Archduk :: Majorca :: Miramar and Ramon Llull

“Miramar. The Tramuntana coast. Ludwig Salvator was increasingly delighted with the contrast created by the space... And as a fundamental cultural alibi, there was the enigmatic figure of Ramón Llull, who, six centuries earlier, had planned an ideal community. In Llull’s novel Blanquerna, the eponymous protagonist runs into a minstrel who was accompanying a knight. The knight, travelling by foot, had a spear in one hand and a sword hanging from his neck. The minstrel tells Blanquerna, who had seen the knight many times, that it was in fact the Emperor. Blanquerna and the minstrel bow before the Emperor, who responds by saluting amicably. This Emperor, a figure frequently praised by Ramón Llull as an exemplary Christian monarch, is none other than Rudolf of Habsburg, the Landgrave of Alsace immortalised by Rubens. Nineteen generations later, Ludwig Salvator was a descendent of that Emperor... Many years later, the Archduke would dedicate endless hours to studying Ramón Llull. In addition, he adorned the cave where he grieved for his lost love with his ‘friend’. He brought back a stone from Béjaïa in Northern Africa, where Ramón Llull was martyred, and placed it on the floor of the cave, where it was venerated.”

March Cencillo, J., El Archiduque, Biografía ilustrada de un príncipe nómada, La Foradada, 1991.