The Mallorca List

Four years ago, I went to the birthday of a close friend who had just moved to Mallorca with her family. We partied for three days and I never came back to Paris. Not totally true. I fell in love with a Spanish Ambassador and then fell in love with the whole island. He would play golf and I would swim. But golf lasts five hours. I swim for an hour each day. So in my free time, I decided to interview people to meet the insiders and I quickly realized that Mallorca was so much more than a “summer island” that closes its doors from October to May. 

I like traveling through humans, and getting to know a place when I hear the insiders speak about their land. My journalistic curiosity led me to meet an incredible crowd. Among them was Toni Esteva, a renowned architect who recently built Es Raco d’Arta, one of the most beautiful hotels on this island. I also met World of Interiors journalist Catherine de Montalembert, who is married to Jean Marie Delmoral, the genius Spanish-Parisian photographer known for his portraits of famous artists like Joan Miró or Miquel Barceló; Pauline de Saussure, a young Swiss who started a wedding planning business in northeast Mallorca; and Uraaz and Shaana Levy-Bhal, documentary film directors from Mumbai, who now live in Palma with their two little boys. My last crush: Bruno Entrecanales. After making a fortune in finance in Madrid, he chose to invest his money not in a yacht in Saint-Tropez, but in restoring Son Moragues with the help of 100 local artisans. This possession, or large estate, is located on the mountain of Valldemossa. Bruno is one of the founders of an NGO called Tramontana 21, conceived to protect the mountain range that spans 164 km from east to west on the island. He produces 12,000 liters of olive oil per year, some of which are sold in beautiful Gordiola bottles (they have an incredible factory you can visit), and also sells gin, marmalade, and ceramics. Recently, he was given a 19th-century antique loom and hired a young English specialist to revive it and begin weaving his own tapestries. Meeting this crowd made me fall in love with Mallorca’s creative undercurrent and the values of those it seems to attract. It allowed me to see the island without the negative image it often has—that it’s full of misbehaving, intoxicated tourists from Germany and England.

So why visit Mallorca if you didn’t have the same experience as me? There is a shift underway in the Balearic Islands. Menorca, reenergized with the opening of Hauser & Wirth on Isla del Rey in the port of Mahon, is no longer the Menorca you once knew. Ibiza has evolved beyond its party animal reputation thanks to openings like the Six Senses in Portinatx. Formentera isn’t just the chiringuito place anymore and Mallorca is not only the island known for cheap mass tourism, but a luxury getaway with 5-star hotels like Son Net, Vestige Miramar, The Lodge, Mandarin, Son Bunyola, Four Seasons, Nobis Palma. 

Mallorca is neither Spain nor France (though it was occupied during the Napoleonic wars) nor Europe: it is its own promised land. It is a return to the sources, the synthesis of everything we were looking for on the other side of the world, yet it’s right here, close to us. Really close to us. An hour and a half from Paris (sorry, I am Parisienne), Mallorca has secret beaches, natural bird reserves, sacred sites, cliffside villages, monumental ancient sculptures, and precious stone churches and palaces. Its Moorish gardens, isolated turquoise calas accessible only by boat, and umbrella pines falling into the Mediterranean make it a true paradise. But above all, it is the people, who have never lost their taste for traditions and their sense of hospitality, that make the Balearic Islands a paradise rediscovered.

If you can spend a week on the island of Mallorca, I would advise you split your time in three parts to fully experience its slow luxury. Here’s how I’d spend a few days in Palma, a few days in the rural heart of the island, and a few days by the sea.