Five days in Mallorca
I sort of enjoyed Mallorca and I sort of didn’t. It had some big hills, the sea was sparkly and clear, there was a pleasant greenness to the island and lots of the villages are architecturally worthy even when they’re swamped with visitors like us. I’ve been on the island a few times but, when I checked when we were last there, and it turned out to be over 15 years ago.
Naturally, we tourists were everywhere. After our experience in Seville back in June, that came as no surprise. We’d expected the island to be busy — it’s one of Europe’s most established holiday destinations — but some things were worse than I’d anticipated. It seemed that Mallorca had given up on being Mallorcan, or even Spanish, and just become tourist land.
As obvious foreigners, we were usually greeted in English because English was definitely the lingua franca. The language we heard around us most frequently was German. In the smaller towns, locals spoke to each other in Mallorquín - I heard almost no Castilian Spanish (the most widespread version) except perhaps in Palma. It was as if the island had become linguistically outsourced.
But the real shock was the food. Spain, after all, takes food seriously. It’s a national conversation. Go anywhere on the peninsula and you’ll spot the Spanish tourists immediately — they’re the ones asking for directions to a good restaurant and, once there, for the local speciality: paella in Valencia, caldero in Cartagena, migas in Cáceres, farinato in Ciudad Rodrigo, fabada in Oviedo, cocido in Madrid. Everywhere, there’s something distinct, something local. Except, it seems, in Mallorca. We searched and searched for something typical and only struck lucky once, in a cheerful, inexpensive, very touristy place where the food, though edible, was hardly exceptional. Most restaurants offered international fare — not international in the time honoured sense of the sort of meal you could find as easily in Boom in Belgium or Punxsutawney in the USA like chicken and chips or steak and salad — but international in the franchised sense: pizza, pasta and burgers. Even the pricier restaurants offered little else. The gesture toward Spanishness came only in the tapas list— stripped down to the safest crowd-pleasers like patatas bravas and garlic prawns. No michirones, no sangre, no gilda, no tigres, no patatas a la riojana — not even txistorra.
Or maybe there was something even more submissive. On our first night, we unpacked — that is, I hung my T-shirts in the wardrobe — and went out in search of a beer and a couple of local tapas. To our surprise, most bars were already half-closed by 9.30. In much of Spain, that’s barely the start of the evening. We assumed it was just a quiet Monday, our fellow travellers all tucked up in their hotel beds thinking fondly of Horlicks or heiße Milch mit Honig. But later in the week, when we went looking for something more authentic, a smart restaurant full of well-heeled visitors had a notice saying the kitchen would close at 21:30. We’d noticed that Americans, Germans and Britons were eating at six, but assumed the locals would take over later. Apparently not. Everywhere we went, it was the same: restaurants serving expensive variations on the same old pizza, pasta and burgers — and closing early.
So, we tourists have made parking a premium-cost sport. We’ve pushed up the prices of everything from a beer to a flat and we have turned sleepy villages into selling fields for tawdry souvenirs, ice cream and lots of esparto donkeys. There are loads of us, in every conceivable corner, taking selfies of ourselves and making videos as we wander the heaving streets. The supermarkets and vets have had to move from the high-rent centre to the outskirts and their former premises are now wellness and yoga centres. The local language has been overwhelmed, eating habits and even the eating hours have been adjusted to international time.
To be honest, I’ve been getting a bit bored with trudging around towns and cities — we walked over 60 km in the five days we were in Mallorca, for instance. When you get to my age, you’ve seen a lot of souvenir shops, craft markets and cathedrals — and I keep promising myself that next time I’ll get my act together and try something a bit more activity-based — you know the sort of thing: digging in the mud at an archaeological site, hunting for edible mushrooms and toadstools or learning how to cook five typical local recipes. But somehow I never get around to doing any of that. Instead, I trudge, I go into bars and restaurants, I visit buildings and gawp at polychrome altars or sculpture.
Maybe the trick is to go where the guidebooks don’t send you. Skip the “must see before you die” places and head instead for the Ciudad Reals, the Teruels and the Palencias of this bigger-than-you-think country. There, you can still find a parking space, buy a coffee without a bank loan, and eat something you’ve never even heard of — let alone tasted.
Oh, and if you want to see my holiday slides they're here
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