In 1990, the current bishop of Mallorca, Sebastià Taltavull, aged 78 and from Ciutadella, was vicar general of Menorca and a great activist in the environmental movement. "As a delegate for the diocese's youth," he asserts, "I helped organize many demonstrations in defense of the land. I also wrote articles of denunciation for the newspapers. It was clear to me that defending the territory was defending the people, their identity, and their language." At the end of 1973, Menorca led the green struggle in the Archipelago, demanding the protection of the Albufera del Grau, north of Maó, where a mega-urbanization with an exotic name, Shangri-La, had been planned. It was not until 1995, almost two decades later, that the site was declared a Natural Park.

Concern among companies? Fear of possible disturbances to public order? Coincidence with an election period? Nothing new. There has been all of that, and more, in the successive general strikes that have taken place in the Islands over time, one of which even lasted not one, but ten days. We recall these episodes as one of these total work stoppages has been called, across the State, for the upcoming November 11th, shortly before the general elections.

A team from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has documented human remains and archaeological materials from about 3,500 years ago at the Son Sunyer necropolis, in S'Aranjassa (Palma). The discovery will allow for a deeper understanding of the funeral rituals of the prehistoric communities of Mallorca.

The Crown of Aragon: this is the shared history of centuries that the president of the Balearic Government, Marga Prohens, reclaimed last October 15th, when the board of the Poblet monastery met for the first time in fifteen years, shared with Catalonia, the Valencian Country, and Aragon, and responsible for the management of this space, a pantheon of the common sovereigns. Well, yes. Or no? The truth is that the Balearic Islands were systematically sidelined –what a surprise!– throughout their membership in this confederation, practically during all the time they were part of it.

On July 21, 1936, three days after the coup d'état, the Catalan Marina Ginestà Coloma, a 17-year-old communist girl, accidentally became the great icon of the anti-fascist militia woman. She was working as a translator at the Hotel Colón in Barcelona, which had been converted into the headquarters of the PSUC, the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia. Her determined pose did not go unnoticed by Juan Guzmán, a Mexican photojournalist of German origin who was in the city to cover the People's Olympiad for the Efe agency, the alternative to the Olympic Games in Hitler's Berlin that, due to the military insurrection, did not take place. Guzmán asked the young woman if he could take a special photo session of her. He had her go up to the building's roof and lent her a rifle. The proposal caught her attention, as she had never touched one before. Due to the circumstances of the moment, however, she agreed to act as a model dressed in a militia uniform. In front of the camera, she exhibited a defiant attitude with the weapon hanging on her back.

“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.

Mallorca will become these days an international meeting point for spinning top lovers. The Cloister of Sant Domingo in Pollença hosts the 8th Majorcan Spinning Top Gathering on October 16th and 17th, a consolidated festival that will bring together around forty professional spinning top players, artisans, and enthusiasts from different countries.

Vilafranca de Bonany, together with three other municipalities such as Vilafranca (els Ports), Vilafranca de Conflent, and Vilafranca del Penedès, have officially resumed their inter-municipal collaboration ties. This has taken place in the year that coincides with the twentieth anniversary of a first meeting promoted in 2006: "The four Catalan-speaking Vilafranques are getting back in touch" with the firm will to "recover the bonds that unite them and explore new forms of cooperation".

Can Morató, the old mat factory located in Pollença, is being transformed after decades of abandonment. Colonya Caixa Pollença will move its central services there and set up cultural spaces. The work must also resolve how to preserve a factory that had reached a state of ruin. The façade will recover its original configuration and, inside, the warehouses and the remains of the facilities will allow for explaining how wool was converted into carpets and how the people who made them worked there.

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.”

Maria Martorell thought the problem would be running out of writers. When she imagined Veus Pròpies, a publishing house dedicated to recovering in Catalan authors from the 19th and 20th centuries who had been left on the margins of the canon, she calculated that she might have material for three or four years. Now she knows she was wrong. “There is material for many years,” she says. The more she searches, the more names appear.

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.

In 2015, having retired as a hotel manager, 75-year-old Guillem Garau Amorós from Artà felt the need to preserve the pre-touristic Mallorca of his childhood in the book A foravila antany (El Tall Editorial). “With a terrible heartache –he says– I interviewed shepherds, estate owners, sharecroppers, and other witnesses to a world that was disappearing”. One of these witnesses to lost words, tools, customs, and trades was his mother, Magdalena Amorós Ginard, who today, at 104 years old, still keeps a very clear head. “I –she recalls under her son's attentive gaze– was born in 1921 in Artà, in the countryside, at the Can Capblanc estate. I am the eldest daughter. My parents were farmers”.

Arriving in a town and seeing a bar in the square is synonymous with people, with town life, but if we also add that the establishment bears the name Café, we immediately understand that behind it there is a patina of history that most likely speaks to us of ancestry, of stories and generations. In Sencelles, the bustle and the stir, the history of the town in short, must be written with Café Ca'n París as a pillar. Parties, meetings, funerals, and conversations have had this place as a reference point. Behind the counter, Miquel Llabrés Amengual (Sencelles, 1961) and Maria Llabrés Munar (Sencelles, 1964) have held the reins from 1981 until this summer. But as we say, Ca'n París has a long history, and for that reason, sitting at a marble table and with our coffee finished, we wanted to talk to them about it.

‘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’”.

The Civil Guard has recovered from the seabed in the north of Mallorca a stock weighing about 350 kilograms that belongs to the anchor of a vessel from the Roman Empire era, dated between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, due to the risk of it being looted. Agents from the Special Underwater Activities Group (GEAS) moved the piece this Thursday, which was located at about three meters deep in an area near the coast, to a new location to ensure its protection.

The story of Mateu Martorell (Palma, 1939) is that of a man who has always remained in the same place while everything around him changed or disappeared. When he speaks of himself, he is actually speaking of the neighborhood where he has lived for 87 years, of his family, of his neighbors, and, of course, of Can Vinagre. Of the bar counter on Carrer dels Oms from which he has watched the transformation of this urban space. He disappears from the narrative as if his identity were more outside than inside, as part of a generation that explains itself by talking about others. He does not lament his sacrifices nor does he recognize this idea—so contemporary—of self-sacrifice, of a whole life spent working. "Only a year ago I was still serving behind the bar, but now my legs no longer respond," he reveals, calmly.

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.