The year Robert Graves mourned the loss of paradise

Palm In 1965, the 70-year-old British writer Robert Graves saw his Mediterranean refuge threatened. He had discovered it in 1929 thanks to his friend, the American poet Gertrude Stein, who had lived in the Palma neighborhood of El Terreno between 1915 and 1916. "If you can stand it, Mallorca is paradise," she had told him. The chosen place was Deià, a small fishing village in the Tramuntana mountains, with about 400 inhabitants. At 36, the famous author of I, Claudius (1934) published Majorca observedwhich in Spanish would be translated as Why do I live in Mallorca? It was a collection of articles with a distinctly elegiac tone. It formed part of a series on the impressions of various English writers living abroad. The Palma-born philologist Eduard Moyà is the Catalan translator of some of the Londoner's poems. "He," he asserts, "was deeply concerned about the consequences of the boom tourist on an island where he had found the happy Arcadia of his admired classics."

Graves was not only captivated by Mallorca's unspoiled landscapes but also by its low prices. In 1930, he wrote a letter to a friend with the following warning: "Don't advertise Mallorca! Perhaps one day you'll want to come. And it's not yet overrun with tourists." Three decades later, the prophecy had come true. Son Sant Joan Airport, inaugurated in 1960, had already surpassed two million passengers. "With the support of Camilo José Cela," Moyà notes, "Graves was encouraged to send a letter to Manuel Fraga, then Minister of Information and Tourism, asking him to declare Deià a 'National Monument' for fear that hotels would be built there. Many residents of Deià, however, were demanding hotels so they could—not going hungry—they simply longed to break free from the isolation of living in the heart of the Serra de Tramuntana."

Paternalistic attitude

Since settling in Deià, the Oxford scholar had shown his affection for the region. "In 1932," the philologist emphasizes, "he built a house on the outskirts of the town, which he named Ca n'Alluny, now his museum. He didn't hesitate to buy some land to prevent some Germans from blocking his view with a housing development that was to be called Lunaland." Moyà describes Graves's protective zeal as paternalistic rather than colonialist: "He never acted arrogantly toward the Mallorcans, unlike the 19th-century travelers, among them the French writer George Sand, who, in A winter in Mallorca (1841), spoke disparagingly of 'the island of the apes'. Graves, on the other hand, came from the future, from the England of the Industrial Revolution, and feared that Deià would end up being a victim of progress as well."

However, the British scholar would make improvements to his locus amoenus Mallorcan. "To facilitate the transport of fish to the village," the researcher states, "Mayor Joan 'Gelat' convinced him to pay for the construction of the road in Cala Deià. He also obtained the first generator for the residents. If he was named an Adopted Son in 1969, it wasn't for his poetry, but for his involvement. He was always seen in cafes, chatting with people."

Once a week, the London writer used to take the 'mail' train down to Palma. He sadly witnessed its gradual loss of identity due to the proliferation of restaurants, travel agencies, and shops. souvenirs"He has – adds Moyà – a poem entitled A beach in SpainIn it, he says that people come here to love quickly instead of finding a calm and unhurried love as was done in the past. In the plays he wrote to be performed at Ca n'Alluny, there is a constant denunciation of boom touristic, which, in his opinion, promotes the Americanization of society and the loss of rural tradition and all its rich lexical heritage. He laments the large number of visitors that Deià was already receiving at that time, many of whom brought drugs and overly modern music. However, the philologist finds one criticism of Graves particularly striking: "Sixty years ago, he was already concerned about the fact that some residents were lending their homes to foreigners, which was driving up the local population."

Curiously, the figure of the British literary genius attracted a legion of artists and intellectuals to Deià, including Ava Gardner, Tyrone Power, Gabriel García Márquez, and Julio Cortázar. Following in his footsteps would also be... hippies and leaders of pioneering psychedelic rock bands like Kevin Ayers. "They were people," Moyà states, "who came with a class-based, intellectual perspective, seduced by the Edenic myth promoted by Graves. Meanwhile, the working class went on holiday to more touristy areas like Magaluf."

'Individual Tourist' versus 'Group Tourist'

Another scholar who has studied Graves's vision of tourism is Antoni Vives Riera, a historian from Manacor and professor at the University of Barcelona (UB). "He distinguished between the 'individual tourist' seeking authentic places and the 'group tourist,' who behaved like a flock of sheep on charter flights organized by travel agencies. He identified with the former and harshly criticized the latter. The problem, however, is that today, with the explosion of internal tourism, there are even worse tourists than the 'group tourists.'"

Majorca observedHowever, it wasn't conceived as a pamphlet against tourism. "Rather," the researcher states, "it was intended to be helpful to 'individual tourists' like Graves interested in settling down to live on the island. Advice is given on practical matters, such as where to send their children to school or where to buy butter." The book contains the following statement: "When my friends write to me asking for information about 'my island,' I reply: 'The island isn't mine, it belongs to the Mallorcans.'" Vives, however, doesn't hesitate to label the British writer a supremacist: "He treats the local population as if they were 'wild bounties,' whom he admires for their innocence and simplicity. He also tells his compatriots that Mallorca is paradise because domestic help is much cheaper than in London."

'Expatriate' criticized by the BBC

In 1970, five years after the publication of Majorca observedThe BBC premiered a documentary with the same title. It was a warning about the threat that [the virus] was posing. boom touristic for the island's wildlife. However, the work contained an implicit critique of Graves. "He mentions," says Vives, "'some expatriates who were drawn to Mallorca when it was still unpolluted' and who 'see the masses of tourists as plagues of locusts devouring their private pleasures of peace and discretion.'" The footage opens with bathers on beaches to the sound of the song Every day is a party in Mallorca, by Los Javaloyas, sung in English. Next, a crowd of tourists appears disembarking from planes at Son Sant Joan airport and others strolling along the coastal areas. Immediately afterward, the contrast is highlighted with a farmer plowing his fields and images of an agricultural market accompanied by bot dance music.

The main promoter of that initiative was Richard Brock, a BBC employee and also a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a group of ornithologists who, since 1967, had been arriving in Mallorca on package holidays called ornithoholidaysTheir operational base was a hotel in Puerto de Pollença, near the Tramuntana mountain range, where black vultures could be spotted, and close to the Albufera de Alcudia lagoon, which was home to a significant bird colony. "The documentary," Vives states, "pointed out that, apart from tourism development, other problems for wildlife in Mallorca included 'practices such as hunting with traps or firearms.'" The film's activist nature is evident at the end when birds are shown flying over the construction site of the Ciudad de los Lagos residential development, near the Albufera.

Majorca observed It was screened in Palma three months after its BBC premiere. It was shown as part of a fair. Among the audience was a group of friends who had become interested in ornithology thanks to the influence of the media-savvy naturalist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. One of them was Miquel Rayó, an 18-year-old. "That documentary had a huge impact on us. It opened our eyes to the devastating effects of the so-called 'Balearicization' of the islands. We immediately got a copy to show to schools and cultural groups. Since it was in English, one of us did the live simultaneous translation." In December 1973, three years later, Rayó would be one of the eight founding members of the GOB (Balearic Ornithology Group), the leading environmental organization in the Balearic Islands.