The love for learning and curiosity have turned him into the “total artist” he is today. This curiosity was nurtured in a home where culture was present at all times, whether in conversations, homework, or family games after dinner. A graphic designer, writer, musician, and passionate about animals and nature, he decided to sell his house in Deià because he no longer felt comfortable there, overwhelmed by the tourist traffic and overcrowding. He now lives in the Pla de Mallorca, in a wooded rural setting. We are talking about Tomàs Graves (Palma, 1953), and we are brought closer to him by the musician Ramon Farran.

The Ulls de Dona (Women's Eyes) cycle, organized by the Estudi General Lul·lià and supported by the Consell de Mallorca, kicks off this week with a series of screenings focused on women and the countryside, and will continue with other themes related to affectivity, the kiss as a protagonist, and special attention to the perspective of adolescents. In its third edition, it approaches cinema from a female perspective in terms of encounter and alliance to generate critical thinking, making a proposal aimed at all audiences and also with specific activities for adolescents.

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.

Determination, courage, and firmness are traits that her presence exudes; her voice and her words are her calling card to the world. Maria Magdalena Amengual Caldés (Pollença, 1985) grew up between Port de Pollença and sa Pobla, surrounded by the love of her grandparents from both sides, who “were her gods.” For a period of time, she couldn't stand honey or mushrooms. Today she is a glosadora (improvisational poet), a discovery that “changed her life,” as she herself admits. However, as a special education teacher, she is the one who contributes to changing the lives of many children.

The Santa Maria de Formentor youth camp, located on the Cala Murta estate, will recover its use as a space for camps and educational activities after its renovation. The space, linked for decades to youth camps, will thus return to having a public use intended mainly for children and young people.

Every morning, while he religiously drank his daily Cola-Cao, he would watch Club Súper 3, of which he was a member. At home, they still keep his membership card. Since he has two older siblings, until the seventh month of pregnancy, his mother thought he would be a girl –a wish that was not fulfilled because a few years later another boy arrived. The first years were not easy: “Until he was two years old, he was often sick, with problems with mucus, his chest, and his ears. At two years old, they had to operate on his adenoids and everything started to get better.” So says Ana Sitges, the mother of the politician Ferran Montero, candidate for mayor of Manacor for MÉS per Manacor.

A family snapshot: the six members squeezed into a three-door orange Renault 5. They are four siblings born in Llucmajor. At home, Spanish was always spoken: the father had arrived from the Peninsula and married a Mallorcan woman, the mother. The family's linguistic idiosyncrasy changed when the third brother was about 17 years old. We will tell it later. The third brother was born in 1968 and today he is a poet, narrator, and professor: Miquel Bezares. A fire at his home, when he was about four years old, impacted him so much that even today, when he starts to smell burning, he feels a certain dread, as if that smell had stayed stuck in his nose forever. The youngest brother, Jesús – although everyone knows him by the nickname Tuti – says that Miquel "was an extraordinarily bright child": "At eight years old, he already had the head of a fifteen-year-old boy; and at fifteen, he looked like an old man," he laughs.

He has an extraordinary natural talent for rhythm and a very fine sense of harmony. In fact, he even played bass with people from the Deià scene, linked to English punk, in groups like Sex Beatles. Who knows if it's because from a very young age he listened to music that didn't sound anywhere else on Mallorca: his older brother, Jaume, brought him the latest music records directly from London in the early 70s. The middle brother is Joan and the protagonist of these lines is the gallerist Xavier Fiol (Palma, 1962). He is brought to us by who would be, given the years they have known each other and the affection they have, the fourth brother: Ivan Albons.

A close person, with a smile that enchanted and shining eyes, eager for knowledge, for love, and for life. Very soon he began to play the guitar and to take an interest in music and songs. For him, there was no other path than music: “His father was already a musician, and his mother was called Cecilia, the patron saint of music.” Neus Ferrer says this, half-seriously and half-jokingly, highlighting the kindness of the character we are about to discover today: “When it got dark, he always accompanied me home. Over time, I discovered it was because he was very interested in my neighbor, Mercè, whom he eventually married.” Neus Ferrer’s lifelong friend is the musician and linguist from Ibiza, Isidor Marí (1949).

Once upon a time there was an island of deserted beaches and crystal-clear waters; with mountains to hike and find absolutely no one. It's hard to imagine, but once, in the Palma bullring, there were only low buildings and vacant lots, and adventurous 12 and 13-year-old pre-teens who went camping alone on the other side of Mallorca. Nowadays, in fact, camping on the island is strictly forbidden. But those days existed, and that island, when kids wanted to dance and dress like Elvis Presley, and The Beatles had all their dreams to fulfill. Today's protagonist "wanted to be the Mallorcan Peter Fonda", was "a very good racetrack rider (motorsport discipline) and had a childhood "tied to the street and nature". He is Xavier Pastor (Palma, 1950), one of the great references of environmentalism in the Balearic Islands, and a childhood friend and lifelong friend, Santiago Bonnín, tells us about him.

It's made of Umberto Tozzi. But let's go back: she was born in a house of onions, so she had to be an onion, yes or yes. From a very young age she showed interest in drawing and today it is her way of "unfolding". She played with Nancys, but she often exchanged them for her little brother Pau's Airgam Boys, with whom there is a four-year age difference. It is he who brings us closer to the figure of his older sister, politician Xisca Mora Veny (1971). She recently left the mayor's office of Porreres, her hometown, after 13 years.

In an 80-square-meter apartment in Madrid Square, six people lived: four siblings, mother, and father. At times, the grandmother was also there. It was a noisy house with a large terrace, and while some were returning from high school, a baby was crying. There is a 14-year age difference between the eldest brother and the youngest in the house. “It surprises me how, in the middle of that chaotic house, full of shouts and playing children, Pep could read, completely absorbed. He had a brutal capacity for concentration, it was as if he escaped.” Pep is Josep Ramon Cerdà (Palma, 1971), a playwright and professor. His younger sister, Margalida, known on social media as Madò Llucia, introduces us to him.

Today's protagonist has a magnetism and personality that make him difficult to approach. He is as quick to approach people as he is to distance himself, as quick to dazzle and charm you as he is to weigh you down. A lifelong friend will tell us about him, one of those you start to relate to by kicking a ball around the schoolyard as the adolescent sun rises: one of those who know you so well that they are even a little afraid to talk about you. The protagonist is the artist Albert Pinya (Palma, 1985), and Francesc Becerra, whom he has known since kindergarten, brings us closer to his most unknown story: "Back then, Albert was already a very friendly person, although he also had an introverted side." Contradictions accompany us throughout these lines.

A bacterial infection complicated his birth in November 1983, an illness that severely hampered his childhood. Nothing, however, prevented that boy from Palma, who spent entire summers and weekends in Can Picafort, from running joyfully over the rugged rocks by the coast and being a restless soul, constantly darting up and down the beach with his cousins, a good-sized group of mischievous kids: "They grew up in a community, above all, a community, above all, a community of people. They'd come out of the water with a splash." One of those mischievous cousins ​​is the visual artist Joan Aguiló, and his partner, the actress Catalina Inès Florit, tells us about him. They met amidst the blue and sand hues of summer. Joan is four years older than Catalina, but they've known each other all their lives because their godparents were neighbors on the same terrace in Can Picafort—in this town, the terraces open onto the street, a feature that fosters close relationships with neighbors. "We grew up together, along with his cousins. His paternal godmother, for me, was Aunt Ángela," says Catalina, who as a child saw Joan as "the nice older cousin." Over the years, Joan began to amuse her and her friends: "We were teenagers and he was studying Fine Arts in Barcelona. He had long hair and a bohemian air about him," she recounts, and remembers that, "between his long hair and the fact that he was very thin, my brother called him Jesus Christ."

When she was little, she loved pencil sharpeners so much that she said when she grew up she wanted to be one. "Nintendo and Game Boy game tester." She was terrified of animals—"it's quite frightening"—but that changed when Boira, a little dog, came home at age twelve, transforming her fear into affection. She belongs to the generation of young girls who started wandering around town with a digital camera, taking "photoshoots" and then posting them on Fotolog and Tuenti. There's a strange balance in her daily life: a combination of stage fright and embarrassment with the excitement and joy of telling stories to an audience, whether young or old. We're talking about Maria del Mar Coll (Muro, 1994), actress, screenwriter, presenter, and comedian. She tells us how small her mother, Martina Ferriol, was.

He says of him that, as a teenager, he was "fun, chatty, funny, and a really good person." They would go out for walks after dark to some of Palma's classic bars: Es Carreró, Sa Font. Sometimes they would also go to Gomila: "And he would chat with everyone, he was very articulate, and he would go from group to group meeting people. Now perhaps he's lost a little of his charm, but he's still a sweetheart," says Pedro Moll, one of the friends the journalist—winner of the Ciutat de Palma novel prize—still keeps in touch with from his teenage years, laughing throughout the conversation. They grew up in Palma and didn't live far from each other: Jaume Oliver lived in the neighborhood near the bullring, and Pedro lived near Blanquerna. Since they became friends in the schoolyard (they weren't in the same class because Jaume is a year older than Pedro), they spent many evenings together. Pedro recounts that the now writer and journalist used to play hockey, in the version that is without skates (but with stickThey played volleyball together for a while, but that didn't last long either. What they did enjoy together was hiking, but don't think they went out every week: "Out of every ten times we got together, one ended up being a hike. It wasn't like it is now. We could improvise much more: the mountain huts were open, you didn't have to book, you could be more adventurous. We'd make it last longer," the friend recalls.

He was born on November 22, 1984, at eight months gestation, and before arriving home (first in Inca and, a few years later, in Caimari) he had to spend almost a month in an incubator. His mother remembers those moments with sadness: "After four or five days I went back to work so I could enjoy my maternity leave when the baby was home," she notes. It was just before Christmas that year that the family was able to properly welcome their son. The son, who was so tiny it was almost pitiful, is the writer, poet, translator, and contributor to this weekly publication, Jaume C. Pons AlordaHis mother, Teresa Alorda, tells us about him. Six years later, she had her second daughter, Gloria.

When he was born in December 1960, there were only two television channels. Before discovering and falling in love with the Tramuntana mountain range, he explored the Ports de Tortosa-Beseit. As a teenager, he joined his village's hiking club, and they would go on trips to the Pyrenees. We travel to the Baix Ebre region, in the municipality of Tortosa, to learn about the origins of Jaume Carot, the physicist and current rector of the University of the Balearic Islands, the third of four siblings. Before him came the twins Tomàs and Maria Cinta; the youngest was Elena, who lends her voice to these memories.

Being the youngest in the family, she was destined to inherit her sisters' clothes. The situation frustrated her a bit; everyone wants to wear something new, and she couldn't: "To make her happy, Mom took her to buy shoes just for her: she chose red shoes, with studs, in the Sevillian style. She was small, but so determined that neither Mom nor the saleswoman at the shop could count her out." This determination is one of the traits she most highlights about her sister, whom she describes as more of a shy and quiet doll.

On this straight, arrow-shaped line that is life, any invitation to stop and look back becomes a disturbing experience. We rush so fast toward the future that we forget it's with that same speed that we move away from the present and leave the past behind. And I no longer know if it's deliberate: to avoid having time to consider whether we've made a mistake, because we don't know exactly who we are or what we want, for fear of having taken the wrong shortcut at some point and not knowing how to retrace our steps. Or perhaps this is the only pace to get there. The fact is, at least for me, my relationship with time is becoming increasingly dysfunctional.