Mallorca has been a land of pirates and corsairs, the scene of battles and conquests that have been fought in the Mediterranean, but also a home for letters and a landscape for the pages of essays and novels. The unique environment, its natural beauties and the saltpeter that permeates the air have captivated writers of all times and places, who have made the solitude of the island their best inspiration. Beyond the classic sun and beach pairing, mass tourism and Imserso trips, the Balearic Islands offer themselves as a territory to be rediscovered through letters.
From the steps across the Mediterranean of Ulysses, the protagonist of the oldest work of Western literature, to George Sand, Robert Graves or Julio Cortázar, passing through Mallorcan writers such as Llorenç Villalonga i Pols, they have found their own island on this land. For the visitor eager to dive into the depths of literary inspiration, Mallorca has the Walking on Words project, an initiative that includes different routes through the territory led by almost fifty artists who met their muse in some corner of the island.
7 guided routes through paradise, if you can stand it is the name with which this project is presented, which collects up to 72 literary points. It is also available for mobile phones with the free WoW! Literary Mallorca, which allows you to enjoy elements of augmented reality and geolocation to discover each enclave in a different way. Whether you want to use this application or if you prefer to make your own route through the life and work of essential writers of literature, we suggest some of the corners and settings that you cannot miss on your journey.
The first of the stops is in the capital of the island. Palma has seen the birth of writers such as Joan Alcover, whose birthplace -at number 24 Calle de Sant Alonso- has become a museum space. In Can Alcover the poet’s house-museum is preserved, which takes the visitor into his creative universe. A footbridge flies over one of its great attractions: the garden, which so many times inspired the promoter of the so-called Mallorcan School.
But if there is an enclave in the city that has been captivating visitors for centuries, it is La Seu. The cathedral of Mallorca captivated the verses of one of the most outstanding authors of 20th century Hispanic literature, Jorge Luis Borges. In 1921 he published the poem Catedral in the magazine Baleares, dedicated to one of the most representative buildings of Mediterranean Gothic. The Argentine writer lived on the island during several periods in which he stayed at the Continental Hotel.
His gatherings were famous, together with writers such as Jacobo Sureda, in the famous Casa Elena, a brothel in Palma where dawn would surprise them when the city was already silent. In addition to giving life to poems, articles, an ultraist manifesto and even a short story, Mallorca acquired great personal importance or, at least, that’s how he recognized it in a poem from 1926: “Mallorca is a place similar to happiness”.
Following the narrow streets of Jewish heritage located behind the cathedral, you can reach the cloister of Sant Francesc. Among its fine columns, the Nobel Prize for Literature Albert Camus walked. The summer of 1935 in Mallorca was captured in his first book L’envers et l’endroit. His summer stay also served him to discover exceptional places such as the Bellver castle and some towns in the Tramuntana. Next to the cloister of Sant Francesc is the church that receives the same name. Inside the temple is the tomb of Ramon Llull, the first writer to express scientific, philosophical and technical knowledge in Catalan. The traces of the capital figure of the Catalan language can also be seen in the Plaza Mayor. In its northern corner, a plaque reports the place where he was born.
The towns of the Serra de Tramuntana, the backbone of the island, have been sheltering man who has known how to work in harmony with the natural environment for centuries. Among its mountains, capable of stopping the wind before it reaches the Mediterranean, towns like Valldemossa rise up. Through the cobbled streets of one of the most photographed towns on the island, their love Frédéric Chopin and George Sand walked. The couple lived in the cells of the royal charterhouse of Valldemossa. Currently you can visit one of them converted into a museum and walk through its gardens.
During his stay, the Polish pianist produced many of his famous Preludes, while George Sand wrote A Winter in Majorca. “Everything that the poet and the painter can dream of, nature has created in this place.” With these words, Aurora Dudevant, the real name of the poet George Sand, alluded to the royal charterhouse of Valldemossa.
In a monastic cell, years later, Rubén Darío also found consolation for his battered health and managed to silence his demons. As a result of his stay on the island, he published the titles La isla de oro and the unfinished El oro de Mallorca. It was not the first time that the Nicaraguan poet set foot on these lands. He did so in 1907, the year in which he also lived in Palma, and finally in 1913, much more troubled by his health and seeking solitude in the mansion owned by Juan Sureda and his wife, the painter Pilar Montaner in Valldemossa. In the old cells of the Carthusian monks, other writers such as Unamuno or Azorín also met with solitude.
Following the route of stone villages that the Tramuntana hides, we find Deià. In this corner, with the Mediterranean in the background, Robert Graves’s home was located from 1929 until the day he died. His stay was interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War, which forced him to return to his native England. But the poet had the phrase of his friend and writer Gertrude Stein engraved on fire: “Mallorca is paradise, if you can resist it”.
He returned to the island in 1946. The house surrounded by orange trees that he built with his wife has now become a space for visitors where the original furniture and decoration are preserved. The garden is fundamental in this visit. The olive, carob and almond trees, whose shade fed the numen of one of the great literary figures of the 20th century, are still in the same place. The tour can be completed with a walk to her grave, in the local cemetery.
Julio Cortázar was another of the writers who could not resist the summers in Deià. He spent his days on the shore of the rocky Cala Deià and watched sunsets from Son Marroig, the iconic viewpoint to which he dedicated El Rayo Verde. Halfway between Valldemossa and Deià, looking for Jules Verne’s green ray in Son Marroig, as the author of Hopscotch did, is the perfect excuse to contemplate one of the most beautiful sunsets on the island from the small palace that once belonged to the Archduke Louis Salvador of Austria.
But when it comes to viewpoints, the most north-western point of the Tramuntana, Cap de Formentor, offers unique views. Up to here came the letters of the writer Camilo José Cela. The Galician author settled on the island in 1954 and founded the magazine Papeles de Son Armadans. Five years later, he placed Mallorca on the map of international letters with the celebration of the Formentor Poetic Conversations, which brought together poets of different nationalities at the Formentor hotel.
Cela’s appointment further raised the cultural status of an emblematic hotel that had hosted personalities such as Winston Churchill, Grace Kelly or the Dalai Lama. Visitors seeking to find one of the most emblematic coastal hotels in Majorca today will come across cranes and the remains of an establishment immersed in a controversial renovation work.
