The image of Mallorca faded

PalmThere are images that become iconic with the passage of time. Today, Mallorca bears little resemblance to the one immortalized in 1987, 38 years ago, by a tourist postcard from the Barcelona-based publishing house Fisa Escudo de Oro. It was on a corner of the road that formerly ran through Vilafranca de Bonany. Five elderly people are seated, a man and four women. One of them isn't looking at the camera because she's concentrating on her embroidery. At the top of the back wall hang two posters announcing a rally by the PSM (Nationalist Left), on May 29th. It's to commemorate the European elections. Below are four more from the album. Take by Tomeu Penya, a native of the town. On the right, remains of an old advertisement for El Fary at the Palma Auditorium on May 8 stand out. Some witnesses, direct or indirect, are also present. One of them is Catalina Mestre Jaume, 76. She is the daughter of the couple on the left, Sebastià Mestre Bauçà and Aina Maria Jaume Jaume. because, after finishing work outside, he would often stop for a while. One day, a man passing by asked to take a photo.

Surprise in the souvenir

The surprise came after a while. "A sister of mine saw that snapshot turned into a tourist postcard in a store souvenirs del Islote, where we spent our summers. My parents were very complimentary about it. Later, we saw it in a catalog of promotional photos of Mallorca. Now, none of its subjects remain. My mother died when I was two, in 1989, and my father, in 2003." Maestro is deeply nostalgic for that Mallorca of summers spent chatting on the street. "It was a different life, with a slower pace. Now, hardly anyone goes out to get some fresh air. Everyone is at home glued to their cell phones, the television, and the air conditioning."

76-year-old Tomeu Penya was also pleasantly surprised to discover that photo. "It's wonderful. I find it funny that the album poster appears in it." Take, the seventh of my degree, and, what's more, it's in my town. I've kept the postcard safe at home. It represents a Mallorca that no longer exists. I remember the neighbors on my street coming out every day to get some fresh air. I always stopped to count a few sparrows and we'd have a good laugh. It was terrific entertainment. People took advantage of that time of day to talk while they made lace or a string of tomatoes." Peña still lives in Vilafranca. The same feeling always comes over her when she returns to Mallorca after a concert tour abroad. "I used to feel a great joy. Not anymore. I don't like seeing the island so overcrowded. We should have stopped it a long time ago. And, meanwhile, everyone blames each other for the disaster."

European Elections

Another protagonist of the famous snapshot is the former PSM leader, Sebastià Serra, 75. His name appears on the list of participants in the nationalist party's rally, presented as "the necessary force" ahead of the 1987 European elections—the legislative term had begun in 1984. These were the first for a Spain that, after Franco's death in 1975, had only been a member of the European Union for a year. "We," Serra asserts, "ran as part of a coalition made up of different nationalist parties under the name Esquerra dels Pobles (People's Left). I saw the famous postcard after the elections at a newsstand in Palma. I found it very funny that it featured our initials. I bought it to take to the party." Everyone laughed.

In 1976, Serra was one of the founders of the PSM (Mallorca Socialist Party), which was initially called the PSI (Socialist Party of the Islands). In 1983, he was one of the party's two deputies elected in the first regional elections, which brought the popular Gabriel Cañellas to the Consolat de Mar seat. In the first municipal elections of 1979, Montuirero native Francesc Trobat had become the party's first mayor of all of Mallorca thanks to a pact with the PSOE. Those European elections took place on June 10th, coinciding with the regional and municipal elections. In the regional elections, the PSM again revalidated the results of four years earlier. However, in the Brussels parliament, Esquerra dels Pobles failed to win any MEPs. It was in the Balearic Islands, however, that it obtained its best results (around 9,900 votes, 2.9%). The coalition had to wait until the 1989 elections to have a member of the European Parliament. It was Basque Juan María Bandrés, representing Euskadiko Ezkerra.

Contrasting Worlds

Jaume Sansó, a 61-year-old researcher from Villafranca, experienced all that nationalist warmth with great enthusiasm. "In 1987, I was 23 years old and joined the town as a PSM councilor. I would serve as mayor from 1999 to 2010. I was delighted when I first saw the postcard at the party headquarters in Palma. Later, when the town magazine was published, it became more widely distributed." The former politician offers the following assessment of the image: "It represents the generation that lived through a civil war, the famous years of hunger, and the transformation of rural Mallorca into a tourist destination. Buses loaded with tourists making the route from the Gordiola glassblowing factory (Algaida) to the Caves of Drac (Manacor). It was like the contrast of two worlds."

He boom The tourist boom turned that road into an important commercial hub. "It was full of bars and picturesque shops selling melons, ramellet tomatoes, and all kinds of farm produce that were also the subject of other tourist postcards. With so many olive oil mills, there were constantly many car accidents and hit-and-runs, often resulting in fatalities. Tourists in the hotels of the Levante region were also on the road. In 1994, the town breathed a little easier with the first bypass of the town."

Another of Vilafranca de Bonany's attractions was the Es Cruce restaurant, located on a roundabout on the current Palma-Manacor highway, which opened in 2006. It occupies an old orchard where, in 1969, taking advantage of the tourist boom, the Garí family began serving rice. Today it is the great temple of island gastronomy. Overshadowing it, not far away on the same highway, is Los Melones, which left its former location in the town in the early 1970s. "The buses would stop at these two establishments so tourists could eat. Parking was good."

Indigenous Reserve

The construction of the Palma-Manacor highway served to ease traffic congestion in the interior of Vilafranca de Bonany. However, it marked the beginning of a new change throughout Mallorca. "We became a commuter town. With the pandemic, this trend accelerated." Today, in the midst of globalization, Mallorca is approaching one million inhabitants (almost half were born outside the island). Thirty-eight years ago, there were nearly 700,000. Sansó laments the changing signs of the times. "Vilafranca has lost a lot of its postcard quality, a lot of its tourist life. Hardly anyone says hello on the street anymore."

In 2013, the Manacor-born actor Toni Gomila reflected on the lost identity of the Mallorcans in the monologue To shelter. At one point he speaks of the possible creation of an indigenous reserve: "Exactly, then we'll all come to Escorca in pants with puffy pants to dance the parado, and buses of tourists will throw peanuts out the window at us [...]". Seen in retrospect, this idea can already be seen in the photograph with which Joan Linares attempted to capture the soul of a Mallorca in extinction in 1987. Antoni Marimon, professor of Contemporary History at the UIB, is not very optimistic: "The prophecy ofTo shelter. In the midst of the current touristification and Castilianization of the island, all we can do is resist, like the irreducible Gauls in Asterix's village.