In January 1968, the English weekly Melody Maker published news that generated a lot of excitement: the possible organization of a festival called the First World Festival Of Jazz and Popular Music, which would colloquially be known as the Música 68 festival. It was to take place from July 22 to 27 in the Palma bullring, with a capacity for 17,500 people. Historian Tomeu Canyelles offers the details in his doctoral thesis New musical styles and social changes in Mallorca: 1960-1975. "Behind the organization was an English promoter called Music Festival Productions which, in association with musicians Ronnie Scott and Peter King, launched the idea of staging a large-scale musical event on the island."Última Hora was the first local newspaper to pick up on that rumor. It speculated that "British, French, Spanish, German, and American stars" would participate in the festival. Later, with information from London, it published some of the lineup names: Donovan, Scott Mckenzie, Jimmi Hendrix, Peret, Rita Pavone, Tom Jones, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, and the groups Los Bravos, The Animals, and The Byrds. The stage setup included a filming set to later sell the tapes to various world televisions.In mid-June, a month before the event, Última Hora reported that the organizers had disappeared. "In an atmosphere of absolute silence – states the historian – the promoter Music Festival Productions backed out, and none of the journalists or chroniclers of the time recall the exact reason why this major festival did not take place. It's possible that the budget got out of hand, or simply that it was foreseen that it would not be profitable."Despite the failure of that initiative, Mallorca during the tourist boom would not stop using music as a promotional tool. In 1972, Mallorca and Ibiza hosted the filming of the famous music video Un beso y una flor by the Valencian singer Nino Bravo. In 1978, the Italian diva Raffaela Carrà split her time between Mallorca and Menorca to film her hit Hay que venir al sur. That same year, Menorca also served as a filming location for two songs of the moment: Summer Love, by Phil Trim from Trinidad and Tobago, and Paquito Eche, by the Frenchman Georgie Dann.Classical music would also be an important tourist attraction. In 1962, the Pollença Festival was launched, promoted by the English violinist Philip Newman, a loyal visitor to the town. In 1964, another artist enamored with the Tramuntana mountain range, the Catalan painter Josep Coll Bardolet, promoted the concert at the Torrent de Pareis. On September 3, 1969, the Inquer shoe businessman Marc Ferragut Fluxà inaugurated the Auditorium in Palma. For the occasion, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra played under the baton of the prestigious Austrian conductor Herbert Von Karajan. In 1979, English musicians Patrick Meadows and Stephanie Shepard kicked off the Deià International Festival. And in 1981, the Chopin Festival of Valldemossa was revived, which in 1930 had been promoted by the Palma composer Joan Maria Thomàs.
From 'Me lo dijo Pérez' to 'El Puente': the tourist songs that projected Mallorca to the world
Promoted by Foment de Turisme in 1964, the International Song Festival of Mallorca turned music into a great advertising showcase for the island and popularized songs like ‘Paradise of Love’, ‘Vuelo 502’ and ‘El turista 1.999.999’.
PalmaIn Mallorca, one of the great allies of the boom of tourism were the so-called tourist songs. The lyrics praised the island's scenic wonders. The seed was sown in the 1940s by the Palma musician Pere Bonet Mir (1917-2002), better known as Bonet de Sant Pere and professionally Bonet de San Pedro. In the midst of the post-war period, in the song Bajo el cielo de Palma, he proclaimed to the four winds "beautiful landscapes Mallorca has". He would deal with the same theme in Un viejo hogar en la isla, Juntito al mar, Cala d’Or, and Canto a Mallorca. These entirely naive compositions contrasted with the famous song Raska-yú, which in 1943 the island artist wrote as a parody of death in times of great misery (Franco's regime even censored it, suspecting it contained an implicit criticism of the dictatorship).
Bonet de Sant Pere's tourist songs were the ones that in 1950 welcomed hundreds of newlyweds, peninsular and foreign, who arrived on the island thanks to the campaign 'Honeymoon in Mallorca'. The initiative had been born from the Foment de Turisme de Mallorca to relaunch the sun and beach industry after the shock of the Second World War. At the beginning of the 60s new lyrics dedicated to the island would appear. In 1961 the singer from Granada Gelu recalled a summer love in En Palma de Mallorca. And in 1963, after performing in Santa Margalida, the Hispano-Argentine Luis Aguilé composed the successful song Santa Margarita. “Spain has Mallorca –he said–, Mallorca has a saint named Margarita. Who hasn't had a nice night in Santa Margarita, in Santa Margarita? And who hasn't seen a pretty girl in Santa Margarita, in Santa Margarita?”.
The boom in tourism also led to the birth of Mallorcan music bands that played in hotels – some would make the leap to the Peninsula and abroad. Standing out, among others, were Los Javaloyas, Los Bravos, Los Beta, Los 5 del Este, Z-66 and Els Valldemossa, by the Estaràs brothers. They mixed their own songs with international hits of the moment like Yesterday and Yellow Submarine by The Beatles and Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones. Outside the hotels, Palma would be filled with discotheques designed to attract young European tourists. The kings of the night were Tagomago (1964), Sgt. Peppers (1968) and Barbarela (1969).
“Every day is a party in Mallorca”
In 1964, aware of the importance of music as a promotional tool, the Foment de Turisme (Tourism Promotion) launched the Festival Internacional de Canción de Mallorca (International Song Festival of Mallorca). It was preceded by the success of the organization the previous year of the Festival Mundial de la Elegancia y la Belleza (World Festival of Elegance and Beauty) for the election of Miss United Nations. That musical event was in line with other world-renowned festivals such as the one in San Remo in Italy (1951), Eurovision (1956), Benidorm (1959), and the Cançó Mediterrània de Barcelona (Mediterranean Song of Barcelona) (1959). The Mallorca festival, however, differed from the others by a special clause: any participating composition had to "disseminate and popularize the name of the island, evoke Mallorca through a song".
Between July 7 and 11, 1964, the Hotel Cristina in Palma hosted the first edition of the International Song Festival of Mallorca. The presenters were José Luis Uribarri and Irene Mir. They were accompanied by the North American musician Andy Russell, who was in charge of addressing foreign television stations in English. A total of 496 songs were presented, of which 20 were selected, representing countries as diverse as Argentina, Ireland, France, and Greece. The winning theme was Quand Palma chantait, by the French duo formed by Frida Boccara and Luis Recatero. Until the time of the performance, neither of them had visited the island. In the book Paradise of Love or the imagined island (Edicions Documenta Balear, 2012), musicologist Francesc Vicens recalls the words they said upon receiving the award: “Everyone knows Palma and not everyone has been here. We know it from what we had seen in photos and read in books and from what many friends had told us”.
Despite not receiving any award, the most remembered song from that first edition in 1964 was Paradise of Love. Written by Bernat Pomar, it was performed in Spanish and English by Los Javaloyas. “Every day – the tune said – is a party in Mallorca”. It was a common trend that the compositions with the most impact at the festival were not the winning ones. In 1965, the public was enthusiastic about Me lo dijo Pérez, by Karina. Despite its success, the lyrics were heavily criticized for being frivolous and superficial. Things were said such as: “Me lo dijo Pérez, that he was in Mallorca, that there the joy, by night and by day, never ends. If you saw, he told me, what lovely girls who love on the beach playing in the sea”.
‘The 1,999,999th tourist’
In 1966 Vuelo 502, from the group Los 4 de la Torre, took a large part of the applause. “We are almost there –he proclaimed–, to be able to see the land that God placed”. In 1967 the most acclaimed piece was El turista 1.999.999, by Los Stop. It spoke of the sadness felt by the tourist who had been on the verge of being visitor number 2,000,000. In 1968 the ovation was for El Puente, in which Los Mismos assured that “if they built a bridge from Valencia to Mallorca, it would be wonderful to travel to Mallorca without needing to take a boat or a plane, just walking, by bicycle or hitchhiking”. In that edition, second place went to a song in Catalan that exceptionally did not speak of the beauties of Mallorca. It was M’és ben igual, by Antoni Perera Fons from Manacor.
![Collection of vinyl records from the exhibition Destinació Mallorca! (2025).](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 1920 1281"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
In 1970, the sixth and last edition of the Festival Internacional de Canción de Mallorca took place. The historian Margalida Pujals Mas explains the reasons in the book Leisure in the sixties. Music, song and party venues (Edicions Cort, 2002): “The public soon realized that the results were agreed upon, that the songs did not have the minimum quality to participate in a festival and that, in short, it was more of a media spectacle than a musical event. It fell into a monotony that bored even the organizers. Year after year the same presenters were repeated, the gala scripts were almost repeated and the public's opinion was not respected, which in some cases was met with whistles for the jury's decision”. In 1975, it was decided to revive the old competition with a new name, Musical Mallorca. The initiative, with its epicenter at the Auditòrium de Palma, was intended to help the island recover as a tourist destination after the international oil crisis of 1973. Funded by RTVE and also presented by José Luis Uribarri, it would only last for three editions. The last one featured the Italian diva Raffaela Carrà with her iconic song Hay que venir al sur.
‘Souvenir disc’
The Mallorca International Song Festival would mark the life of one of the participants in the first edition, the musician from León, Miguel Aller, who was eliminated in the first round. The historian Tomeu Canyelles talks about it in his doctoral thesis, which he presented in 2013 at the UIB, titled New musical styles and social changes in Mallorca: 1960-1975. "Aller left with two lessons learned: the first, the important business that existed around the different record labels which, taking advantage of the great diffusion of that contest, achieved a considerable profit margin by editing the songs that participated in it. The second, the lack of recording studios on the island at a time when a very large number of musical groups appeared, intended to liven up the nights of countless night-clubs, party halls, discotheques, or any tourist infrastructure".
In 1965, Aller, at 39 years old, opened the headquarters of the first record label in the Balearic Islands, Fonal, on Sant Jaume street in Palma. The new label allowed island groups not to have to travel to the Peninsula to record their albums. Aller understood music as a business based 50% on quality and another 50% on commercial appeal. His star product was the 'souvenir disc'. It contained 'toponymic songs' that evoked the happiness of Mallorcan summer in a specific corner and that tourists bought at their hotel. Thus, albums like Can Picafort, Son Vida, El Arenal, Cala Millor, Magalluf, and Cala Mayor emerged.
Catalan music was testimonial at Fonal. Spanish themes of pasodobles, fandangos, and flamenco, and current hits like Un rayo de sol, Limón limonero, Guantanamera, Prorrompomero, Cuando salí de Cuba, Vivo cantando, and La bamba were prioritized. There would also be LP compilations under the title Vacaciones en Mallorca and Vacaciones en España. "The striking covers – Canyelles points out – were a whole collection of clichés of that golden Mallorca: beachfront hotels, attractive female swimmers in bikinis by the sea, nocturnal images of the Cathedral..." Fonal was a resounding success. It sold print runs of 50,000 copies of records at a time. In 1973, it would transform into Maller. As a tool for tourist promotion, today music has been completely displaced by Instagram.
