“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.

Has it ever happened to you that, when someone told you they had greeted ‘a la veïna’ [the neighbor] or that on the radio they had interviewed ‘a aquella escriptora tan famosa’ [that famous writer], you wondered if that ‘a’ should be there? The question is quite common and, if we only take the regulations into account, the answer is simple: no. We should say ‘he saludat la veïna’ or ‘han entrevistat aquella escriptora’. In Spanish, however, the preposition would indeed be necessary: it would be appropriate to say ‘he saludado a mi vecina’ or ‘han entrevistado a la escritora’, and that is why it is easy to think that, when we use it in Catalan, we have let ourselves be carried away by the neighboring language.

Twenty-nine editions of Teatre de Barra are many, almost very many. Therefore, it deserves that the sequence number goes in capital letters, but it also happens that day after day they fill to the brim the chairs that surround the counters of the different venues where the different stories unfold. Stories that for the occasion speak of the eighties, and it must be said that a high percentage of regular spectators of the event were already there. Five plays five.

He is a benchmark for the Catalan language in the Balearic Islands. An expert in sociolinguistics and language models, before retiring Joan Melià Garí (Porreres, 1954) was a teacher at secondary schools and at the University of the Balearic Islands, where he held the positions of associate vice-rector for Linguistic Normalization and director of the Linguistic Service. He has also been the director general of Linguistic Policy for the Government of the Balearic Islands. In 2023, he published with the publisher Lleonard Muntaner Smiling with grammar, and now he brings to light, under the same imprint, Exemplary lives, his first foray into fiction literature, a collection of thirteen stories. He acknowledges the influence of authors such as Quim Monzó and, above all, Pere Calders, to whom he pays tribute in one of the stories. On Saturday, October 17th, at 7:30 PM, he will present the book at the Cultural Association of Porreres, accompanied by Cesca Roig and Maria Muntaner.

Actress Diane Kruger will be one of the protagonists of the 15th Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival (EMIFF), which will take place from October 28th to November 4th. The event will grant her the Evolution Icon Award in recognition of a career that has connected European cinema with Hollywood, with titles such as Troy, National Treasure and Inglourious Basterds. Over eight days, the festival will screen more than 140 films and documentaries in 13 locations in Mallorca and expects to bring together more than 8,000 attendees.

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.

Niño de Elche will present in Palma the absolute premiere of the complete version of Entre Feldman, a creation developed with Héctor Cavallaro based on the work and thought of the American composer Morton Feldman. It will take place on November 14 at 9:30 PM at the Auditòrium de Palma as part of the ME_MMIX festival program. The artist will be accompanied by an ensemble of thirteen musicians from the Balearic Islands Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christian Karlsen.

The Casal Solleric in Palma will host from this Thursday the collective exhibition "Vinyeta és una paraula femenina" (Vignette is a feminine word), an exhibition that reviews seven decades of Spanish comics through the work of half a hundred female authors of different generations.

Like so many other young people born in the eighties, she grew up with series such as Sesame Street, David the Gnome, Full House and Around the World in 80 Days; and with the films Back to the Future, The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins, which she watched over and over again. A particularity of her home, however, is that both her father and her mother were great film buffs (and readers), so they also habitually watched films by Chaplin, the Marx brothers, Woody Allen, Bergman, and Italian and American classics. All these stimuli made that “shy girl” spend part of her early years curious about the great questions of humanity: who we are and where we come from, how big the universe is, death. Marga Melià Rigo (Palma, 1982), “restless and curious,” is still looking for answers. Her lifelong friend Deborah Florit tells us about it.

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.”

Have you ever had it happen that, while telling an anecdote, the word you are looking for does not come to you? Or that you start a sentence with all the confidence in the world and, halfway through, you need an 'mmm' to buy time? Maybe you are one of those who speak almost without stopping, but it could also be that you need to take a pause to organize your ideas before continuing. If you had to describe your way of speaking, what would you say? And do you think there is something in your rhythm that distinguishes you from the rest?

The Ciutat Auditorium reopened its doors to the Balearic Islands Symphony Orchestra with renewed, comfortable, and elegant seating, harmonious with its history, featuring a young, well-known, and renowned protagonist: Kian Soltani. Renowned, because his resume shows it, and experienced, having performed on many of the world's best stages. Well-known, because this is the third time he has visited us. First at the Trui, with Dvořák, then at Bellver Castle, with Schumann, and this last time with the Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, by Edward Elgar. A mature work, although perhaps there is no work by Elgar that does not seem so. What is certain is that when he wrote it, his state of mind was one of infinite affliction and sorrow; perhaps for this reason, the choice of the cello could not have been more appropriate. Even so, the composition, with which the author bade farewell to symphonic music, had to wait to find the place it currently occupies. A place where the most canonical pieces for the instrument reside. Kian Soltani made this clear with the recitative that begins the composition—faint, light, subtle. It continues, in the second movement, with a whole series of repetitions between the soloist and the orchestra, like an exquisite combat, like two ways of expressing the same thing. In the Adagio, the third of the four movements that make up the piece, the spotlight falls on the soloist, which led to an immense display of talent and delicacy by Soltani, which he underscored with the initial section. The fourth movement, Finale, also requires the magnificence of the protagonist to try to overcome the sorrow, which finally returns to where it had breathed throughout the musical lament. Soltani and the Symphony, conducted by Pablo Mielgo, complemented each other perfectly with a score that demands the absolute conjunction they achieved. An essential encore and, once again, a small composition that celebrates his Persian origins.

The conservationist entity ARCA has denounced works at the Charterhouse of Valldemossa which, as experts in the heritage of the complex warn, would not respect the necessary conservation criteria. The entity has observed that two openings recently made in the wall of the Murteres cloister have been widened to install wooden doors.

The Llibres Colom bookstore in Palma will close its doors at the end of October after 61 years of history. The establishment, located in the square known as Plaça dels Patins, has not found anyone to take over before the retirement of the person in charge, Marian Colom.

“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.

The memory of a Mallorca that no longer exists returns to the stage with Quan venia l’esquadra, the play by Xesca Ensenyat that Catalina Solivellas performs in a theatrical adaptation by Joan Yago. The production will be performed this Saturday, October 10th, at 7 PM at the Principal Theatre in Inca, coinciding with the Year of Xesca Ensenyat, which celebrates the figure of a fundamental author of Mallorcan literature.

The Obra Cultural Balear (OCB) and the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) are organizing the conference series The language that is sung. Music and linguistic normalization (1986-2026), which began this Thursday and will continue until Saturday at Ca n’Oleo, in Palma. The series proposes a look at the role of music as a space for cultural, educational, and linguistic transmission, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of linguistic normalization policies and the 50th anniversary of Cucorba, a musical and educational project linked to the dissemination of music in Catalan among children.

The Balearic Islands entered the history of records that have little to do with each other. Some musicians wrote songs there; others recorded albums there, found refuge there, or discovered music that they would later take outside the Islands. Between the 60s and the 90s, those stays linked the Archipelago to names like Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Kevin Ayers, Judas Priest and New Order.

Saul Steinberg made drawing a way of observing and questioning the world. Known above all for his covers and illustrations for The New Yorker, the artist built a body of work that crosses painting, collage, photography, and literature without fully settling into any one discipline. The Joan March Foundation in Palma now proposes a tour through the exhibition Saul Steinberg, Artist, which opened this Tuesday and will be on view until January 23, 2027.