Climent Picornell continues to document the changes in the physiognomy of Mallorcan towns in his new book.

PalmIn one of the first texts that are part of Shrinking landscapes, Climent Picornell's new book published by El Gall Editor, tells an anecdote that perfectly sums up the book's essence. It is transcribed by Picornell, but these are the words of one of his neighbors, Miquel Granyón. "They expropriated a small piece of land from me, inside a two-quarter-mile section that I have going to Sineu, because they had to widen the railway track. And now the train passes through what was mine and you'd like to believe that the goats I have, two dozen of them, when it passes, they stop... and watch it go by!" As if it were one of Miquel's little animals. Granyón, Picornell demonstrates again in Shrinking landscapes who can't help but raise his head every time reality, with all its force and speed, passes him by.

"My mother told me something that I've always liked a lot," shares the author, "and that is that it was not good to listen, on the street. You didn't have to stop to listen, but to hear you? and I feel something that catches my attention I have to take note, whether it be with a mouthpiece or the notes on the phone. If I see that with all this there is enough material, I give it shape and a book like this one that I present now comes out," he says, and recognizes that, although he has said more than once that perhaps this is wrong, it is the last one that he dedicates " more. "I already said it about the previous book, The end of a world, which would be the last, and look at it!" he proclaims with a laugh a few hours before the presentation of his latest book in Palma – on Thursday, October 23, at 7 p.m., in Can Alcover – and a few days before the presentation of Felanitx, next Friday, the 31st.

The residents of Sant Joan and the residents of Sant Joan

In this case, he combines more descriptive texts, stories full of anecdotes and conversations heard by the people, with others that are more reflective and introspective, with which he explores and compiles the main changes that a pebble has experienced that, nevertheless, feels his own. "If you ask me what has changed the most in all these years in the villages of Pla, I would tell you that it is not the physical landscapes, it is the human ones. The physiognomies of the town, without a doubt, because that is what these people talk about. Shrinking landscapes", he continues, referring to one of the stories included in the book as a clear and precise example of this fact. "It was a woman from the village who told me that when she went out on the street she didn't know anyone, and that, on the other hand, when she went to the cemetery she knew everyone. It's a very beautiful and very symbolic way of telling what has happened in the villages," he explains, and confirms it with a demographic theory, he says, shared by another resident of San Juan. "Her father was the brother of twelve, in his case there were three, and he had only had one daughter; who already said she didn't want children, and who only had a cat that, on top of that, had been cured! Isn't this a good summary of what has happened in the last century? Even more so if you think that she told me all this while we were watching North African women accompanying their children to school." "That's why these women only go out, to accompany them and to go look for them," shares the geographer, who recalls that this latest book is "neither a sociology book, nor a geography book, nor a history book," but rather "a book of stories." "Very harsh and exclusionary, tending towards Vox" and speaking of children as a reference for the integration processes. "The voices that speak Mallorcan and go to school and everyone is everyone's friend, but then they grow up and a process of exclusion occurs, which they receive and feel part of it in every detail with a cruel cruelty," says Pienso. San Juan. "We have a mayor who is English, which is saying something, but the cook at Can Tronca, who is currently doing the fried food, is Moustafà, and the truñelladas ensaimadas from the oven upstairs, which are so good, are made by an Argentinian, and until recently the priest was from the Congo. "These are the new landscapes that are taking shape, a demonstration of how postcards have changed over time on a human scale," he says.

"We are not believers, but we are practitioners."

Regarding the rise of cultural projects in the Pla de Mallorca, both some that also reflect on the changes that have taken place and others that seek to promote new ones, Picornell believes that "people are happy to live in the towns of the Pla, they enjoy being there, and perhaps there has been a fear that we have become what we have become." "And that makes me think of a quote by Salvador Dalí, who was found at a funeral and asked if he was a believer. And he said no, that he wasn't a believer in anything, but that he was a practitioner. I believe that we don't believe in many things, but that we are practitioners, as paradoxical as that may be," he concludes.