They were venues of intense cultural activity and are currently closed, unused. While grandiose projects are announced, such as the transformation of the Gesa building into a major cultural infrastructure, spaces like the Assistència Palmesana, La Protectora, the Catalina Valls theater, the Balear theater, or the old Centre de Sa Nostra, all of them in Palma; the Sala Augusta in Maó; and the Dalt Vila Archaeological Museum, among others, are sleeping the sleep of the just, awaiting recovery.

Like an ancient sibyl, 93-year-old Maria Capó Navarro concentrates and begins to sing one of the tunes from her youth, when she worked on the family farm in Sóller. It's her way of evoking a world of connection to the land and precise words that vanished with the boom A tourist attraction in the 1960s. The first person to hear that same tune live 74 years ago was the American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. "In 1952," he says, "he saw me perform at an international folklore competition held in the Palma bullring. I sang with my village group, Los Danzadores del Baile de Oro (The Dancers of the Golden Dance). We were one of the prize winners. Apparently, my family liked it a lot and asked to come. I was the only doll." Capó remembers that visit perfectly. "The sun was blazing, and Lomax arrived hunched over and sweltering. He took out his tape recorder and recorded the moment when my father, my grandfather, and I were singing while we threshed grain on the threshing floor with a sledgehammer. He must not have understood a thing. He only knew a little Spanish."