The cat Pavarotti lounges on the terrace as art director Emanuela Amato recalls how oppressive it was to spend confinement in her rental apartment in central Paris.
"I felt like a mouse in a cage."
In November, he moved to a house in Campanet, a small town in Mallorca, and now, every time he gets up from in front of the screen, goes out to the patio and feels a ray of sunshine on his face, he can't believe it. nice it is.
"I feel very lucky," says the Italian.
If this island has always been an object of desire, in times of pandemic distress its appeal is redoubled despite being a prohibitive place. The Balearic Islands are the community with the most expensive square meter in Spain (about 3,000 euros) and that does not stop the demand. According to Hans Lenz, executive of Engel & Völkers, the volume of the real estate business in Mallorca is expected to set a record in 2021. “The COVID crisis has made us think about the kind of life we want to lead, and this place is unique wellness space ”, he says. According to his firm's record, during the first quarter of this year there was a 66% year-on-year increase in internet searches for “
prime
[luxury] properties”.
Amato, 33, misses "aperitifs with friends in Paris", but raves about his new land. “Everything is done to a human measure. The craftsmanship is amazing. And the flavor of the vegetables ... Those tomatoes, those lettuces. It had been years since I had eaten a lettuce that tasted like the one from my grandfather's garden in Sicily, ”says a warm midday with an Italian
disco
playlist
in the background. He came to Mallorca because his partner, Lauri Kopio, a 30-year-old Finn, works with Camper's new creative director, his countryman Achilles Ion Gabriel, (33 years old). Now the three are part of the Mallorcan footwear firm, she as a content creator. Weekends are market predators. Amato also takes care of the design of
Dust Magazine
from Campanet
,
a fine and very modern German-style magazine, written in English, which he does with three other Italians - one also lives on the island, another in Madrid, another in London - and which is printed in Lithuania.
To put the finishing touches on the latest issue, they met at Campanet.
"Now you can work from wherever you want," he remembers.
"People are realizing that you don't need to be in Paris or another major capital paying a lot."
Amato hopes that, once the pandemic is over, the pace of events in the fashion industry will be less hectic than before and that he will be able to travel for work less and more selectively.
“Tomorrow I have to take a flight to go to Italy and I already have anxiety”, smiles the owner of Pavarotti.
An old Porsche in the town of Deià.Kate Bellm
Near Campanet, in Inca, we are received at Camper's headquarters by his partner, Lauri Kopio, and Achilles Ion Gabriel. The designer sports the smile of a child who has just gone out for recess and a fabulous outfit. A crazy Prada cap with pink faux hair; an asymmetrical coat from Fiskars, a gardening brand; pink pants to match the madcap cap, and cowhide Camper boots with her natural black and white hair. In fact, he tells us about his taste for markets. He loves
siurells,
the typical figurines of Mallorca, and the most bizarre paintings that local families discard.
Originally from Lapland, he doesn't show much interest in the beach - "it's boring, isn't it?" - and emphasizes the virtues of the interior of the island: "The tranquility and beauty of its humble landscape", which, he says, is being filtering to its aesthetics.
“I think Mallorca is making me a cleaner designer.
I prefer that what I do has a function and does not fall into formal excess, although I do like to give it my surreal touch ”, he jokes.
After a decade involved in the Parisian frenzy, Achilles Ion Gabriel (33 years old) feels better than ever in Mallorca.
In his spare time he enjoys the serenity of this place, “its organic wines” and the new cuisine of the island.
"You have to go to Ca na Toneta," he says.
"I plan to go tomorrow."
"Oh, say hi to Maria!"
"How divine", says Maria Solivellas when we give her greetings from the author who came from the north.
Ca na Toneta, in Caimari, claims the Mediterranean cuisine of a lifetime.
Solivellas (Palma, 1970), who runs the restaurant with her sister Teresa, entered the business in a shocking way.
In 2001 he lived in Madrid and was dedicated to theatrical production.
He was doing well, but he did not know whether to continue down that path.
Anyway, an interesting offer came to him from New York and on the evening of September 10 he sent an email accepting it.
The next morning he woke up and the Twin Towers were falling.
"It was like a sign," he says at his Caimari store. He returned to his village, where his mother and sister had already opened Ca na Toneta, and became deeply involved with them. He began to investigate the traditional cookbook, to recover seeds. Today she is a celebrated chef whose concept revolves around identity. "I have nothing to invent, I just have to imitate my ancestors from this century, revere what we leave behind due to the impact on our lives of the tourism industry," he explains as he prepares a dinner with cuttlefish and snow peas, a privilege that It was because the restaurant was still closed (it reopened in early June). Solivellas says the Mediterranean diet was wiped out by the
tsunami
tourist, proposing greasy suckling pigs as the most typical or sobrasadas with —abracadabra— “Romanian meat, Chinese tripe and Moroccan paprika”.
"That is what we have been offering instead of selling that we have 25 varieties of spectacular tomatoes."
Two of the photographer's friends skate down to the beach.Kate Bellm
In the town of Binissalem - from the Arab Hijos de Ssálim or Hijos de la paz, it is believed - the 55-year-old agronomist Julio Cantos explains how little by little the discourse of caring for the environment and promoting local products is taking hold even in the hard core of the tourist machinery. “The
hotel
lobbies
themselves
are realizing where the trends are going and are beginning to ask for things related to edible agri-gardening and sustainability. They know that if the island degrades, it will lose its attractiveness, and that more and more tourists are looking for a quality experience and with another level of consciousness, "he says in L'Exquisit, an ecological bread and pastry shop whose motto is" Naturally, with the heart in the hands ”.
Another
green
activist
, Miquel Ramis (60 years old), agrees that, even in an embryonic way, the winds are blowing in the direction of the green economy and tourist reconversion. “The current model is doomed and Mallorca is the perfect laboratory to experiment with a new one that is viable, less congested. In the medium term, this island is not going to be the same, which is why it is becoming a sanctuary for the
jet-set.
They are the ones who have the best information about the places where they put their money, ”he says on the outskirts of Palma at Artifex, a center for building arts and regenerative agriculture. This interest of wealthy people and investment funds to buy on the island is, according to Ramis, an indication of a more balanced tourism horizon - something he sees positive - but at the same time - something he sees very negative - shows gentrification of the territory: “Many Majorcans can no longer aspire to live in the town where their family lived for generations. Who is buying their houses now? They are bought by foreigners with a lot of money ”.
During the talk it starts to rain, the smell of the earth gets wet and Ramis exclaims: “Miracle! Here the droughts are getting worse ”. The headquarters, temporarily loaned by its owner, is a beautiful manor house. They have an orchard in which Ramis boasts of the size of his beans grown without chemicals. For something Josep Pla in his book
Les illes
defined Majorcans as
“devoradors de faves”
(eaters of broad beans).
The idea of creating alternative paths is buzzing around the island. "We need to enrich our range of industry by betting on things with identity and added value," says Rosa Esteva, designer and owner of the fashion brand Cortana. “I am convinced that this is going to happen. There are too many people going in that direction ”, he reflects while having artichokes for breakfast in Son Gener, the hotel of his mother, the florist Catrín Cañellas, in Son Servera. It was designed by Rosa's father, the architect Antoni Esteva. "This hotel", she says, "was already 30 years ago an alternative proposal to mass tourism."
Son Gener has just opened and the designer celebrates the immediate response from the clients: “It's done.
People from all over Europe are crazy to come to Mallorca ”.
At 46, he had spent half his life in Barcelona.
After the experience of passing the pandemic here, he has decided to stay and has been excited about the possibility of making his firm's products with local workers and raw materials.
“Before we were a powerhouse in the cultivation of hemp and flax and we continue to have optimal conditions for this,” says the creator, dressed in her sober and elegant garments, like the island landscape.
The designer Rosa Esteva, on the coast of Canyamel.Kate Bellm
One of the products that Rosa Esteva believes should be bet on is ceramics. In the last decades something had been forgotten, but it regains strength. We visited Joan Pere Català Roig (48 years old) in the town of Pòrtol, one of the protagonists of the revival of this trade. "Right now I have a lot of orders, but I don't forget when years ago I went to the market with my brother, we spent hours there and hopefully we returned home with 100 euros," he recalls in his workshop with his cat Timo ( They called him that because when they gave it to him they told him it was a female; but he wants it) and a shelf full of jars with minerals. Quartz. Feldspar. Kaolin. Calcium carbonate. Pegmatite. Bentonite. “And what is not understood is that, when there is more demand for ceramics,we do not have an institutional program that promotes our sector ”, continues Català Roig, who notices the companies more alive. "They know that consumption has to do with currents of thought, and having reached a technological point as extreme as the current one, it is logical that manual is put into value again."
The ceramist longs for the Mallorca of his childhood, when he went to a cove with his cousins and his grandmother Magdalena and they were often alone.
They bathed.
Magdalena would sit on the rocks and wait for them to come out to give them some Androver sodas to cool off.
The cove was called Caló des Moro and today, according to what he tells us, it is Instagram territory.
The writer Sebastià Perelló meets us in Palma in the Plaza de Santa Eulàlia.
"At the bar Toni."
Unfortunately, there is no table and we were left without trying their
llonguets,
some very suitable rolls for breakfast. In his opinion, those of Toni have no rival. Once out of the disappointment, Perelló, 58, rewards him with a rich dissertation on the importance of recovering a closer relationship with visitors in the dynamics of tourism. “Mallorca could be the center of reference in thinking about tourism. The phenomenon of mass tourism was born here and we are in a position to rethink many concepts, such as what it is to be a tourist, that is, what does not want to be anyone and that, surely, we are all ", ironizes Perelló, who longs for a change of tourism model and at the same time rejects "tourismophobia".
The author of
Els darreres de l'illa
[The reverse side of the island].
Literatura de viatges i les Illes Balears
(Leonard Muntaner Editor, 2014) argues that a key to enriching the concept of tourism is to aspire to once again achieve - as it was in the early days of this business - that it supposes an experience of encounter between the visitor and host. “I think this is an idea shared by many Mallorcan people. There is a sensitivity to creating an alternative based on hospitality, ”he says. Perelló wants there to be more contact between one and the other and also that tourism reconnects the traveler with the territory, that he does not go through Mallorca as one passes through any other vacation place, as if it were a non-place, but rather visiting its sites. ,
being
on their sites.
"It is not about claiming localism," he says.
"The question is to vindicate the concept of locality, to refound the idea of the small, of the minuscule, of the site itself."
Cactus and aloes in bloom in Mallorca.Kate Bellm
A perfect place for that intellectual revision of tourism that Perelló claims is Casa Planas, a cultural center that houses the formidable archive of Josep Planas (1924-2016), a self-taught person who with his photos for postcards created the image of tourist Mallorca. "He was the inventor of paradise," says his granddaughter Marina Planas, director of the center. “The idea of tourism that he sold played on the contrast between the traditional, which attracted tourists, and the modernity, represented by the new hotels. It presented Mallorca as a safe place in full opening, but always emphasizing the stereotypes, the typical Mallorcan and, of course, the beauty of the landscapes ”.
After living in Barcelona and New York, Planas, 38, returned in 2015 to take care of this family legacy and put it at the service of artists and researchers who want to understand how neither more nor less than the tourism industry was born, which today it represents 10% of world GDP. The granddaughter of Josep Planas, who had a monopoly on the production of postcards for three decades, shows us the building of her grandfather's old business, which she rescued from total abandonment and today is a cultural dynamo, and in addition to her endless postcards we It shows the wonderful gadgets that were bought, authentic rarities in Mallorca of its time such as stereoscopic or spy cameras. A detail to understand the mood of Mr. Planas: according to Marina, he was the first European photographer to use a helicopter to take aerial photography."On weekends," completes his granddaughter, "he rented it to the Civil Guard."
The artist Susy Gómez welcomes us in her studio on a rural farm in Campos. It is a dairy that he has converted into a vast space for his creative work. Gómez, born in Pollença, grew up, between the sixties and seventies, in the middle of the transition from traditional Mallorca to that of tourism and offers a balanced vision of the impact of this mutation, recalling that it helped to overcome the “subsistence economy” and “ oxygenate society ”. "The arrival of people who came from more open worlds helped us get out of inbreeding and that patriarchal thing," he says. "It's easy to say that everything has been a disaster, but I think you have to learn from each stage to improve." He considers that the refocusing of the tourist phenomenon "goes more through an exercise in self-awareness" and invites us to rethink the idea of travel from other perspectives:“It is part of each one of us to learn to stand and travel in depth: for example, by reading or watching a movie carefully”. Gómez left Mallorca at 18 to study in Barcelona and returned from Barcelona in 2002. “I wanted to have more time for my daughter, more time for my work and more time with me,” she explains. "And returning did not mean locking myself in a cave, but seeking another position of consciousness to see paths," says Gómez. He cites a phrase by Cocteau to summarize what his return brought him: "A bird sings better in his family tree."more time for my work and more time with me ”, he explains. "And returning did not mean locking myself in a cave, but seeking another position of consciousness to see paths," says Gómez. He cites a phrase by Cocteau to summarize what his return brought him: "A bird sings better in his family tree."more time for my work and more time with me ”, he explains. "And returning did not mean locking myself in a cave, but seeking another position of consciousness to see paths," says Gómez. He cites a phrase by Cocteau to summarize what his return brought him: "A bird sings better in his family tree."
The artist Susy Gómez, in her studio in Campos.Kate Bellm
Another more recent return story is that of the artist Marta Armengol (33 years old). “I came in 2018 and it was not my intention to stay. I left all my junk in Barcelona. But after a year or so I said to myself: 'Well, I'm fine here, ”he says in the house where he grew up, in Esporles. He does not miss a larger art scene - "I am discovering a very interesting one here" - and he assures that working in his land is drawing out his most creative vein. “In a place like this you are not so conditioned by the competitive drive and the need to position yourself. You do things in the way that pleases you the most, more isolated and with time to think. I have realized that at least the slowness suits me ”. This vital atmosphere of Mallorca has long been, and continues to be, a magnet that attracts locals and foreigners."It's a magnetism that I don't know exactly how to explain," says Armengol. “But there is something that makes you feel good. It is something almost mystical ”.
The sparkling water of the Mediterranean.Kate Bellm
His good friend Guille Wheel, a 29-year-old musician, reflects in his studio in Calvià - the old parish theater, given by the church to his previous group, The Wheels - on the double side of insular parsimony, of its soft relaxation : “This is a place where you live really well and that grabs you, but it can also have a melancholic side.
That life and this environment, which are so good, can limit you.
Sometimes it takes action ”.
He plans to move to Madrid soon to have new experiences, although he knows that sooner or later the Mallorcan always feels the call of
“Sa roqueta”,
as it says and translates: "His rock."
The island.
That island that dazzled and welcomed its admired Kevin Ayers (1944-2013), whose ashes were deposited in the Deià cemetery by his daughter Galen in a ceremony of hippie essence.
When they were kids and they were just starting out, Wheel and his friends from the band went to Deià on a motorcycle in search of the leader of Soft Machine.
Upon arrival they were told that he no longer lived there.
It was a disappointment for those "15-year-olds who only wanted to make sixties music."
Mallorca is that too: worshiping the myth of a Mallorca that will never come back.
Musician Guille Wheel.Kate Bellm
The 35-year-old filmmaker Balthazar Klarwein, son of bohemian Mallorca, has also returned to his native island. He grew up in Deià with his parents, the painters Laure Klarwein and Mati Klarwein (1932-2002), the latter a psychedelic artist who illustrated mythical albums such as
Miles Davis's
Bitches Brew
and
Santana's
Abraxas
. He spent his adolescence in Barcelona making videos and photos of skateboarders in front of the Macba, he grew up in London working with figures such as Mario Testino or Kate Moss and for a year he has been back in the Tramuntana, in a rental house that he shares with his partner. , the illustrator Julia Bosch, 24 years old. "During the pandemic, I was projecting myself into the future and I could only see myself in Mallorca", says Klarwein, author of the short
Yo, diablo,
in which he plays with the hedonistic and spiritual culture that sucked with one foot in the satire of his own and the other in the celebration of his beautiful vitality.
As in a cycle that begins again, he has returned to the same corner where, for more than a century, so many existential adventurers have pursued the arcade of serenity.
"I think that's what we are looking for," he says.
"Something as simple and as necessary as a slower life."
The director Balthazar Klarwein in Fornalutx with a lily in his hand.Kate Bellm
The photographs in this report are part of the book
La isla,
by Kate Bellm, with the exception of the portraits of Rosa Esteva, Susy Gómez, Balthazar Klarwein and Guille Wheel.
The book will be published in September by Mirage Magazine.
