Mallorca

"Mallorcans tend to have a more affable and calmer character than the inhabitants of Ibiza. Men and women stand out for their happiness, openness and communicability. They are respectful of their superiors and known how to demonstrate their gratitude for favors received. Their innate bonhomie makes them show solidarity with the less fortunate. They are considered to be faithful friends, and the love for their women and children is at times even exaggeratedly expressed. As occurs with all the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands, they stand out for their hospitality. This virtue is seen not only amongst farmhands but even amongst people in the more elevated social classes. All foreigners, even if completely unknown, represent a very welcome guest for them, and they would not tire of doting on them. They do the impossible to lavish them with attention; it could even be seen as a question of honor to regale foreigners and show them the beauties of the island or the city of residence. I exaggerate not when I affirm that any foreigner could visit the entire island without ever having to set foot in an inn, finding cordial hospitality and welcome whether at a luxurious estate belonging to a Grandee of Spain or at a farmhand’s meager shack in the mountains.

This deference with respect to foreigners, the desire to show them the island’s miracles, has to do in part with another no less characteristic trait of Mallorcans: the love they feel for their patria chica (literally, “little homeland”). This profound identification with their land, much more fervent amongst the islanders than on the peninsula is, if possible, even more accentuated amongst Mallorcans than on the other islands. If, for any reason, they are forced to abandon their cherished island, they suffer extraordinarily from nostalgia, what they call the mal d'enyorança (“nostalgia ailment”). The town in which they were born, the house in which they were raised, the fields or other places for their games, the sky, the trees, the customs, everything the island represents, they feel are the best and the most beautiful the world has to offer. Off the island, they miss it, or enyoren in their language, and all their efforts converge to a single thought: returning to the island, even if years or decades have gone by since they left. They constantly yearn for their beautiful island which with they affectionately call by the name Sa Roqueta (“the little rock”).

Mallorcans lack that fiery character so typical amongst southern peoples, but they can be distinguished by their common sense which emerges on the most varied occasions, as well as by their good doses of wit, characteristics both which give them both a serious and somewhat infantile tone at the same time, an extremely attractive and even moving trait in the foreigner’s eye."

Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria. Las Baleares por la palabra y el grabado. Majorca: General Part. Ed. Sa Nostra, Caja de Baleares. Palma de Mallorca. 1982.