He was born in Barcelona, of French and Cuban origin, raised in the Philippines, emigrated to Sweden, acquired Swedish nationality, and, by his own wish, was buried in Mallorca. Ernest Dethorey was, in the Balearic Islands a century ago, the chronicler of culture and also of the then-incipient tourism. We remember him as 125 years have passed since his birth, on September 13, 1901.

Carles Buxadé was two years old when his aunts, Daria and Mercè Buxadé, embarked at 22 and 18 years of age at the port of Barcelona with Captain Alberto Bayo's expedition. He keeps a vague memory of it, but enough to have dedicated decades of his life to searching for the truth about the cruel fate of those two women whom he never saw again. “Obviously, he was very small, but he remembers seeing them get onto an open truck with many other women, approximately ten of them,” relates his daughter, Ann.

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.

After last week's newtons and greengage plums, we can continue searching for proper names hidden within everyday vocabulary. Once again, we just need to look around a little. We can put on some sneakers to go for a run or some hiking boots to go on an excursion. If during these activities we catch a bit of a cold and get a headache, we might have to take an aspirin. And, if the headache goes away and we decide to go out for dinner, we might use mascara to dress ourselves up a bit more.

The Coral de Sant Joan has seen the completion of its 50th anniversary program of events with the presentation of the commemorative book written by musicologist and researcher Bàrbara Duran Bordoy. Under the title of Cantar al Pla de Mallorca. 50 years of the Coral de Sant Joan, last Saturday and within the framework of the patron saint festivities, the parish church was filled with friends, singers, and neighbors.

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.”

Would you buy some talaiots? The real estate market in Pla de Mallorca continues to surprise: the estate called S’Hort de Sabor has been put up for sale, a plot of almost 64,000 square meters, 9 quarterades, which is part of the homonymous estate of Sabor. It is within the municipal district of Montuïri and very close to the well-known archaeological site of Son Forners.

To be scorned, insulted, or even attacked; this is what the Xuetes endured for three centuries, the bearers of the fifteen surnames pointed out by the rest of the Majorcans as the sole descendants of Jews converted to Christianity. They did not always endure it stoically: two of them, Gabriel Fuster and Ignasi Forteza, expelled from a ball, took their discrimination to court and won the lawsuit, called 'of Cartagena' due to the jurisdiction that took charge of it. 175 years ago, on September 1, 1851, the defendants decided to appoint a representative to pursue that case.

They are two towers, like the title of Tolkien's novel of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings: one Islamic; the other, from after the conquest. Two towers, with a central body added in the 19th century. They are known as the towers of the Temple or Almudaina de Gumara. Their origin is, of course, defensive. But Gumara will no longer fight: the Palma City Council plans to open them to the public to be a museum space. They will do so, the officials assure, once the rehabilitation works are completed, in 2027, twenty years after acquiring the building.

In Mallorca, one of the great allies of the boom of tourism were the so-called tourist songs. The lyrics praised the island's scenic wonders. The seed was already sown in the 40s of the 20th century by the Majorcan musician Pere Bonet Mir (1917-2002), better known as Bonet de Sant Pere and professionally Bonet de San Pedro. In the midst of the post-war period, in the song Bajo el cielo de Palma, he proclaimed to the four winds “paisajes lindos tiene Mallorca”. He would deal with the same theme in Un viejo hogar en la isla, Juntito al mar, Cala d’Or, and Canto a Mallorca. These utterly naive compositions contrasted with the famous song Raska-yú, which in 1943 the island artist wrote as a parody of death in times of great misery (Franco's regime even censored it, suspecting it contained an implicit criticism of the dictatorship).

“Speak to me, O Muse, of the man of many turns, who wandered far...”. No one would ever have thought that the Odyssey, a 2,700-year-old classic, would unleash heated controversies on social media, as it is doing, thanks to Christopher Nolan's recent film adaptation. For the islanders, there is still another point of interest in Homer's story: whether its hero, Odysseus – or Ulysses – passed through any of the Balearic Islands, during his decade of journeys across the Mediterranean, after the Trojan War – ten more years – to return to his home island, Ithaca. Perhaps he did?

Talking about Rafel Muntaner Morey, Coca, is to talk about almost a century through Manacor life. Mayor, printer, cinephile, president of TV Manacor, a man linked to Perles Manacor — both in the basketball section and in underwater fishing — promoter of the skyscraper in Plaça de la Bassa and manager of Cine Goya for a decade. The politician of "put a furrow between the eyebrows" was a polyhedral, impulsive and active man until his last years.

The keyboard chords of a version of Whitney Houston coming from the Hotel Mariant Park are mixed with the notes, at full volume, of Barbie Girl, a hit from the 90s coming from the surroundings of the Hotel Playamar. The August night is heavy and the hotel terraces are full of tourists looking for the promised entertainment. Right in the middle, immutable and eternal, oblivious to anachronism, remain the millenary stones of the Talayotic settlement of l’Illot.

Any major event, such as the total solar eclipse on August 12, is surrounded by fascinating aspects and curiosities. With what artifacts were these astronomical phenomena predicted in ancient times? What do you miss if you are not in a zone of totality? Will there be eclipses someday?

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.