The combination of meat, sugar, and fruit was for centuries one of the most distinctive characteristics of medieval cuisine. Far from understanding sweet and savory as two separate worlds, cooks sought harmony between different flavors. Andalusian cuisine had developed a wide repertoire of dishes where meat was combined with fruits, nuts, and aromatic spices, an influence that left a deep mark on the territories of the Crown of Aragon. At the same time, the great Catalan medieval recipe books, such as the Llibre de Sent Soví (14th century) and the Llibre del Coch, by Robert de Nola (1520), collect numerous preparations in which the use of sugar and fruit is common, especially in dishes of game, poultry, and veal.

Personnel from the Balearic Nature Institute (Ibanat) are acting on two forest fires of potential severity 0 in Bunyola, Mallorca. On one hand, a fire has been confirmed at Coll d'Honor at 08:20 and, on the other, two active outbreaks have been confirmed since 02:42 at Son Creus. At this latter point, 19 forest firefighters, 2 fire engines, and 1 environmental agent are working.

A new digital platform allows the discovery of 50 emblematic spaces in Mallorca through videos, photographs, augmented reality, Street View, and virtual reconstructions. The project, Mallorca Digitalitzada i Realitat Augmentada, presented this Monday at Es Baluard, consists of an interactive website and an experimental application that collect a selection of heritage spaces and elements from the island chosen for their historical, cultural, landscape, and ethnological relevance.

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.

It is indeed true that the Consell d’Eivissa is the institution that has done the most to combat illegal tourist rentals. But let's not fool ourselves either, it had no other choice. Because the situation on the main Pitiusa island is simply desperate. During the summer months, you can practically not drive a car without being a victim of a traffic jam and a constant feeling of chaos and suffocation. Upon arrival at the airport, there are not enough taxis, public transport is more than improvable, and hotel entrepreneurs have said on more than one occasion that the tourist experience has worsened in recent years.

I grew up with the beach in front of me. Before I knew almost anything about the world, I already knew how to hold a crab net from my grandfather, how the wet sand clung to my feet (also the varnish) and how the castles we built with my mother and my brother, with a bucket or just with our hands, had minutes counted before the sea took them away. Later came the long summers of adolescence: hours and hours with friends sitting on the sand doing nothing more than chatting, laughing and jumping again from that rock we saw from our house. Mornings, afternoons and evenings. The beach was our natural place. We didn't go there, we lived there.

One week after ARA Balears revealed that the Consell de Mallorca has lowered the environmental requirement for part of the transfer of waste from Ibiza to be carried out in bulk, the institution from Ibiza has rectified. After the residents of Son Sardina and La Garriga protested about how the import would be carried out and the GOB filed a legal challenge, the Consell d'Eivissa now says it will not send any type of waste in bulk. Despite declaring last December that it did not have the technical capacity to carry out all transport with shrink-wrapped bales, it now assures that it has the necessary machinery.

He declared himself excited to visit the land of Juníper Serra and satisfied to combat, in good camaraderie, with the Franco dictatorship, against international communism. 70 years ago, at the beginning of the summer of 1956, who was then Vice President of the United States, Richard Nixon, made a lightning visit to Mallorca to meet with the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and, as a good tourist, to swim for a while on the beach.

The heat continues to grip the Balearic Islands, and this Saturday Mallorca once again is the only island in the Archipelago with active alerts for high temperatures. The State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) maintains a yellow alert in the interior and south of the island, where thermometers could reach up to 37 degrees.

There are ideas that are born in an office. Others, at a coffee break. And then there are ideas that appear when someone has been thinking about the same question for too long and decides that, instead of continuing to grumble alone, it is better to gather people and have them discuss it in public. The conference "Majorcan identity in the 21st century: continuities, fractures and narratives" undoubtedly belongs to this third category.The event, organized by Professor Ernest Carranza at Can Oleo, in Palma, brought together diverse but very complementary profiles. Thus, Miquel Sbert and Andreu Ramis reflected on the role of traditions in a society in constant transformation; Mercè Picornell offered a particularly suggestive view on new ways of participating in Mallorcan identity; and finally, Antoni Janer coordinated a round table.As often happens with good conversations, the conferences did not end because the arguments had been exhausted, but because the custodians reminded us that, no matter how much we discussed the future of Mallorca, the building closed at a certain hour. And perhaps this is the most important detail of all. Because, beyond the lectures, what was really worthwhile was the conversation.It had been a long time since I had enjoyed a public debate so much. There were few of us, yes, but perhaps that was part of the charm. It wasn't one of those talks where, before sitting down, you already know exactly what they're going to tell you and where everything ends up being a sum of parallel monologues. Something else happened here. That literary atmosphere, which is becoming increasingly difficult to find, was palpable: a space where you can disagree without needing to turn any difference into a trench.I also have to say that I also did my bit with a communication. It was titled Relatos en disputa: history, symbols, and identity in contemporary Mallorca. My intervention started from a very simple idea: identities do not arise spontaneously, but are a social construction. And, precisely for this reason, they are also an object of dispute. In Mallorca, this dispute is visible everywhere. In street names, public signage, at school, on commemorative days, or in the presence of institutional symbols. That "La Balanguera" plays in a supermarket. That a Mallorcan influencer moves naturally through social networks. That a popular festival is perceived as one's own by people of very different profiles. It is here, in these apparently insignificant gestures, where cultural hegemonies are built. This struggle is not divided into two perfectly defined sides. Between Spanish nationalism and Catalan nationalism, we could say. Identity debates, rather, move on a scale of greys. Because reality is much more complex than television often suggests. We all know that in Mallorca you can claim the Catalan language without questioning the current institutional framework; that you can feel Mallorcan and Spanish at the same time; or that you can defend greater self-government without being an independentist, to say something. Deep down, the debate is very simple: who has the capacity to define what Mallorca is?However, it is important not to lose perspective, because there is a fact that is difficult to refute: despite all the nuances, Spanish identity in Mallorca enjoys an enviable health. Its great triumph has been to achieve that, for a large majority of the population, feeling Mallorcan and feeling Spanish are not conflicting identities, but perfectly compatible ones. As historian Ferran Archilés has pointed out, the Spanish national project has not only not failed, but has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for integration, incorporating regional diversity within a narrative widely accepted as natural. And here the big question arises: where is Mallorcan identity heading? The answer is that no one knows for sure. But we do know one thing: identities are not immutable, but rather evolve as societies do. To think that the Mallorca of the future will be exactly the same as today's is as naive as believing that the current Mallorca is the same as that of fifty years ago. What I think could happen is that a 'light' Majorcan identity emerges. Apparently less ideologized, capable of integrating an increasingly diverse society without renouncing a part of the culture and traditions. In this new context, it must be assumed that this new society will inevitably include Majorcans of diverse origins who only speak Spanish. The question that remains to be resolved, in my opinion, is whether these new identities will be reduced to a purely folkloric expression or whether, on the contrary, they will transform into a collective project capable of engaging new generations. This, probably, will depend on what we Majorcanists are capable of doing. 

Drums of war are sounding in Mallorca's environmental sector. Marga Prohens' government, after a string of environmental deregulation and deregulation measures, has now dared to tackle one of the great symbols of Balearic environmentalism: Es Trenc.

A ntoni Gaudí Cornet, born in Reus in 1852, found in nature his main source of inspiration. “Originality consists in returning to the origin,” he used to say. At the end of the 19th century, the muses led him to Mallorca. He did so as a member of the Catalan Association of Scientific Excursions, founded in 1876. The entity used to organize trips to the island, then famous for its unspoiled landscapes. The man from Reus was particularly struck by the Caves of Artà and the Caves of Drach (Manacor). This is assured by the Japanese researcher Tokutoshi Torii in a work titled Mallorca in Gaudí's works – it was published in 2002 within the framework of international conferences on Gaudí studies.

The Reggaeton Beach Festival (RBF) announced this Thursday the cancellation of the entire tour planned for the summer of 2026 and the cessation of its operations. The festival management assures that, after analyzing the global situation of the project, it has found that the company's operational and financial structure no longer allows for organizing the events with the necessary guarantees. For this edition, it was announced that the festival would be held at Son Fusteret, in Palma, and that Myke Towers would be the headliner.According to the statement, the new administration has detected economic, financial, and operational circumstances that significantly compromise the project's viability, making it impossible to maintain the planned activity for this summer. Sources close to the situation describe the outcome as "the total closure of the company" and "a catastrophe".

During the boom of tourism, there were Swedes who did not get discouraged. Some tried to dissuade their compatriots from going on vacation to a country that was a dictatorship and that, with the economic support of the USA, had made tourism its salvation. The most activist ones demonstrated with slogans such as 'Boycott trips to Spain!' and 'Trips to Mallorca are a disgrace'. From other countries, these protests would also be supported by Spanish anarchists in exile organized around Defensa Interior (DI). Coordinating the entity was the native of Menorca Octavi Alberola Surinach (1928-2025).

As summer is about to begin, Menorca is once again knocking on the door of mobilization against tourist saturation. The Via Menorca platform, driven by the GOB and an enthusiastic group of young people, is the promoter of the first of the major demonstrations and protests – that of Saturday, June 13 – which are being announced throughout the Islands to demand effective and immediate measures in defense of housing and natural resources. The first public outcry has been in Menorca, where, says the GOB's territorial policy coordinator, Miquel Camps, "we still have time to avoid becoming a new Ibiza".

The Hotel Business Federation of Mallorca (FEHM) expressed this Tuesday its respect for the demonstration called against the tourist saturation planned for July in Palma, but has harshly criticized the narrative of the protest, which it considers "uses tourism as a punching bag".

Marratxí's budgets for 2026, approved this week with the votes of the PP and Vox, have opened a new political front in the municipality. The accounts amount to 42.6 million euros, 8.39% more than last year, and incorporate some of the main demands of the far-right party, which has provoked criticism from the opposition.

Perifèria Cultural will land for the first time in Mallorca in 2026 with a program focused on historical memory, root music, and local gastronomy. The cycle will stop in Porreres and Mancor de la Vall on May 29 and 30 with a proposal that claims peripheral culture and narratives linked to the wounds of Francoism.

Mallorcans do not know our anthem. In our country, unless you are from Sóller or a slightly eccentric person, you do not know how to sing La Balanguera. And by knowing how to sing it, I mean the whole song, not just the chorus, and with the emotion it requires.