I went to Mallorca and thought of you

PalmIf certain football matches, the ultimate expression of the flat EEG, can be called "classics", with the same or greater reason this name can be used for souvenirs in kiosks and stores. souvenirs that have been in circulation for decades. Untouched by the passage of time, unfazed by changing fashions, impervious to oblivion, affected, if at all, and only by the wear and tear caused by the sun, postcards, towels, and T-shirts bearing the name of Mallorca have reigned supreme in their territory forever.

These are times of Instagram and TikTok, times of viral videos and images generated by artificial intelligence, which are also capable of generating new images on their own and reproducing themselves endlessly. We are living in times that defy what Walter Benjamin predicted in The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility (which, by the way, can be read in Catalan in Jaume Creus's translation). These are hellish times, in which some image experts fear that we will soon find ourselves in a situation where we cannot, or do not know how, or do not have the means to distinguish, among the thousands of images that demand our attention every day, all day long, which are true and which are false.

But in the midst of all this, there are still people (there must be quite a few left, judging by the selection on the market) who cannot resist sending a postcard, or a few, during their vacation trip. Postcards from Mallorca are diverse and of different genres, namely: 1) landscapes, 2) of the Seu, 3) of cute little animals, 4) of the Drach caves, or 5) gastronomic. In the photograph that inspired this article, by Ismael Velázquez, the predominant feature is that of animals, which are always amusing, even if the animal in question is a donkey drawn as if it were an immigrant from the old days, a cat wearing a knitted sweater, and a little dog standing there, waiting for a message to arrive, if it doesn't arrive, if it receives a message, and it doesn't. Dogs and cats, on the other hand, and donkeys too, are domestic animals found all over the world and, therefore, have no, let's say, identity-based, idiosyncratic relationship with Mallorca, but they sell postcards and, therefore, they are simply placed there, and that's it.

There was another genre in the past, that of traditional scenes in Mallorcan villages (men sitting in the doorway of a café, pleasures selling vegetables in the market square, games of truco or escambrinco in the same café, but indoors, people on bicycles), but it was sent to the streets. It also seems that the semi-, para-, or pseudo-erotic postcards, with images of scantily clad women (they're always women) on the beach, have declined. Landscape postcards have always been very popular, and it's best to take advantage of them, because if the provisions of the Land Acquisition Law are passed, the beautiful images of sunsets with spectacular cliffs will soon be transformed into images of apartment blocks and commercial complexes.

The classics are the classics.

It's actually the whole store sector. souvenirs which seems to be a bit downcast, a bit of a bust. It's logical, because competition is tough: cruise and all-inclusive tourists are not very keen on spending on anything (despite the fact that tourism industry employers always claim them to be a strategic audience), luxury tourists buy more expensive souvenirs in luxury shops, and everyone has discovered the charm of taking stones from the coves or stapled. civilized. Nor can it be said that the businessman of souvenirs has never been characterized by its imagination, inventiveness, and dynamism: in Mallorca, they've been selling exactly the same merchandise for sixty years (bullfighters, Andalusian dancers, Mexican hats, keychains in the shape of an ensaimada, references to almond blossoms, although they hardly ever mention it anymore) perhaps they could have heard it done. Even so, the business, perhaps not as productive as before, remains, because, as we said at the beginning, the classics are the classics. Tourist Mallorca is no longer what it once was, and perhaps postcards will soon be the last places we can go to reconnect with an island that some want to transform, but not for the good of all. Only for their own.