At some point during their holidays in Mallorca, at least half of the tourists who visit the island will pass through Valldemossa, a picturesque town of stone houses located 20 kilometers from Palma, at the foot of the Tramuntana mountains. So, on the low side, more than 800,000 tourists passed through a population that barely exceeds 2,000 inhabitants last year. It is on the route of the 14,000 cars that circulate daily along a winding road that borders the Mediterranean coast and connects the municipality with Deià.
Valldemossa is the spearhead of the touristification of inland Mallorca, but the phenomenon is not of today; Here it began at least three decades ago, something that sets it apart from other municipalities in the interior of the island, where the process of mass tourism has recently begun. With three decades of mass tourism behind them, it could almost be said that the inhabitants of Valldemossa have become used to, or at least resigned to, the fact that their town becomes a beautiful background for holiday photos.
This is, at least, what the cashier who sells tickets to enter the Cartoixa thinks, a monumental space that includes a church, a monastic pharmacy, a room with works of art that belonged to the Archduke Luis Salvador of Austria and another that exhibits posters by Joan Miro. The entrance costs 12 euros and the seller says that this has not been a good year because tourists come without money. Nearby you can visit the cell where the pianist Frédéric Chopin and the writer George Sand spent a winter, precursors, without knowing it, of that mass tourism that drowns the town at certain times.
The central streets of Valldemossa have a perfect cobblestone and perfect one-story houses with green shutters are lined up, because Valldemossa is a perfect town, almost, almost a perfect theme park for that Instagram tourism, cared for to the extreme by its inhabitants , who live on a good part of the money left by visitors. You can see it when you walk through those streets, where there used to be traditional shops and now there are souvenir shops, Ibizan clothes shops, pearl shops or cafeterias where they serve the famous coca de patata, the gastronomic symbol of the municipality, above the own Mallorcan ensaimada.
Walking there on an August morning means coming across tourists of a dozen nationalities, according to the languages ??that are heard during the walk, but in recent years there has been a significant change, because there is a growing presence of tourists from the United States United States, according to the tourist office. There are more Americans because, two years ago, United Airlines opened a direct line between New York and Palma with full capacity on all flights since it was launched. There is also a presence of American tourism that arrives by bus from the port of Palma, where they have just disembarked from their multi-day Mediterranean cruise.
You may not know it, but one of your best-known compatriots resides in Valldemossa for long periods of time. The actor Michael Douglas is the owner of s’Estaca, a spectacular villa on the coast of the municipality that was built in 1867 by the Archduke of Austria. It is not uncommon to see the actor having a coffee in one of the town’s bars, camouflaged among the thousands of tourists who are visiting. Douglas, in Miquel de s’Estaca, as it is called in the town, opened Costa Nord years ago, a cultural center that ended up being a failure, in which Philip Glass, Van Morrison, Michel Camilo performed with the guitarist Tomatito or Paquito d’Estaca. ‘Ribera, among other great musical figures.
The center cost 2.3 million and it was his way of ingratiating himself with the City Council after building a house in s’Estaca attached to the main building without a license. Now he is dying in the center of town, near the tourist office, where most tourists pass without stopping, according to the two young men at the counter. There is a rush to buy a potato coke and take a selfie in the Cartoixa gardens.
