From agricultural Mallorca to tourist Mallorca in two generations: the story of a family from Artà

In 2015, having retired as a hotel manager, 75-year-old Guillem Garau Amorós from Artà felt the need to preserve the pre-touristic Mallorca of his childhood in the book A foravila antany (El Tall Editorial). “With a terrible heartache –he says– I interviewed shepherds, estate owners, sharecroppers, and other witnesses to a world that was disappearing”. One of these witnesses to lost words, tools, customs, and trades was his mother, Magdalena Amorós Ginard, who today, at 104 years old, still keeps a very clear head. “I –she recalls under her son's attentive gaze– was born in 1921 in Artà, in the countryside, at the Can Capblanc estate. I am the eldest daughter. My parents were farmers”.

When the military uprising of July 1936 took place, Amorós was 14 years old. “They said that in three days it would all be over, but we had to suffer a war that lasted three years. Here the Falangists had a lot of ‘matera’. They enjoyed killing, some for ideological reasons, others out of envy, and others for pending debts. Even so, they did not kill as many as in other municipalities”. The one who was in time to flee from that repression was the 'mayor Boira', Gabriel Garau Caselles, who went into exile until his final days in France after passing through Menorca and Barcelona. On August 31, 1936, there were 11 deaths and 3 injuries caused by ‘friendly fire’ from the Italian aviation, which had arrived in Mallorca to stop the landing of Captain Bayo's republican troops at Portocristo. Mussolini's squadron dropped two bombs on Artà by mistake, thinking it was not yet under the control of the insurgents.

A world of orality

“During the war –notes the woman from Artà– the insurgents forced my parents, like the rest of the farmers, to give them everything they had, be it wheat, rabbits, or livestock. Everything had to be for the fatherland”. At the end of the war, fear took hold of the town. In December 1941, the Alqueria Vella estate hosted one of the 26 concentration camps that existed on the island. It was the last to close in December 1942. Throughout this entire time, more than 1,400 inmates passed through it. “On the street and in the countryside, gatherings of two or more people were forbidden to prevent any kind of conspiracy. In the town, however, only the women, the children, and the elderly remained. Men between 21 and 38 years old were sent to serve as soldiers in Palma or to fight on the Peninsula. I remember mothers crying as they saw them leave. Upon receiving a letter from the front, they were afraid it might be the last one before they were killed”.

Thanks to the countryside, the Amorós family was able to survive the well-known ‘years of hunger’ of the postwar period. They were times of many restrictions and the black market, the illegal business of products controlled by the State and sold at abusive prices. “At home –recalls Amorós– we never lacked anything. We had figs, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carob beans, rabbits, roosters, pigs, and a goat that gave us milk. We bought a machine to make noodles with the wheat we ground secretly at night. Every month we went to a shop in the village to get what we were entitled to with our ration books [they were in use until 1952]”.

A few years after the end of the war, the fear dissipated and the gatherings returned. “In the evenings or on rainy days, we would organize nice circles with the neighbors. While some made straw plait and others made cord, we would talk about how our day had gone and also read folk tales. We had a great time. Today, because of television and mobile phones, the magic of orality has been lost”.

The woman from Artà followed in her parents' footsteps. “Except for plowing, I have done everything: shaking almond trees, hoeing, sowing, leading a beast, milking cows... In 1947, at 25 years old, I married a neighbor, who was also a farmer. We celebrated it in a very austere way. We made ensaïmadas and chocolate for our relatives, who came to visit us in a staggered manner over three consecutive Sundays. Since I was the heiress, my husband and I moved to live on my parents' farm. In 1951 our first son, Guillem, arrived, and in 1956, the second, Toni”.

Pride of a country dweller

From the 60s onwards, with the boom in tourism, the countryside of Artà, just like that of Capdepera and Son Servera, began to empty out. “Many people –assures Amorós– left to work in the construction and hospitality sectors in Cala Rajada and Cala Millor. I also wanted that more promising future for my two children”. Guillem confirms this. “At 15, in the evenings, she had me study English with a young man from the village who worked as a concierge at a hotel in Cala Rajada. And after three months I entered his hotel to work as a bellboy. Meanwhile, I also studied accounting and German by correspondence. I had learned French at school. In 1993, at 42, I was promoted to hotel manager. My younger brother had the same career path”.

At this point, the mother makes the following observation: “It didn't make me happy at all that my two children left the countryside to go work on the coast. But when I saw them dressed as bellboys, I was. They looked spotless. I, on the other hand, had worked in the dirt. Guillem, who was the first to dedicate himself to hospitality, gave us what he earned every month. It was money that came in very handy, especially to pay for my mother's medicine, who was ill at the time”.

It was hard for Guillem to detach himself from the rural Mallorca of his childhood. “In the winter, I continued working as a farmer. I helped my father. He would make the furrow with the plow and I would place the beans and the fertilizer in it. Until the end of the 70s, my ID card said ‘farmer’ in the ‘profession’ section. Even though I was already working in a hotel, I didn't want to change it because I felt very proud of my origins. I considered that working in the hospitality industry was a way to progress, to make money. I, however, loved the countryside very much; it was what I had been raised with since I was little.” The man from Artà remembers a very funny anecdote: “At 18, I accompanied the owner of the hotel where I worked to London. I had to act as his interpreter. At the airport, upon seeing that my ID said ‘farmer’, the customs agent thought I was an illegal immigrant. My good level of English mattered little to him. I had to go look for my superior all over the hall so he could make him understand that he was wrong.”

The sale of rural produce

The transition from rural Mallorca to tourist Mallorca happened by inertia. “In the countryside –states Guillem– people saw that, due to competition from abroad, everything had dropped in price: almonds, carob beans, milk, pigs... Therefore, the arrival of tourism was seen as a good alternative to an ancestral world that was going bankrupt. We left behind a life of survival and embraced another more comfortable one, with eight-hour daily jobs and monthly paychecks. My father also ended up embracing it. He would go by motorcycle to Canyamel to work as a gardener at some tennis courts”.

Despite the benefits it brought him, the young man from Artà made that transition with a lot of melancholy. “It was like watching a sick grandfather die who has taken care of you all your life and whom you have loved very much, but you know that his death is the law of life. In the past, the estates were clean as a whistle. Families would spend the whole week clearing weeds. They were ashamed if a neighbor saw that they had weeds at their place. Everything had to be well plowed and well kept. That was a lot of hard work that the new generations were not willing to maintain”.

In 1986, Spain's entry into the EU enabled the free movement of capital and people within the European space. From the 90s onwards, without any regulations to limit the mass purchase of houses by foreigners, the depatrimonialization of the Artà countryside began. “Unlike other areas of Mallorca,” points out Guillem, “many lands in the Llevant are ‘uneven’ and could not be cultivated with machinery to make them profitable. So, most farmers preferred to sell them for triple their real price to the wealthy Germans who were starting to come to Mallorca. It was a possibility they had never imagined. The money they made allowed them to secure a comfortable old age and provided their children with a good economic cushion. It wasn't a matter of human greed, but of moving with the signs of the new times.”

Four decades later, this year the man from Artà has found himself in the same situation. "I have sold the family estate of Can Capblanc to some Germans. I have given part of the money to my three children. Instead of them selling it when I die, I have done it myself to spare them problems. At 75 years old, I no longer have the strength or the means to take care of it as it should be. It has not been an easy decision at all. I have had to grieve to accept the loss of a heritage that my ancestors managed to build with a lot of sweat." Sitting to one side, Madò Magdalena, the mother, aged 104, remains attentive. "It saddens me," she says with resignation, "that we have abandoned the countryside. However, there is no other choice but to adapt to this new world."