

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