“The aforementioned building will constitute a model of its kind, a true palace of primary education, with simple yet elegant lines, large proportions, and a perfect finish...”. This is how the newspaper La Almudaina defined, in October 1929, the girls' school building that had just been constructed in Casa Blanca. A few years earlier, in 1926, the first one had been built, which became the one for the boys.

An archaeological research team will resume excavations this October at the Son Sunyer necropolis, in Pil·larí, with the aim of discovering what is hidden in the tombs from about 3,500 years ago. Researchers will search for burial remains that have been preserved without alterations, a finding that would allow, for the first time, the study of a Majorcan hypogeum using scientific methodology.

With an archaeological excavation, the remains of James IV, titular king of Mallorca, have been sought in Soria. In principle, it seems disconcerting that the bones of a sovereign of the Islands, even though he never managed to take possession of the crown, are found lost in the world. But this is just one more case of the strange adventures, after death, of those who in life were monarchs of the 'kingdom in the middle of the sea', between the 13th and 14th centuries: transfers, disappearances, a tomb with two heads and another with a strange object inside. Just as if they were victims of some kind of curse or, at the very least, of colossal bad luck.

The 74-year-old priest from Palma, Jaume Alemany Pasqual, is the delegate of Prison Pastoral Care for Mallorca. He has just returned from spending a week walking the Camino de Santiago with a group of inmates. “It is a pioneering initiative throughout the country,” he says with pride. “I launched it thirty years ago when I took on the position, during the time of Bishop Teodor Úbeda. Back then, the Palma prison was located in the Cas Capiscol neighborhood, which closed in 1999 to move to a new complex on the Valldemossa road. The Ministry of the Interior looked favorably upon the Camino de Santiago project, and today it is already part of the reintegration program of many penitentiary centers. The dozen people who come with me have been selected for their good behavior.”

Seven and a half centuries ago, languages were not learned for tourism, much less to attend to tourists who might show up. No one traveled unless they had no other choice. The Majorcan philosopher Ramon Llull conceived a school to learn Arabic, in order to convert Muslims to Christianity, and thus was born, in the current municipality of Valldemossa, Miramar, a brief experience, but with a lasting imprint. Its foundation was confirmed by a papal bull on October 17, 1276, 750 years ago now.

‘Catalan’ is the scientific name of the language spoken in the Balearic Islands. This is established by the Statute of Autonomy, although, colloquially, the demonym of each island is used, and ‘pagès’ in Formentera. However, over the centuries, many denominations have been used to refer to it: ‘our language’, ‘vernacular’, ‘mother tongue’, ‘own’, ‘regional’, etc. Often, so as not to have to say ‘Catalan’, because it was understood –and is still understood– that whoever speaks Catalan might be Catalan, and some did not want –do not want– to fall into this identification. We remember the range of synonyms when the European Day of Languages (September 26) is celebrated.

During the Second Republic, the Communist International, known as the Comintern in Russian, sent a mysterious figure to Spain who played a prominent role in the Balearic Islands. His trajectory can be traced in the book by historian David Ginard titled Heriberto Quiñones y el movimiento comunista en España(1931-1942), published in 2000 by Documenta Balear. “Of him –he asserts–, Dolores Ibárruri, the leader of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), said that ‘everything, even the name, was false’”.

In 1892, the Menorcan Francesc F. Andreu promoted the first power plant in the Balearic Islands, Eléctrica Mahonesa. The first one in Mallorca was inaugurated in Alaró in 1901 through the initiative of the brothers Gaspar and Josep Perelló Pol, local soap and oil merchants. In 1902, electricity arrived in Manacor with the company Servera i Melis. And in 1903 it would be Palma's turn, thanks to the Compañía Mallorquina de Electricidad, which built a power plant near the Can Pere Antoni beach designed by the architect Gaspar Bennàssar. As pioneering infrastructures, there were also the hydroelectric power plants of Gorg Blau (1905) and La Costera (1908). In Ibiza, the first power plant dates back to 1907 and its architect was the businessman Abel Matutes Torres.

Yes, you read that right: James I, the champion of Christendom, who drove Islam out of Mallorca and the Pityusic Islands, provided valuable aid to the Moroccans when they wanted to invade Ceuta. It is true that, at the time, Ceuta was part of another Islamic domain. This is one of many episodes in a long history of complicated relations between neighbors. So long, in fact, that it has reached the present day.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Balearic Islands had nearly 370,000 inhabitants. Of these, about 300,000 lived in Mallorca and about 100,000 were gathered in Palma. They were one of the communities with the highest illiteracy rate. 77% of the population could neither read nor write – in the case of women, the figure was higher. It was from 1926 onwards, with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, that a plan for the construction of educational infrastructure was devised to reverse the situation. The majority of those that existed at the time occupied old buildings reused as schools and had pitiful conditions of light and sanitation.

He is known as the ‘wise and good king’ and, periodically, current political leaders pay tribute to him at his tomb in the Cathedral of Mallorca, in commemoration of September 12th (a date established as the new Day of Mallorca), the day he swore to uphold the island's liberties and franchises. Was he really that good, the good King James II? This is the question we ask ourselves as 750 years have passed since his coronation, around September 1276.

At 82 years old, Joan Pons Gost from sa Pobla looks at the calluses on his hands and reviews his five decades working as a stonemason. “I learned the trade in 1957, at 13 years old. I had lost my father when I was very young, and to help the family economy, I started as a laborer in different renovations that were being done within the same municipality of sa Pobla. With a cart, they sent me up and down to fetch material. Later they taught me how to make cement and lay blocks.”

Expectation? People coming from abroad to witness a very infrequent phenomenon? Nothing new. Another August, but this one 121 years ago, Mallorca became an international focus of attraction for a total solar eclipse, with the presence of six scientific collectives from four countries and three hundred Italian tourists who traveled expressly to the island to witness this exceptional phenomenon. It was August 30, 1905, at noon.

When you ask AI to create a drawing about Mallorca 50 years from now, the result is a polluted island full of buildings, much like Hong Kong. In 1978, when only natural intelligence existed, this same scenario was already described by the Palma-based cartoonist Pere Joan Riera, better known as Pere Joan. “I–he recalls today in his seventies–was 22 years old and still studying in Barcelona. One day Basilio Baltasar came to see me. He was one of the leaders of the anarcho-ecological formation Terra i Llibertat, which the previous summer, in July 1977, had occupied the small island of Dragonera near Andratx to prevent its development. He asked me for a poster that would reflect the direction Mallorca would take if the construction fever, initiated with the boom of tourism, was not stopped”.

Two members of the family of the princes of Monaco were allies of James III in his frustrated attempt to recover lost Mallorca. And another became lord of Carlat, an enclave that had been part of the ‘kingdom in the middle of the sea’. A few Grimaldis, for that is their lineage, have visited the island until recent times. Let's review the links between these two corners of the Mediterranean; Monaco and Mallorca, taking as a motif that the Club de Mar in Palma hosts, until August 6, an exhibition on the connections between that territory and the Spanish monarchy.

Tomeu Penya, 77, speaks candidly to ARA Balears: “I want my current state of mind to be very clear. I am very sad. As a young man, I would never have imagined that Mallorca's future would be like it is now, an island full of cement and tourists, with saturated roads and residents who cannot afford housing. For this summer's concerts, I'm considering singing ‘Trenc’ again, which I dedicated four decades ago to the emblematic beach of Campos that now, unfortunately, is once again under threat”. ‘Trenc’ was the debut of the country singer from Vilafranca as an environmental activist at 35 years old. It is one of the most outstanding songs from his third album Coverbos (1984).

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.

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.

A few kilometers from the beaches and while we see planes passing every minute overhead, there exists a Mallorca that works in another dimension. It is the Pla. We don't want to say it or shout it from the rooftops either, but we do collect it for you, the people from here, from the land, who live with this same heartbeat. Thus, in the very heart of the Pla, at any point on the road from the field of Pina to Lloret de Vistalegre, there are those who carry the chimera of the old and giant race that Pere Capellà wrote and that Biel Majoral sings.

In the Mallorca of late Francoism, the revolution began in La Calatrava, a small neighborhood of Palma located between the cathedral and the Baluard del Príncep. Antoni Rotger Martínez was its alma mater. “I no longer recognize – he laments at 80 years old – the streets where I grew up and played with other children. There are tourists everywhere and, because of gentrification, many of my former comrades in struggle have had to leave. This was a rundown, working-class neighborhood, and now it is prey to the real estate speculation that the entire island suffers from”. In 1975, this man from Calatrava, of the 'pedra picada' style, was 32 years old and, with Franco agonizing, he already led the neighborhood mobilization against the construction of a large parking lot for tourist coaches in front of the Cathedral. The cry of protest was ‘Park YES, parking NO’. Due to that pressure, in May 1976 the City Council rectified and gave way to a competition of ideas for the design of the current Parc de la Mar, which was inaugurated in 1984.