The 16th Atlàntida Mallorca Film Fest (AMFF) takes place in Palma from July 24 to August 2, with over a hundred premieres, concerts, and international guests such as Gael García Bernal and Alexandre Desplat. In contrast, the online edition on the Filmin platform extends until August 24. Below, we highlight some of the most notable proposals of this edition of the AMFF.

The Atlàntida Film Fest reaches its sixteenth edition with an intense trajectory, which has taken it from being a pioneering and unusual experience, an online film showcase, to becoming one of the benchmark events in the country: first position among festivals held in the summer, second best-rated among all events, according to data from the Ministry of Culture. Like any relevant film festival, a good number of stars have walked through its openings and closings: Liv Ullmann, Michael Douglas, Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Isabelle Huppert, Joseph Fiennes, Britt Ekland… This year, Gael García Bernal, Javier and Carlos Bardem, Fernando Trueba, Jaime Chávarri, Rodrigo Sorogoyen and the Mallorcan actress Victoria Luengo, among others.

No other monarch has been so mythologized, idealized, and glorified as James I the Conqueror –well, perhaps the emeritus king, in his good times–: knight king, warrior, valiant, sensible, wise, generous, good Christian... Of course, of all this, half of half, and more in reference to women, whom he used and abandoned when they no longer served his interests. We recall the private life of James I as the 750th anniversary of his death, in 1276, is being commemorated – on July 27th.

He was Aragonese, from inland, but a long sea voyage, including a visit to the Islands, revealed his vocation: the study of the sea, oceanography, of which he was a pioneer in Spain by creating and directing the Oceanographic Laboratory of the Balearic Islands, the second in the State and an international reference. It was the final stages of his career when in July 1936, 90 years ago, he was arrested in Mallorca and imprisoned until August of the following year.

They didn't know it would be the beginning of a war that would last three years. It was supposed to be a coup d'état, supposedly to save Spain from a supposed communist revolution. Not everyone was fascist either, even though they were generally called that. The fact is that elements of the army, of a very minority Falange and of the right, also the Carlists, prepared in Mallorca – not very discreetly – that revolt against the legitimate authority of the II Republic, which broke out in July 1936, 90 years ago.

They were venues of intense cultural activity and are currently closed, unused. While grandiose projects are announced, such as the transformation of the Gesa building into a major cultural infrastructure, spaces like the Assistència Palmesana, La Protectora, the Catalina Valls theater, the Balear theater, or the old Centre de Sa Nostra, all of them in Palma; the Sala Augusta in Maó; and the Dalt Vila Archaeological Museum, among others, are sleeping the sleep of the just, awaiting recovery.

Almost a hundred Menorcan privateering ships hindered Spain and France from helping the American colonists in the revolt against the British, led by George Washington, who would be the first president of the United States and would give his name to the capital. The islanders, and specifically the Menorcans, played a prominent and perhaps not very well-known role in the early days of the USA, which celebrates on Saturday, July 4, 250 years of its declaration of independence, in 1776.The revolt of the inhabitants of the 13 colonies was not an isolated event. On the one hand, it stemmed from the certainly groundbreaking ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers, such as Voltaire and his peers. On the other hand, from a previous conflict, the Seven Years' War, between France and Spain on one side and Great Britain on the other, in which the colonists had supported the metropolis, but for the expenses of which – wars are always expensive – it wanted them to pay the bill. This led to the rupture of hostilities in 1775 and the unilateral declaration of independence the following year.

He declared himself excited to visit the land of Juníper Serra and satisfied to combat, in good camaraderie, with the Franco dictatorship, against international communism. 70 years ago, at the beginning of the summer of 1956, who was then Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, made a lightning visit to Mallorca to meet with the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and, as a good tourist, to swim for a while on the beach.

He was short, but energetic. And, above all, he was loyal to the constitutional legality. The Majorcan military man Valerià Weyler did not like it at all that his colleague Miguel Primo de Rivera staged a coup d'état and became a dictator, with the approval of the monarch of the time, Alfonso XIII. He disliked it so much that, a century ago, in June 1926, at the age of 87, he led an attempt to overthrow Primo de Rivera and return to normality: the 'Santjoanada', so named because it was to take place on the 24th, Saint John's Day.

It was known as Operation Roca after its leader, Miquel Roca, a prominent figure in Catalan politics. And it was a failed attempt to revive a centrist party, after the disappearance of Unió de Centre Democràtic (UCD). Forty years ago, in June 1986, the Reformist Party ran in the general elections, with the participation of Unió Mallorquina (UM) and Unió Democràtica de Menorca (UDM) in the Balearic Islands, on that strange platform where the main leader did not even run under the common acronyms, but under those of Convergència i Unió, in Catalonia. Its failure is probably explained because no one understood this.

He has always been multifaceted: poet, narrator, playwright, reciter, biologist, journalist, literary prescriber, creator and director of the Mediterranean Poetry Festival, eternal activist for various causes. Biel Mesquida received last Monday, June 8, in the incomparable setting of the Palau de la Música, in Barcelona, the Honor Award for Catalan Literature, awarded by Òmnium Cultural. This Mallorcan, born in Castelló in 1947, began his career in 1973 with L’adolescent de sal, banned for two years by censorship. He has just published a new poetry collection at La Breu, Trast.

He reached 95 years of age and was absolutely prolific. Josep Costa Ferrer, nicknamed Picarol, was an excellent draftsman and satirical cartoonist, a specialist in art and antiques, an amateur archaeologist, a gallery owner, also a pioneer of tourism and landscape defense, and even the creator of a utopian urbanization. Ibiza will remember him with an exhibition this summer, when it is 150 years since his birth, on June 7, 1876. That was the beginning of a life path that would culminate in Cala d’Or, Mallorca, after a North American adventure in Chicago.

He was widely admired, also in the Balearic Islands, until the judicial affair that affected his family broke out and from which he has been excluded due to his delicate health. Before that, Jordi Pujol was, for decades, the benchmark of Catalonia par excellence, with certain ties to the Islands. We remember them as half a century has passed since the controversy generated, in May 1976, by his supposed 'disembarkment' as a shareholder in the Majorcan magazine Cort, in the midst of the political Transition.

Even today, the festival that remembers Alexandre Ballester in sa Pobla, of which the sixth edition has just taken place, is called Albopàs, the name of the town backwards: a term he coined, as a kind of magical recreaction of sa Pobla, and a country where he set many of his works. We remember this stage creator precisely when the Principal Theatre of Palma is about to premiere a new version of Un baül groc per a Nofre Taylor, one of his most outstanding works.

Yes, Majorcans and Catalans, brothers, without a doubt… But, even in the best of families, relationships often become complicated. Between May and June 1936, a Message to the Majorcans from Catalonia, and the consequent Reply to the Catalans from Mallorca, for common cultural cooperation, would end up complicating the lives of a good part of the signatories, upon the sudden arrival of the coup d’état and the victory of the rebels on the island. We remember this as we mark ninety years since that episode.

Natural phenomena fascinate people: a solar eclipse scheduled for next August has everyone captivated, for months. Others are not so entertaining: an earthquake, in the early morning of May 15, 1851, caused damage to houses and churches in Mallorca and generated panic among the citizens of Palma, who fled to improvised shelters. We recall this episode as the 175th anniversary of the scare is celebrated.

“N’Abel wants it all”. That’s what a veteran journalist from Ibiza, referring to Abel Matutes Juan, said years ago: a man who, in addition to his multiple businesses, certainly became practically everything in politics over three decades: mayor of Vila, a prominent figure of the Transition, senator, deputy, negotiator of the Statute of Autonomy, European commissioner, minister... We review his career as the thirtieth anniversary of his appointment, on May 5, 1996, as head of Foreign Affairs in José María Aznar’s first cabinet is celebrated.

What are gardens that seem so much taken from Granada in the very heart of Palma, at the foot of the Almudaina and a few steps from the Born and the sea? And even more so when the elderly people of Ciutat still remember that right here, in Hort del Rei, there were the Líric theatre, the Alhambra hotel, the mythical Riskal café... The truth, however, is that with the demolition of those buildings, what had already been a green area in the Middle Ages was recovered, only this time it was not done for the enjoyment of a monarch, but for the entire citizenry – and tourists, of course. We recall the history of Hort del Rei as sixty years have passed since the project that the architect Gabriel Alomar Esteve made in 1966 and which envisaged the recovery of that space.

Those were hard times and one could jump from a ministry to prison. This is what happened to the Asturian Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (1744-1811), a politician, scholar, writer, and one of the most prominent figures of the State between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Now 225 years ago, on April 18, 1801, Jovellanos arrived in a Mallorca that was not then a tourist destination, but a peripheral territory where people who wanted to disappear were sent, and where he was confined for seven years.

“The olive trees that your Pilar paints are real, / They are pagan, Christian, and modern olive trees / that guard the secret desires of the dead / with gestures, wills, and poses of the living”. This is what the poet Rubén Darío wrote addressing Joan Sureda, the husband of the painter Pilar Montaner. We remember the life and work of this exceptional artist, ahead of her time, as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of her birth, on April 13, 1876.