There is a Mallorca that does not appear on postcards, which remains far from the sea and above all from the images with which the island has projected itself to the world. It is the Mallorca of the interior, of the old paths between villages, of the fields and the small farms that for generations sustained a way of life. The photographer Tomeu Coll (Sant Jordi, 1981) has been photographing this universe that has practically vanished for at least 20 years. The result is Fauç. Illa interior, 2004-2024, an exhibition that can be visited at the Espai Passatemps in Santa Maria from October 21st to November 30th.

In Mallorca, dead trees are already an important part of the agrarian landscape. Where there once were almond trees that gave flowers and fruits, now there are skeletons of dry branches that remain standing, in the same place, for years and years. Fig trees also take the hit, and even carob trees, which seemed more resistant, have symptoms of disease. The Xylella and other pests have wreaked havoc in the countryside, also punished by drought, climate change, and the progressive abandonment of productive activity. The death of the trees has become almost part of the daily landscape.

“This is pure Mexico.” So says Aurelia Álvarez Urbajtel, daughter of Manuel Álvarez Bravo, as she walks through the rooms of the Toni Catany Foundation (FTC) in Llucmajor, where Cuerpos, almas, calles has just been inaugurated, a selection of more than a hundred photographs by the man considered one of the great representatives of 20th-century Mexican photography. She says this in front of images that, rather than explaining Mexico, seem to contain it: the people of the streets, the bodies, the faces, the religion, the death, the symbols, and the silences. “They seem like very simple photos, but they have a lot of mystery,” notes the curator of the exhibition, Horacio Fernández.

La Nit de l’Art always fills Palma with exhibitions and people who come to celebrate. But it ends, and the galleries remain open. The shows inaugurated these days offer a good opportunity to return calmly, look at the works without rushing, and discover proposals that deserve a visit beyond the Night. Below, we take a tour among the many possible ones of some of the most outstanding exhibitions shown by the city's galleries.

There are not many cultural initiatives around us that can boast of having reached 30 years. The Nit de l’Art has achieved this, and that is no small feat. Born in 1997 as an initiative by some gallery owners in Palma such as Pep Pinya (Pelaires), Xavier Fiol, and Joan Guaita, among others, it was conceived with the desire to join forces—perhaps thinking that the more there are, the more noise is made—and, above all, with the purpose of bringing art closer to the citizenry. It has been many years since the Nit de l’Art achieved a good part of these objectives. But what does it leave us and what could the Nit de l’Art leave behind, with the strength it has gathered in these 30 years? Perhaps it is a good time to ask ourselves that.

At the beginning of the sixties, the Son Sant Joan airport was inaugurated in Palma, replacing the one in Son Bonet, and the Majorcans welcomed tourists at the foot of the runway with bouquets of flowers. The gateway to the island was just that, a door. Today that door has become a piece of machinery that has a lot, or everything, of a shredder. It is not a very exaggerated metaphor. Because Aena is no longer satisfied with managing an airport: it expands it, fills it, sells it, rents it, exploits it, and extracts as much juice from it as it can. Let us never forget that Aena is a majority public company. That is to say, this big business is very public, but very little of it is ours.

This summer I noticed that young people go to the sea with a chair. And I'm not referring to young people who have ceased to be young, but to very young people. Some carry a deck chair, but most, a folding chair. You see them with the chair, but also with the umbrella, a large cooler, a basket with the picnic, lunch boxes and with clothes hanging from the umbrella. They set up on the rocks or on the beach as if they were at home. I like the attitude.

There are many ways to explain how we have grown in the Balearic Islands. Mercè Pinya's report on archaeological heritage besieged, swallowed, or boxed in by construction shows one of the most explicit: we have come to disregard what we simultaneously declared an Asset of Cultural Interest. That is to say, heritage that, by definition, has a mandate for protection, including its surroundings.

There are events that last only a few minutes, but are lived for months. The wait is also part of the experience. Sometimes, even more than the moment itself. That's why great celebrations don't start on the day they arrive but much earlier. They are prepared, shared, fed by expectations. Institutions know this very well, and that's why every New Year's Eve, on Saint John's Day, during patron saint festivals, or on so many other significant dates, they organize activities so that the celebration becomes a collective experience.

What happens when a protest is so justified and so broad, cross-cutting, and peaceful that it cannot be discredited by its own actions? Perhaps what we are seeing with the police actions against the movement crying out in Mallorca against tourist overcrowding and for the right to housing happens.

We already know what these people want, as we know from Maria del Mar Bonet's great song denouncing fascism, which in these times resonates in our heads too often. Now they want the photograph of a young woman with a hijab to weigh more than an academic record, for prejudice to prevail over merit, and to turn a university graduation into an identity battleground, because that is where they feel most comfortable, stirring up fears even if they are the most unfounded.

I grew up with the beach in front of me. Before I knew almost anything about the world, I already knew how to hold a crab net from my grandfather, how the wet sand clung to my feet (also the varnish) and how the castles we built with my mother and my brother, with a bucket or just with our hands, had minutes counted before the sea took them away. Later came the long summers of adolescence: hours and hours with friends sitting on the sand doing nothing more than chatting, laughing and jumping again from that rock we saw from our house. Mornings, afternoons and evenings. The beach was our natural place. We didn't go there, we lived there.

The Mariantònia Oliver Company has just received the Toni Catany ARA Balears Culture award, but the person it is named after has been paving the way through dance for over three decades, in the Balearics and abroad. Mariantònia Oliver, an essential choreographer and dancer, has turned the body into a language and dance into a tool for thought and social transformation.

I like Joan Cortés because he is an artist who doesn't need to speak loudly to be heard. At a time when art often seems to compete for attention at any cost, he continues to work with discretion, with an honesty that is not a strategy or a pose, but a way of being. Those who know him know that the man and the artist share attributes such as serenity, coherence, neatness, and fidelity to what he believes in.