During the boom of tourism, there were Swedes who did not get discouraged. Some tried to dissuade their compatriots from going on vacation to a country that was a dictatorship and that, with the economic support of the USA, had made tourism its salvation. The most activist ones demonstrated with slogans such as 'Boycott trips to Spain!' and 'Trips to Mallorca are a disgrace'. From other countries, these protests would also be supported by Spanish anarchists in exile organized around Defensa Interior (DI). Coordinating the entity was the native of Menorca Octavi Alberola Surinach (1928-2025).

Between 1960 and 1980, in just two decades, the population of Palma doubled. It went from 150,000 inhabitants to 300,000. The tourist boom, with its epicenter in l'Arenal, turned the Balearic capital into a kind of promised land not only for peninsulars, especially from Andalusia and Murcia, but also for families from the Part Forana, who were fleeing the harshness of the countryside. One of the suburban neighborhoods that was suddenly colonized was Son Gotleu, located in the Llevant district, between Aragó street and La Soledat. Its transformation can be traced in the exhibition Son Gotleu, beyond the headline. The origins of a welcoming neighborhood (1960-1980). Until the second week of June it will be at the neighborhood's health center and then it will move to the Mater center. It is a project by Palma XXI and Arquitectives, coordinated by the historian from Pollença Leyla Dworkin with the support of Caixa Colonya and Fundació Iniciatives del Mediterrani.

From his house in Bunyola, at the foot of the Serra d’Alfàbia, Miquel Canals Canyelles Moro, 93 years old, proudly displays a framed photo from his youth. It's no ordinary photo. It shows him with the trophy that in 1956, at the age of 23, accredited him as the best pine cutter in the entire State. At the end of November 2019, local researcher Biel Mateu Batle rescued his story and that of his companions from oblivion. This was during the Mountain Fair he organized in the town, which would later be called the Fira de Santa Catalina.

Citizen struggle has more strength than some believe. The Menorcans know this well, who in 1973, at the end of Francoism, were the first in the Balearic Islands to raise their voices against the destruction of the territory – four years later, in July 1977, in Mallorca, there would be the historic occupation of Dragonera; and in October, in Ibiza, 2,000 people demonstrated with the cry 'Save Ses Salines'. In 1969 Menorca was the last island to embrace mass tourism with the inauguration of Maó airport, which replaced the old aerodrome in Sant Lluís. The historian from Maó, Laura Piris Coll, explains the reasons for this late incorporation into the tourist boom: “Here there was an important structure of its own for footwear and jewelry. The livestock sector was also quite profitable. In addition, the owners were very interested in maintaining family estates for reasons of social prestige. On the other hand, the dictatorship had not invested anything in infrastructure on the island”.

The retired Miquel Ferriol Estrany, 81, has very fond memories of the summers of the late 70s. “It was when TVE began to broadcast the Tour of Spain live and in color. With my father, I would sit in front of the television to watch it after lunch. He was particularly interested in the landscapes. He always told me: ‘I already rode many of these stages when I was young during the war’. It was one of the few occasions when he spoke about the Civil War. Later I learned that he had fought in the Peninsula with a cyclist battalion”.

There are three weeks left until the Manacor Spring Fairs and Festivals and this year the nerves are very noticeable in the 'castellera' group Al·lots de Llevant. One of its members, Joan Llodrà Gayà, 52, assures it: “We hope to be able to raise a good tower to celebrate our thirtieth anniversary. We are among the first 'colles' in the Balearic Islands. We were born in 1996, the same year as Castellers de Mallorca, from Palma. We have been rehearsing for months. Our highest construction has been a four of eight, meaning eight floors with four people on each floor. We have only been able to raise it three times in our history. We almost always do seven floors”.

Llucmajor still preserves vestiges of rural Mallorca. Four times a year, a flock of 100 sheep crosses the town center towards a farm on the old Cala Pi road, nine kilometers away. They do so under the watchful eye of Miquel Tomàs Garau, Pastoret, 75 years old, and his dog. “Everyone takes photos of me,” he says with a smile. “It’s something that catches the eye. When the grass runs out on my farm, I take them there.” The Llucmajorer is one of the last old-fashioned shepherds practicing transhumance, an activity that consists of the seasonal movement of livestock in search of better pastures. Traditionally, sheep flocks from the large estates spent the winter in the Migjorn plains of the island and the summer in the mountains. On the roads, there used to be cisterns, reservoirs, and ponds that allowed animals and shepherds to drink.

Located at the foot of the Tramuntana mountain range, 14 kilometers from Palma, at the beginning of the 20th century Esporles was known as the 'little Russia' of Mallorca. Its six textile factories had managed to forge a strong proletarian consciousness. The inauguration in 1930 of the Casa del Pueblo would be a reflection of that class pride. Already in the municipal elections of April 12, 1931, the municipality would be one of the few on the island where the left triumphed. Two days later, King Alfonso XIII departed into exile and the Second Republic was proclaimed.

Women have played a key role in the history of antimilitarism. When men were obliged to go to war, mothers, wives, and sisters did not hesitate to mobilize to save their loved ones from certain death. It was during the Modern Age (15th-18th centuries) that the armies of European states became permanent and increasingly large. At that time, the Hispanic monarchy, following what was done in the rest of the continent, had three ways of supplying its troops: with mercenaries (professionals who fought in exchange for pay), with forced levies (generally from marginalized people, prisoners, and vagrants), and with the quintas.

The Havana cemetery is full of tombs with very local surnames: Pujol, Roca, Moner, Ensenyat... They are the testimony of the Majorcans who in the 19th century left to 'make the Americas'. According to chronicles, in 1889 there were about 10,000 (4% of the population). Many from Andratx went to Cuba. Among them were the paternal and maternal grandparents of Rosa Calafat Vila, professor of Catalan Philology at the UIB. “In the eighties, during my youth – she says –, I dug into the oral memory of the municipality and I was pleasantly surprised. I discovered a large number of 'gloses' related to the Caribbean island”.

The Palmesan Gonçal López Nadal, 73, is Professor Emeritus of Economic History at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). He feels indebted to the mastery of the Felanitx native Antoni Binimelis Sagrera. “The first time –he assures– I heard of him was in 1964, when I was 11 years old. It was through my uncle, Guillem Nadal Blanes, who was stationed as a diplomat in India. In a letter he told the family that he had met a Majorcan, a specialist in classical languages and a Spanish teacher in New Delhi. He said he was a rather peculiar person, a man of universal culture, and that he hadn't lost a hair, but, from his condition as a peasant”.

In Mallorca, during the Civil War, one of the main targets of the insurgents was the wealthy class that had supported the Second Republic. The symbol of that repression was the mayor of Palma, Emili Darder, a doctor by training, who in 1934 had helped found the Balearic Republican Left (ERB) to counterbalance the local political bosses. On February 24, 1937, after a sham court-martial, Darder was executed by firing squad. He shared that fate with two party members: the businessman Antoni Maria Ques from Alcúdia and the former mayor of Inca, Antoni Mateu, and the Palma socialist Alexandre Jaume. Eight more ERB mayors were also murdered: Joan Mas Verd I harvest (Montuïri), Clemente Garau Juan (Porreres), Pere Llull Fullana (Algaida), Pere Josep Cànaves Sales (Pollença), Pau Crespí Villalonga (Mancor del Valle), Pedro Vallespir Amengual (Costitx), Joan Alemán Villalonga (Búger) and Joan Guasch.

In 2021, Francesc Vicens Vidal, a musicologist from Palma, discovered a remarkable story within his wife Maria de Salut's family. "I received," he recalls, "a phone call from filmmaker Álex Dioscórides, who was preparing the documentary." Stone and oilfocused on the olive grove culture of the Tramuntana mountain range. He asked me if I knew any olive harvesters he could interview, given that many sang while they worked. I told him no. But one day my mother-in-law told me that her mother, when she was single, had been hired out to work on an estate in Sóller. They called this 'going to the mountains'."

During the Franco regime, women had their own form of military service through the Women's Social Service (SSF). This was a request made in 1937 by the Women's Section of the Falange to Franco to obtain more volunteers for the service.Social AssistanceIt was a public assistance organization created by the insurgent side during the Civil War. In 1939, with the fascist victory, the Women's Social Service (SSF) was decreed a 'national duty' presented as the perfect complement to the Home Economics Schools. Under the auspices of National Catholicism, these schools were dedicated to instructing young women in the tasks considered proper to a 'good woman and mother' (cooking, childcare, sewing, nursing, etc.). Curiously, the head of the Women's Section, Pilar Primo de Rivera, sister of José Antonio, founder of the Falange, never married nor had children.

Andreu Matamalas Fons, a 51-year-old from Manacor, had kept silent for three decades. A few months ago, he received an unexpected call from a television program. Saved"They suggested," he says, "that I meet up with four old comrades from my military service in Palma. They got us talking about the biggest military desertion in the entire country, which a group of 18 soldiers staged in 1994 to protest the mistreatment we suffered. My brain had completely erased that trauma."

Francesca Palou Fernández, a 63-year-old from Pollença, perfectly remembers the general elections of March 3, 1996, which gave victory to José María Aznar of the People's Party, after 14 years of socialist government under Felipe González. "It was with my family." grandmother My mother was watching TV. When Aznar came on, she said to me in Spanish, "They're coming back, Francisqueta, they're coming back," referring to the right wing. It was the first time I'd ever heard her make a political comment. At that time, there were still many people alive who had suffered under Franco and who were still afraid. On May 5th, Aznar was sworn in as president, and curiously, she died the next day of a heart attack, at 84 years old. Perhaps she couldn't bear the shock that made her relive all her ghosts from the past.

Like an ancient sibyl, 93-year-old Maria Capó Navarro concentrates and begins to sing one of the tunes from her youth, when she worked on the family farm in Sóller. It's her way of evoking a world of connection to the land and precise words that vanished with the boom A tourist attraction in the 1960s. The first person to hear that same tune live 74 years ago was the American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. "In 1952," he says, "he saw me perform at an international folklore competition held in the Palma bullring. I sang with my village group, Los Danzadores del Baile de Oro (The Dancers of the Golden Dance). We were one of the prize winners. Apparently, my family liked it a lot and asked to come. I was the only doll." Capó remembers that visit perfectly. "The sun was blazing, and Lomax arrived hunched over and sweltering. He took out his tape recorder and recorded the moment when my father, my grandfather, and I were singing while we threshed grain on the threshing floor with a sledgehammer. He must not have understood a thing. He only knew a little Spanish."

In 1968, the world would be governed. It was the year in which the mobilizations against the Vietnam War, begun 13 years earlier, intensified. In May, in Paris, hundreds of students took to the streets with slogans as resounding as 'Be realistic, demand the impossible'. In Czechoslovakia, Soviet forces repressed an attempt at reform called the 'Prague Spring', which advocated 'socialism with a human face'. The United States, while witnessing the rise of the hippie movement, was dismayed by the assassinations of two defenders of the rights of the Black population, the Reverend Martin Luther King and the Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy – the same tragic end had befallen his brother five years earlier, who had arrived in Mexico. He had machine-gunned university students who were demanding more democracy on the eve of the Olympic Games. At that sporting event, the anti-racist 'Black Power' movement was made visible by two African American athletes who accepted their medals raising a black glove and bowing their heads.

I still don't know what the future holds after the death of Margalida Capellà Soler. An entire generation of Latin and Greek teachers owes her a great debt for her work in popularizing these subjects. Born in Campanet in 1965, as a teenager Margalida was fascinated by what her Greek teacher, Coloma Blanes y Blanes, taught her at the Berenguer de Anoia high school in Inca. Even then, she knew that after finishing her pre-university studies, she would go to Barcelona to study Classical Philology. She didn't succumb to the siren call of her science teachers who, upon recognizing her intellectual versatility, insisted she pursue a degree "with better job prospects."

Today, giants are the protagonists of many civic celebrations. Their origin, however, was religious, within the context of Corpus Christi. The most important ancient feast of Christendom was instituted in Europe in the 13th century. It was set on the calendar 60 days after Easter Sunday to venerate 'the body of Christ,' personified in the consecrated host. Initially, it took place inside churches, but from the 14th century onward, it moved into the streets in the form of a procession. Attention then turned to men in costumes and on stilts who recreated episodes from sacred history with the aim of making it known to the illiterate population. Very soon, those actors became giants. The first one in the West dates from 1424 and was built in Barcelona. It was a replica of Goliath, the Philistine giant whom David, the future king of Israel, captured with a powerful slingshot. It already had the characteristic rigid shell that encases the man wearing it. In the Balearic Islands, the appearance of enormous anthropomorphic figures occurred two centuries later. The first is documented in Sóller in 1630 and the second in Sineu in 1653, the latter already integrated into a local festival, that of Sant Roc. The first Mallorcan giant whose name we know, Puput, dates from 1762 and is from Sant Llorenç. And in Menorca, the oldest giants are those of Maó. They arrived rented in 1934 from Barcelona to liven up the festivities of the Virgen de Gracia – the City Council would eventually buy the figures, which would not be given names (Tomeu and Guida) until 1992. In the Pitiusas Islands, however, the giant tradition was entirely nonexistent.