By Soller Shirley
Pic by Rachel Fox of Puig Mayor
In 2024 many of our summer visitors are from the USA. This in part is due to the direct flights which are now possible from Newark to Mallorca. In addition, there are those who fly to other Spanish airports and explore. Then they make a quick hop over to the Balearic Islands to continue their adventure.
Did you know – In1959, Mallorca was in the middle of the Cold War with the construction of an American base on the highest peak of the Sierra de Tramuntana.
On September 26, 1953, the Madrid Pacts were signed. After founding NATO in 1948, the United States was “rehabilitating” Franco’s fascist regime for a “force majeure cause”: monitoring any “communist threat.”
This led the Americans under Eisenhower to help Spain, their new friend, economically and militarily. This was in exchange for being able to build their own military complex in the western part of the Mediterranean. The agreement provided for the creation of four large bases, three air (Zaragoza, Torrejón de Ardoz in Madrid and Morón de la Frontera in Seville) and one naval (Roa in Cadiz). It also provided for the construction of 16 points for military stations.
One of those points called “air alert and control” was the Puig Major, the highest mountain in the Islands. Dominating the Balearic Sea, it offered good communication with other American bases in the south of France, the Italian peninsula, Morocco and Libya
The landscape changes and huge works to create access to the site of a Military Station on the top of Puig Mayor was massive. The station had two radars, which were activated in July 1959. They were inside two large, half-orange domes, clearly visible from many corners of the island. They would be popularly known as “the bubbles of the Puig Major”.
The creation of the road works lasted three years and employed about 1,000 people, most of them from Sóller. On July 23, 1961, a 17-kilometer route with two tunnels was inaugurated.
In the early 1970s, the American machinery was also used to build the Gorg Blau and Cúber reservoirs, which were to be used to supply water to Palma.Workers came from many places in Mallorca, many of them ended up living in Sóller.
The low-ranking soldiers from Puig Major lived in the Cúber barracks, but the officers and non-commissioned officers were distributed in the Sóller area, where they rented houses and apartments. In 1963, some of them moved to the Soller military residence built for them in Son Angelats. Others preferred to go to Palma, settling in the neighbourhoods of Sant Agustí and Cas Català.
In the sixties, the presence of Americans in Mallorca increased with the members of the marines of the Sixth Fleet calling at Palma. Up to fifty ships in a year and one or two aircraft carriers with 5,000 men each came to berth in the bay.
The USA has a huge history with Mallorca. Their work lives on in the huge infrastructure projects in the Tramuntana and the reservoirs, which are taken for granted today. The road from the Monument roundabout towards Fornalutx and beyond, is still known as ‘The American Road’.
Life and politics have moved on but many friends from the USA have a Soller Valley story in their DNA. The years of the USA presence here created connections which ended up in marriage, relocation, and then, in retirement a return to the Soller Valley. There are many here who have their own personal stories they can tell of this era. This is a social history story which is barely 70 years old. A fascinating glimpse of the time when the Soller Valley was of strategic military importance and received great infrastructure benefits, which we appreciate today
