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 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.

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”.

Almost all monarchs have had a distinctive nickname –like ‘the Emeritus’, in our times– and Alfonso, sovereign of the Crown of Aragon and, therefore, of the Balearic Islands, between 1416 and 1458, has gone down in history as ‘the Magnanimous’. Was he, really? It is now 575 years since the eternal fine that, with the king’s full powers, the governor of Mallorca imposed on the Part Forana, on April 9, 1451, for revolting against the injustices they suffered. Not much magnanimity there.

Almost at the same time, just a few days ago, two pieces of news reached us. One: the State denied the temporary loan of the three prehistoric bull heads found over a century ago in Costitx, to be exhibited at the Museum of Mallorca. "The Ministry of Culture is laughing at the Majorcans," stated the president of the Council, Llorenç Galmés. Two: the discovery in the Tramuntana mountain range of a small bull head – precisely! – which this time will remain on the island. We recall the discovery of the bulls and how and why they ended up in Madrid, at the National Archaeological Museum (MAN).

It was formerly called the House of Comedies, and the current building was constructed in the 19th century. But Palma's Principal Theatre stands on the same site where performances were already taking place in the 17th century. For 359 years, comedies have been staged in the same location, next to the former stream that gives its name to the street where it is located. As we approach World Theatre Day, as we do every March 27th, we explore the history of this stage.

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.

One morning in 1965, some French businessmen took 600 kilos of sand from the beach of Portocristo to recreate an artificial beach on the French Riviera. That operation, called Operation Plages Internationals, turned a piece of the Mallorcan coast into a curious tourist postcard a thousand kilometers away.

The 4th-century Roman ship discovered beneath the sands of Les Fontanelles by a local resident swimming at Palma beach in the summer of 2019 concealed a true archaeological treasure: the largest collection of amphorae with inscriptions describing their cargo ever documented in the Mediterranean. The exceptional nature of the site has been revealed as it has been studied, primarily because the goods the ship carried from Carthago Spartaria (around present-day Cartagena) have been preserved as if in a time capsule for over 1,600 years.

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'."

Shall we meet at Bosch? It's impossible to keep count of how many times these two 'junquillos' have said it, which is how the inhabitants of Ciutat are known – proudly, they say now. Ninety years ago, in February 1936, this establishment opened its doors, a regular meeting point for residents and visitors; and of which the salchichón, in its sense of a small bread with a groove along its length, has been and is its reference, although in this case with the popular name of langosta (lobster).

A Mallorcan journalist tried to convince Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero to abandon his plans on the night of February 23, 1981. This is according to documents declassified this Wednesday, which include the transcript of journalist Joan Pla's testimony as a witness in the April 19, 1982 session of Oral Hearing 2.

Mallorca commemorated this Sunday the 123rd anniversary of the first public reading of The BalangueraThe poem by Joan Alcover, which would eventually become the official anthem of the island, was commemorated. The event took place at CaixaForum Palma, the former Gran Hotel, the same venue where Alcover first recited the poem on February 15, 1902. The commemoration, promoted by the Obra Cultural Balear and the Consell de Mallorca, aimed to recall that first public gesture, which would eventually fade away. On that day, the poet read The Balanguera before an audience gathered to celebrate Costa i Llobera's proclamation as Master of Gay Saber at the Floral Games of 1902.

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."

Does God speak Catalan? Undoubtedly, for believers, since He is omnipotent. However, for centuries, the Catholic Church expressed itself in its ceremonies in Latin—the language of the Roman Empire, which threw the first Christians to the beasts of the circus: such are the paradoxes of life. It wasn't until the 1960s that the Second Vatican Council established that Masses would be celebrated in the vernacular: six decades ago, the Church in the Balearic Islands was embroiled in a heated debate about which language that should be. That the vernacular was Catalan had been perfectly clear to the Catholic Church in the Balearic Islands practically since the medieval conquest. Not even the growing centralism of the State made them change their position. The very liberal Bishop of Mallorca, Bernat Nadal, had the catechism published in Catalan in 1801. Bishop Pere Joan Campins created a chair of Mallorcan Language and Literature at the seminary. Bishop Josep Miralles, despite his support for the 1936 coup, had already stood firm against Primo de Rivera's Castilianizing ambitions and, during the early Franco regime, defended preaching in Catalan and published a final edition of the catechism in that language in 1937. Twenty-five years of Franco's dictatorship—a period of peace, as the regime proclaimed; yes, the peace of the cemeteries—and a segment of the Church in the Balearic Islands, as well as a segment of society, understood Castilian as the language of prestige and culture. Not all, of course: in Lluc, as if it were Asterix's village, the priest Pere Riutort promoted textbooks in standard Catalan and distributed copies of the magazine Strong Horse From Barcelona, ​​and upon moving to the Valencian Country, he would continue his work in favor of the presence of Catalan in the ecclesiastical sphere.

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.

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.

On November 20, 1975, the day Franco died, there were approximately 5,000 unemployed people in the Balearic Islands who, since the 1973 international oil crisis, felt completely abandoned. Three weeks later, on January 13, 1976, about fifty of them decided to express their discontent with the government of Arias Navarro by locking themselves inside the church of Sant Miquel in Palma. They did so with the complicity of the Bishop of Mallorca, Teodor Úbeda. The following day, they were violently evicted by the police, who were acting on orders from the Civil Governor, Carlos de Meer.

Catalan Countries, capital... Barcelona? This would perhaps be the most obvious answer. However, 50 years ago, in January 1976, the epicenter of Catalan-speaking politics was a corner of Mallorca with Lullian resonances: the sanctuary of Cura, on Mount Randa, where parties and unity groups from Catalonia, the Valencian Country, and the Balearic Islands met, by consensus, as they put it, for a 'democratic break' with the dictatorship, amnesty for political prisoners, and the right to self-determination.