The islanders of the first souvenirs

PalmCanarian researcher Fernando Estévez González, who died in 2016, is the author of the posthumous essay Souvenir, souvenir. An anthropologist before tourism (2019). "In the pomp of tourist consumption," he says, "the souvenir represents the embodiment of useless spending. As the main symbolic medium of tourism, this small memento, produced in bulk, cannot hide its banality, but it contributes to making the intangible experiences of the trip tangible."

During the tourism boom, there were many islanders who found in these banal products a good opportunity to make money. This was the case of the parents of 82-year-old Llucmajorera Antònia Salvà Sastre. "They were," he says, "the first to open a souvenir shop in Arenal. They settled in April 1943, when I was a six-month-old baby. In 1947, they started by opening a haberdashery, Tejidos Sastre. It did very well, and in 1955, it was eventually expanded to include a proper souvenir shop, which was called Petit Bazar."

In the 1950s, Arenal became the epicenter of the tourist boom, with twenty hotels with exotic names such as Copacabana, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Acapulco, Neptuno, and Solimar. "I," says Salvà, "was 12 years old and already studying languages at school. This made my job as a saleswoman in my parents' store much easier. We had a family of tourists who came back every summer. When we arrived, they always brought us a gift. They paid a lot of attention to us."

Local Products

Petit Bazar was primarily dedicated to selling local products. "We had leather goods (belts, wallets, and bags), embroidery made for us by people from Las Cadenas, small bottles painted by a neighbor, and Flor d'Ametler perfume—created in 1920 by Palma native Bernat Vallori." Over time, the offering would include Typical Spanish items, with which Franco's regime sought to convey a homogeneous image of the country: bull figurines, Cordoban hats, flamenco dresses, botijos, and "Jabón Maja" (Maja Soap) with a Sevillian woman on the wrapper.

Within a few years, Petit Bazar ceased to be a souvenir shop and specialized solely in leather goods. In contrast, gift shops continued to proliferate in the Arenal area of the 1970s. Many were eventually filled with sexist products. These included mainly postcards, aprons, towels, and mattresses promoting Mallorca with naked women. Another classic were bottle openers and keychains in phallic shapes or T-shirts with English sayings like "What happens in Arenal, stays in Arenal." All of this fueled the image of the Balearic Islands as an exotic theme park of carnality, the ultimate example of the joy of living. Today, Salvá often goes for walks in Arenal and is amazed at what he sees. "Now, almost all the souvenir shops sell the same thing. I'm really surprised to find a wooden penis. I find it totally bizarre. But if they offer it, it's because it sells."

"How wonderful it is to live in Mallorca!"

At the other end of the island, a different experience from Salvà's is that of the 83-year-old village of Bel Crespí Socias. "When I was 10 years old, I started working in the marshland, harvesting potatoes and beans. I ended up marrying a marshland man." In 1971, a whim came true. "I had always loved the sea. We bought a building in a row of various shops that a peninsular man was building in Port d'Alcúdia. However, we wanted it alone so our two young daughters could spend the summer there with their godmother while my husband and I worked the marshland. We both slept every Sea. The building had a bed and a screen. It was very austere."

Initially, Crespí wasn't tempted by the siren call of the tourist boom. "We were happy working in the marsh. We earned a very good living. We didn't need to go to the seaside to work." But things changed that same year. "A niece of mine lost her job and encouraged me to open a souvenir shop in the store we had just bought. A brother of mine already had one and gave me some tips on how to get started. My niece, however, took the lead."

The following year, her niece decided to leave the souvenir business to open a supermarket, a business that was also booming at the time. "So I felt obliged to take it over. That meant leaving my job in the marsh. I named the place 'Marlisa,' a combination of the names of my two oldest daughters, Margalida and Isabel. Later, I had a third child." Suddenly, unexpectedly, Crespí found herself serving tourists behind a bar. "We brought in a lot of handcrafted products: olive wood spoons and salad bowls made in Manacor, hats from Can Oliver in Felanitx, ceramic pieces, also from Felanitx, especially siurells, which the Germans really liked. I also received T-shirts with 'Mallorca' stamped on them from Artà." Later, we had various items, in English and German, containing phrases like, "How wonderful it is to live in Mallorca!"

New world

That world was completely new to the 29-year-old from Poblera. "I didn't know any languages. I didn't understand the tourists. I'd give them a pen so they could draw me a picture of what they wanted, and I'd run off to find it on the shelves. I also had to get smart using the machine. In those days, there were no credit cards, and I had to be on my toes."

Little by little, Crespí taught herself basic words in English and German. "The tourists couldn't tell me about their lives, but I ended up knowing how to spell everything in the store and all the price tags." Despite the communication problems, the former marshland woman noticed something curious among her customers: "The English and the Germans tended to avoid each other. Perhaps it was because of the resentment they carried over from World War II." The business was so successful that the possibility of opening another one in Puerto de Alcudia soon arose. "In total, we ended up having four in the area, plus a clothing store. I retired when I turned 65. Then two of my sons took over managing everything."

Looking back, Crespí feels fortunate. "When the potato crisis hit in Sa Pobla in the 1980s, we were so lucky to have souvenirs, which allowed us to progress economically." The Sa Pobla resident acknowledges that starting a business isn't as easy for people these days as it was for her five decades ago. She warns, however, that hers was a life of great sacrifice: "I would go into the shop at 9:00 a.m. and not leave until 11:00 p.m. I would eat inside the shop. This lasted from Monday to Saturday. I was never off work. I had Sunday off, but I would head to Sa Pobla to do Saturday. We would go to mass and, when we left, have a vermouth at Cas Cotxer. My mother would help me with the children." However, there's no reason to complain: "For me, that wasn't work, it was vacation. I came from the marshland. It was very hard being tied down under a hot sun, sweating in the filth."

Postcards

In the early 1980s, the gift shop business also attracted 75-year-old Llucmajor resident Bel Vich Miquel. "I had two young children, and my husband worked as a maintenance worker in the hotels in Colonia de Sant Jordi. I looked for a job that would allow me to balance family life. And I found it in a local souvenir shop owned by a photographer from Santanyí. It worked out very well for us because the owner gave us the option of staying upstairs." By then, the offering had begun to change. "We weren't getting as many handcrafted items anymore. There were plenty of typical Spanish products and the usual beach accessories like diving goggles, fins, sunscreen, and inflatable mattresses."

At a time when there were no cell phones yet, postcards were a constant success. "They contained good photos of Mallorca, and tourists would take them home as souvenirs or to write a few lines to family or friends. Their vacations usually lasted one or two weeks. They were usually very polite." In Colonia Sant Jordi, there were also souvenir shops that offered a special service: "We offered people the option of developing film rolls. Others had a little girl who would take the little ones for walks." At seven, with her children grown, Vich left that job to work as a hotel chambermaid. Today, the souvenirs she and many other islanders sold during the tourist boom decorate thousands of homes around the world.