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 Son Valentí cemetery in Palma inaugurated this Monday the Columbarium of Dignity, a space intended to house the remains of 225 victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. The columbarium is presided over by the epitaph 'Here rest victims of the Civil War and the Dictatorship'. During the solemn inauguration ceremony, the archaeologist and director of the various exhumation projects for missing repressed people in Mallorca, Xesc Busquets, explained that the columbarium houses the remains of "225 people who for too long remained in the pits of oblivion".

At 16 years old, Consuelo García del Cid disappeared from her life for 24 hours. Her mother woke her up early in the morning because she had to go to the academy. At home, there was the family's trusted doctor, linked to Opus Dei. García del Cid explains that they injected her with a sedative intravenously and that she lost consciousness. She woke up the next day in a room she did not know, with the door locked and a window with bars.

The excavation and archaeological research work in Son Servera resumes this Tuesday within the framework of the V Plan of Pits of the Balearic Islands, continuing the tasks initiated in the municipal cemetery and extending them to private properties in the municipality to search for, exhume, and identify those who disappeared during the Civil War.

The paradigm shift that the tourism boom caused in Spanish agrarian society is reflected in the film El turismo es un gran invento (1968). Its protagonist (Paco Martínez Soria) is the mayor of a small Aragonese village who wants to turn the municipality into a large modern tourist center. His role model is Marbella, where he travels with his secretary (José Luis López Vázquez) to take notes. Both are amazed not only by the bikini-clad Swedish women, but also by the monumental hotels on the Andalusian coast, the great icon of progress at the time.

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.

Amidst music, knowing glances, contained emotion, and speaking silences, the Algaida Town Hall yesterday inaugurated the Memory Corner at the entrance of the municipal cemetery.

It was December 1970 when a postal envelope sent from Manacor arrived by motorcycle at the Palacio del Pardo in Madrid. After the mandatory security checks, the envelope, the size of a sheet of paper, ended up on the table of the dictator Francisco Franco. Upon opening it, he discovered what they had already warned him about from Mallorca: inside was a subversive magazine, with articles in Catalan called Es Forat. Founded by Pep Lluís Fuster and Toni Riera, the publication aimed to offer a multidisciplinary view with articles on literature, cinema, and current affairs.

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).

The University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) is hosting this Thursday, May 14, the conference 'Despite Fear, Solidarity and Memory. Accounts of Women in Francoist Prisons', an initiative promoted by LiCET and the UIB Equality Office to reclaim the memory of women repressed during Francoism. The activities will take place between the auditorium of the Ramon Llull building, on the university campus, and the auditorium of Sa Riera, in Palma.

“N’Abel wants it all”. That’s what a veteran journalist from Ibiza, referring to Abel Matutes Juan, said years ago: a man who, in addition to his multiple businesses, certainly became practically everything in politics over three decades: mayor of Vila, a prominent figure of the Transition, senator, deputy, negotiator of the Statute of Autonomy, European commissioner, minister... We review his career as the thirtieth anniversary of his appointment, on May 5, 1996, as head of Foreign Affairs in José María Aznar’s first cabinet is celebrated.

The Consell de Mallorca has been the subject of criticism this Thursday after a stand dedicated to the exaltation of the Francoist military man Millán-Astray was set up within the framework of the Feria de la Gent Gran.

One of the most unpleasant episodes of my entire schooling I still have very present. One day, in the dining room, I vomited. And instead of taking care of me, they forced me to eat it. I still remember it with a very vivid feeling of disgust. It was strawberry jam and they made us eat it by the spoonful. I have never tasted it again. It was a period in which the school really indoctrinated, so much so that they now tell us teachers that we do it.

One of the most unpleasant episodes of my entire schooling still stays with me vividly. One day, in the dining hall, I vomited. And instead of taking care of me, they forced me to eat it. I still remember it with a very strong feeling of disgust. It was strawberry jam, and they made us eat it by the spoonful. I have never tried it again. It was a time when school truly indoctrinated, so much so that they now tell us teachers that we do it.

If something stuck with me from my school days is that there were very violent teachers. I remember one who beat a child until he was destroyed. Another day, he threw one out the window. Today, it would be unthinkable. Back then, nothing happened. There were also humiliations. A classmate with a facial deformity, who spoke with difficulty, was ridiculed by the principal in front of the entire class. He asked him if he had finished selling coupons. No one laughed. The silence was more eloquent than any laughter.

When I started school, I was three years old and the youngest in the class, because we are from November. The first memories are of the Franciscan nuns of Bunyola. I especially remember Sister Antònia: a small, chubby woman who never raised her voice. I have no memory of punishments or bad words. I went to school happy, without fear.

The historian Marina Castillo Fuentesal (Palma, 1996) has recently obtained her doctorate with a cum laude qualification from the University of the Balearic Islands. Between the yoke and the cross. Women during the Franco dictatorship in Mallorca (1939-1975) is the title of the research she has conducted for almost six years and which has been supervised by the professors of Contemporary History David Ginard and Sebastià Serra.

At six years old, I used to cross Palma all by myself to go to school, in a city where children moved with a freedom unthinkable today. I walked from Pere Garau to the Sant Francesc school. In the sixties, families granted much more freedom to their children, and this premature autonomy ended up forging a strong sense of independence.

At school they made us sing 'Cara al Sol' and Catalan was learned in secret. At six years old, I started at the Trinitarian nuns' home in Binissalem. We paid 350 pesetas each month, which was a lot of money back then. My mother wasn't too keen on me studying. She thought our job was to get married, that's all.