LIFE, come and get it in Mallorca
By Shirley Roberts
In the fast changing, multicultural world of Mallorca new people and influences are a fact of life. Each plane load of travellers brings those who stay awhile, longer than they expected, or for ever. Mallorca has that pull on people because it offers so much. This is one beautiful place with the weather and the scenery to suit everyone. Of its one million permanent residents over 55 % live around the fine capital City of Palma. The rest are scattered to the wind on the rest of the island with pockets of preference in the Soller Valley, Calvia and Pollensa to name a few.
For the arrivals of 2016 the past doesn’t become important until they have settled and put their own scent on the place. Why should they care in the early days that they are following a road well travelled by the rich, famous, creative and greatest legends of the 20th Century?
Mallorca has been a magnet for seekers of a different life in all its glory for many years. To take the recent history as the Franco era was in its twilight and democracy beckoned areas of Mallorca were defining themselves. The settlers at that time were welcoming a new dawn.
The Terrano in Palma was ‘the’ place to see and be seen and the nightlife attracted the singers, actors and celebrities who arrived on fine yachts and created the playground of the rich and famous from the rest of the world.
Deia was the haven for an alternative, hedonistic life with a backdrop of music, poetry and the written word. Robert Graves was one of the stalwarts but he was one of many. Books on the reason for Deia still exist and make fascinating reading.
The Pollensa Painting set were another group of talented intellectuals. The Formentor Hotel at the furthest tip of the Island was the meeting place for so many who gave such wonderful work to future generations which grew out of the life of Mallorca.
Of course those days are past and their stories are being consigned to history. Each new generation of arrivals are adding another dimension and in another thirty years they will be written about in the same way as I am reminiscing today.
If Mallorca was a perfume it would be bottled as ‘Life’ – come and get it. Every new arrival and new generation who are privileged to live here has a unique experience and a different view of life. Some would say it is a safe and protected view considering all the troubles in the world and others would say ‘what is wrong with that’. To take one’s haven and enjoy it for as long as you can is a particularly Mallorcan thing to do. The people who came for a season and made Deia, Terrano and Pollensa their base often didn’t stay for ever. They went back to another life and always took with them what they had learned and acquired in their years in this place.
The history of the economic migrations of Mallorca has affected the mind-set of the people. The local people know that when things get tough you go away to work and to earn. They know too that many people come from poorer places to work in tourism here. What goes round comes round is the philosophy and it means that a multicultural, very accepting philosophy abounds. Every international school on the island has most nationalities of the world represented in their numbers. This is making Mallorca very interesting to the information gatherers on this subject.
If multiculturalism can be a good working model in Mallorca it can be in other places.
The researchers in the University have already embarked on this review for the law makers of Europe.
For our new arrivals they are having the best time and discovering everything new for themselves. There are plenty who could save them time by sharing their experiences and telling them what to do and where to go but where would be the fun in that? Everyone needs to experience and touch and feel for themselves what is there for them in Mallorca. They have landed in a place where the line is 5050 between native Mallorquins and incomers. That is a huge statistic and means that people talk to each other because they are all in the same boat. The journey is fascinating and the borders are not closed.
We are all making history in Mallorca right now in 2016. To get the legacy right for a working model of effective, supportive multiculturalism would be a wonderful validation of our lives here in the paradise that is Mallorca.
