Passar pena is very Mallorcan. It is also good to use tenc because as a translation of it seems to me that, an inaccurate variation of I’m afraid that is quite significant. I suppose that due to their geographical location – at the mercy of invasions and speculation, a place of passage, commerce and recreation – the Mallorcans have a reputation for being distrustful, very fatalistic. A bit like the Gauls, who believed that the sky would fall on them. With the difference that they do not defend themselves; for sale. And cheap.
They defended themselves well with slings, and then negotiating with what they had. Something remains: they are closed and cosmopolitan, Phoenician and possessive, proud and they have a reason. It seems like they will never explode. Until they explode. It seems like they take it easy, but the procession goes on inside. I speak of one part; Half of the Balearic population was born outside the islands. I also speak from a literary perspective, it cannot be generalized.
A friend says that life in Mallorca is very good if you were not born there. I imagine that because what happens to him doesn’t affect you. And because, if you were born on dry land, you lack the ancestral fear of being expelled. Being from an island means you have nowhere to go, while the world walks all over you. You have nowhere to return to, because your childhood landscape no longer exists. As Llorenç Villalonga pointed out, all paradises are lost. And as Gertrude Stein told Robert Graves, it’s okay if you can stand it. Today Mallorca is an unbearable lost paradise.
Before I used to compare her to a mother. For you she is the most beautiful, you miss her. When you meet again, maybe she makes a gesture and you think: she’s older. It only lasts a second. Memory corrects reality, and it returns to what it always was. Then you tell yourself that nowhere is she at home. After a few days, you need your independence, and she needs hers. Mallorca is perfect from a distance. Up close, she hurts you.
It hurts to have your mother tongue torn away, to have your identity torn away, to have the environment, the ecosystem, the residents, second-class citizens, despised. “Whoever loves Mallorca does not destroy it” shows how little its rulers love it, regardless of their party. Yesterday, Pere Antoni Pons presented Quan t’acorralen les flames at Can Alcover. Mirades sobre les Mallorques d’avui (3i4). According to him, the emergence of Vox in the institutions will be nothing more than an exaggeration of what is already there, a logical drift of the last 50 years.
On Hispanic Heritage Day, the army will pay tribute to those who fell in El Born de Palma; It is the first time that the flag raising has taken place outside a military facility. The bulls return to the ring (the public, we’ll see). President Prohens wants to build high and widen Via de Cintura so that more cars can fit. She has no problems with the amnesty, as long as she is a real estate agent. But, after spending eight years ensuring that they would change the tourism model, the Armengol government led to human pressure records being broken in the summer. More pollution, more saturation. That’s why they lost the elections. Because the supposed environmentalist left believes that everything is fixed on social networks.
For those of us who lived abroad, Mallorca was a refuge and a burden. Now I don’t take refuge, and it weighs even more. On Tuesday, Margalida Solivellas presented Altaïr Illes ecapçades. Isolated chronicles (La Campana). Biel Mesquida tours places and customs that no longer exist in Passes per Palma (Vibop). Sebastià Perelló and Sebastià Alzamora will participate in the Kosmopolis on the 26th. And the question is whether one always writes about loss. If Mallorca, unbearable lightness of the lost paradise, is nothing more than a literary genre.
