Majorca on the Mild Side

The guy in the black beret alternated his pose between scowling disdain and yawning boredom. Slender, tall and middle-aged, he sat at Deia’s hangout for local artists, Cafe Sa Fonda, looking like a caricature of the embittered painter who hadn’t sold any work in years and was hiding from creditors in the tiny Majorcan village. After he left, a friend of mine who lives part-time in Deia casually mentioned the man’s name. “Remember the cover of Santana’s ‘Abraxis’ album?” she asked, implying that this was his artwork. “He painted a view of Deia’s cove into it below one of the nude women.”

That’s Deia in a nutshell: a visible secret tucked away amid the splashier sights on Majorca, Spain’s largest Mediterranean island. Or put another way, 8 million people a year visit Majorca and only a handful make it to Deia, a village perched on the island’s north coast.

With two luxury hotels, one of them (La Residencia) owned by entrepreneur Richard Branson, Deia is hardly undiscovered, and the town’s picturesque cove sees its share of sunbathers on any summer day. Still, the steep, narrow streets manage to absorb it all to the point where a nightcap at Sa Fonda still feels cozy and intimate. One night on our vacation last April, my friend Diane and I eavesdropped on gossip about an upcoming lesbian wedding and a hotel manager’s firing, and we realized we were in the company of locals--mostly expatriate Britons--not fellow tourists.

We discovered Deia through our friend Shelley and her husband, Lanning, who live in London but spend two to three months a year here in a rented village home. They had talked about Deia as a hidden paradise.

So, taking their cue, Diane and I signed on for a week’s rental of a flat in a 400-year-old building with a view of the village and the Serra de Tramuntana mountains. From that base we drove a rented car to the more visited parts of the island. Coming back to quiet Deia every night was a welcome alternative to taking digs in Palma, Majorca’s party-hearty city.

The apartment had two bedrooms--Diane’s 13-year-old son, Max, was with us--and a fully equipped kitchen. It had been described as newly refurbished; it had cool stone-tile floors, but otherwise was nondescript. The bathroom was small, and there was no TV; Max went to Shelley’s place to watch videos.

Majorca, 145 miles off the southeast coast of Spain, and its fellow Balearic islands, especially Ibiza, have been attracting foreign artists, iconoclasts and other free spirits for centuries. The most famous visiting couple were the French novelist George Sand and her lover-of-the-moment Frederic Chopin, who wintered on Majorca in 1838.

On our first morning, Shelley led us down an ancient, mile-long path lined with stone walls, poppies and olive and lemon groves, to the cala, or cove. Some of the island’s ubiquitous stone walls were erected 1,000 years ago by the Moors (North African conquerors) to terrace the steep hills for agriculture. The walls made every landscape look as though it were being excavated by archeologists.

At the cala, we joined Max and Lucas, Shelley’s 7-year-old son, who had gone ahead of us, and at the beach’s lone cafe we established the separation of tourist interests between adults and kids. The over-40 crowd stayed to evaluate the local cuisine while the boys, content with ice cream bars, roamed the small, rocky beach and hillside trails. Granted, Max’s teenage hormones were at first more interested in the topless sunbathers than in beachcombing, but the more jaded Lucas steered him away. (Interestingly, by the end of the week even Max didn’t look twice at the near-nudity.)

Lanning joined us for lunch, assuring us that most of the fish on the menu had been caught that day. The sea bass (lubina) and roasted red mullet were perhaps the best fish I have eaten, though no doubt the beach and the local wine influenced my judgment.

Max, a consummate consumer, pressed us for less dining and more shopping. Apparently he thought we’d go to a mall. Our first stop was Soller, just six miles from Deia. Of the two towns, Soller was less touristy, with a sleepy central square, Placa de la Constitucio, which was bisected by a quaint electric train line that runs to Port de Soller just a few kilometers away. (Another rail line goes through the mountains to Palma, 16 miles distant on the west coast.) Locals and a few European tourists idled at cafe tables in the sunny Soller square with the collective contentment of people grateful that the bakery was open on a Sunday.

Or perhaps they were just glad not to be in the thick of the Port de Soller scene, where we went next. Yes, the port has an idyllic harbor, watched by two lighthouses, but anxiety was in the air, the collective frenzy of tourists bent on finding the right souvenirs.

We fell in with the pack and bought our share of mementos, including the local olive oil, Olis Soller, a product of a farmers’ co-op. It had a wonderful meaty flavor, so rich that Max finished an entire bottle in three days by soaking bread in it. At 13, you can get away with that kind of thing.

Few in Deia seemed to think of their village as a grand location for restaurants, but every night we found another wonderful place to eat. One evening it was the popular Bens d’Avall. We had to make reservations several days in advance and could only get a table for 6 o’clock, something akin to the early bird special in a country where serious dining starts around 10 p.m.

Bens hung over a rocky section of coastline northeast of Deia, requiring a drive down a long, curvy road that at night was unlighted and a little scary. Ah, but the view from the terrace at sunset and the food and service gave us a feeling of perfect tranquillity. Max, true to form, ordered the most expensive dish, steak; I had lamb, and Diane had a seafood combo. All things considered, the $90 bill for three was reasonable when you add in the usual olives, bread and wine.

(Beware the unsolicited extras placed on the table. Local olives, fresh bread and any other goodies will almost always end up on the final bill whether you asked for them or not.)

Buying souvenirs, lying on the beach and eating are one way to experience Majorca, and really not a bad way at that. But there is also the history to explore. The earliest human remains have been dated to 5000 BC, and there is evidence of Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian traders dropping by the Balearics 3,000 years ago. Then came Roman conquerors and later the Moors, who from about 900 to 1229 made elegant mosques, palaces and sophisticated agriculture part of the landscape. After the Moors, Majorca became part of the newly unified kingdom of Spain.

Locals speak a Catalan dialect, which I’m told is similar to that heard in Barcelona, though most we encountered also spoke English. German is the third language seen frequently on signs and menus, indicating the island’s popularity with German vacationers.

Much of the human past remains in accessible ruins throughout Majorca. Lanning and Shelley recommended the 8th century Castell d’ Alaro as one of the best examples of an old, old place that’s well preserved even if crumbling a bit around the edges.

So we drove to the dusty, monochromatic inland town of Alaro and followed the signs to the castle. The last few miles involved a one-lane, partly paved road with 19 tight switchbacks that took us high above the valley and ended at a white finca (farmhouse) housing the Restaurante Es Verger.

The service was quaintly rude. After we’d waited 20 minutes under the watchful eye of an old woman in the open kitchen, she finally came out, figured that we didn’t speak Spanish or German and asked with her hands to her mouth if we wanted to eat.

Lanning had warned that it was a lamb-only menu. Sheep are slaughtered every morning and roasted for hours in an ancient clay oven that abuts the rustic dining area. The meat was simply seasoned but more intensely lamb flavored than any other I’ve eaten.

With canaries warbling above us in cages, we ate at a large round table with an English-speaking Norwegian couple whose bottomless supply of information about Majorca lasted through the meal.

After lunch Diane, Max and I climbed a mile-long, sometimes steep path to the castle ruins. There were no signs detailing the castle’s history, but according to Lanning, the Moors hunkered down here during the Christian reconquest in 1285, long after their compadres in the lowlands had given up. After a two-year siege the defenders were routed and their commanders roasted alive.

Diane and I enjoyed feeling in touch with history. Max simply saw it as a place without malls and PlayStation games. So to appease him, we stopped in Valldemossa on the way “home” to shop for the soccer shoes he wanted for school. There we found lines of tour buses disgorging hundreds and hundreds of tourists from Palma on a swing through the countryside.

From a distance, Valldemossa, Majorca’s highest town, is a charming sight. Built on gentle slopes atop the Serra de Tramuntana, Valldemossa has the local distinction, at least, of being described by Chopin as “the most beautiful spot in the world.” Unfortunately, winter is not a balmy season on Majorca, and the cold, damp weather exacerbated the composer’s poor health. Still, it was here that he wrote his preludes for piano, considered among his finest work.

Away from the souvenir shops (no soccer shoes), one can visit the Real Cartuja, the former monastery where Chopin and Sand stayed. It houses his piano and some manuscripts and letters.

Perhaps the best part about Valldemossa is the road that connects it with Deia. The narrow highway weaves past ancient olive trees on the steep slopes on one side, and steeper, rocky cliffs above the Mediterranean Sea on the other. There were several turnouts, some with bars or restaurants, for taking in the view.

We had our last big Deian dinner at Sebastian, a small but sophisticated restaurant hidden on a side street near the “highway” that ran through the upper village. The meal for the three of us topped $100, but was worth it.

We spent our last day just hanging out at the beach, alternating between snorkeling (Max got a painful whipping from a jellyfish) and collecting colorful pebbles. By this point, we had discovered a sincere desire to avoid fellow tourists. I think Deia encouraged that, it was so cozy. When the taxi picked us up for the drive to the Palma airport, I had to remind myself that I was going home, not leaving it.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK

Meandering Through Majorca

Getting there: Flying from L.A. to Palma de Majorca involves a change of airline in Europe; for example: British Airways/Midland, Lufthansa/Condor, KLM/Transvia, Swissair/Crossair. Round-trip fares start at $1,066.

Where to stay: We were referred to Talis Waldren, telephone 011-34-971-639-244, fax 011-34-971-639-152, who manages several properties in Deia. We paid $520 for the week for a two-bedroom flat.

There is also La Residencia, a hotel with daily rates ranging from $150 to $750. U.S. tel. (800) 225-4255, fax (in Deia) 011-34-971-639-370. The other major hotel is Es Moli, with rates from $160 to $260 per day; closed November to March. Tel. 011-34-971-639-000, Internet https://www.esmoli.com.

Where to eat: Bens d’Avall, on the coast road four miles north of Deia, local tel. 632-381. For more information: Tourist Office of Spain, 8383 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 956, Beverly Hills, CA 90211; tel. (323) 658-7188 or (323) 658-7192/3, fax (323) 658-1061, Internet https://www.okspain.org.