Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303260563
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIZABETH GUNN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Going to the largest island, Mallorca, for Semana Santa (Easter week) is an accepted rite of spring for thousands of Spaniards, as well as hordes of other Europeans and Americans. Palma, the capital city, is only a couple of hours' flight from Madrid, half an hour from Barcelona. We made reservations well in advance (important) in a package that included airfare, room and meals.
Though Palma's population is about 300,000, it's a beach resort, so it seems manageable and easygoing. Thus, using local bus service and advice, we made our way to the center of town on the first day.
At the port, small sailboats were being towed out for the Regatta in which both the King and Prince of Spain were sailing that weekend. As a result, the harbor was under heavy police guard. Walking along El Born, the wide rambla in the native heart of the city, we got a taste of ancient Mallorca, far removed in time and taste from the jumble of high-rise hotels circling the beach.
Many of the buildings, staircases and patios in this section date from the Middle Ages. Finally, we found the Gothic Cathedral, begun in 1230 and nearly four centuries in the building. It's colossal, with a great pinnacled facade, flying buttresses, a lovely rose window inside and, surprisingly, the recent addition of a strange modernistic baldachin (altar canopy) designed by Gaudi.
Following clues picked up in conversation, we went back downtown in the evening to see the Good Friday parade, a ritual similar to the fabled Valencia Good Friday procession, with each parish furnishing a group of marchers, always long-gowned, caped, with their heads shrouded in high-peaked hoods with holes cut for the eyes. Of course, to us they looked like members of the Ku Klux Klan; actually, they're reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition.
Many groups had drums, some even trumpets, but the music was always a dirge. One section was dressed in burlap; some marchers were barefoot, and in almost every group one or two dragged chains behind bare feet. Often there was a float, carried by eight or 10 men, which featured statues of the Virgin or Christ. All the hooded marchers carried long candles, and in every troupe were half a dozen children robed to match the adults, whose job was to trim the hot wax as it built up on the tapers.
A big crowd turned out to watch, mostly families. Teen-age girls showed off their figures and hair in the long promenade that preceded the main event; old friends embraced; and dressed-up children raced around, getting over-stimulated and behaving worse and worse until they finally had to be reined in by their parents.
The parade was the most foreign sight I've ever seen in Spain, particularly striking in this hedonistic resort town. The Spanish genius, of course, is to embrace the new without letting go of the old, so perhaps one should not be surprised to see bikinis in the afternoon and chain-dragging penitents at night.
As the last of the procession made its way uphill toward the cathedral, we went looking for a bus back to our hotel. We got on with the first big crowd, which was joined by a second surge of people at the next stop; as they continued packing on, the people being crushed in back began crying, "No se puede, no se puede!" (Impossible, can't be done.) Then two or three Catalan men, with typically lusty humor, began commenting on the opportunities for intimacy created by the heavy load, and the rest of the ride was enlivened by a lot of giggling.
Palma is a typical resort town; people come there to have fun and are generally in a mood somewhere between mellow and hilarious.
At the beach, we found a restaurant, and polished off great salads, an omelet and steamed mussels, while we watched a TV broadcast from Valencia of the ceremony we had just attended downtown. At the end, a radiant black-eyed beauty sang a dirge in the flamenco style, Catholic words framed in the wailing Muslim chant of the Moors.
Though offering a wide choice of hotels and restaurants, and boasting the busiest airport in Europe, Mallorca is refreshingly rural in the interior, and many of its smaller towns are picturesque. Touring the countryside is popular with Mallorca tourists; the terrain is varied and the villages unique, some ancient, with country markets that sell the local provender and craft work. Avid shoppers have fun on the country tours, as Mallorca's leatherwork, ceramics and woodcarvings are a great value.
On a bus tour to the east end of the island, we saw miles of stone walls, fields full of wild flowers, and an outdoor market in the small town of Santanyi which offered a bewildering array of goods: several varieties of olives, heaps of vegetables, shoes, belts, purses.
On another day, we drove into the high mountains on the north coast. Our guide delivered her patter in Spanish, French and English; midway in the tour she discovered a German couple on board and added a German translation as well.
At the small town of Selva, surrounded by coal mines, and by factories for shoes, ceramics and olive oil, the bus left the main highway to climb the winding, steep and narrow road to the monastery of Lluc. Our guide said we would make 219 hairpin turns before we reached the seacoast on the other side of the mountain; my impression is that she did not exaggerate and may even have missed one or two.
Some of the outside ones were breathtaking, as the front of the bus appeared to hang briefly over open air. The roadside was liberally decorated with white crosses, flowers and icons commemorating the drivers who had not negotiated the turns successfully. We all became warmly attached to our driver, who managed the entire feat without turning a hair.
The mountains were beautifully, elaborately terraced, but many of the olive trees appeared greatly aged and not very productive. The monastery, which must have made its living from olive oil once, seems now to be entirely given over to tourism, with bars, restaurants and camping facilities.
The church features a dark Virgin, smaller than the one at Montserrat but similarly situated behind the altar; at Lluc, she's on a pivot so she faces the church during services, then turns inward to her own chapel the rest of the day. The buildings are of massive stone blocks with red tile roofs. On all sides, one can still see feeding stalls from what must once have been an extensive stable.
After the monastery, of course, we still had the other half of our 219 turns to do going down the other side, so we were ready for our picnic lunch at Calobra. The after-lunch walk here is de rigueur; one goes to see where the awesome tormentas come down. When it rains, on these steep, barren cliffs, all the water runs down into the ravines, combining at last in a great destructive gully-washer that runs off into the sea. The land is strewn with boulders clawed out of the cliffs by water and sent crashing down.
There followed a short ferry ride to Port Sorrell, where a small antique railway, vintage 1910 or so, took us aboard for the trip back through the middle of the island to Palma.
It was by all odds the pleasantest part of the trip; the antiquated hardware and seats of the train made us feel captured in a time warp, and the fields were full of wildflowers - bright red poppies and several varieties of daisies. It had rained; the sun sparkled on the wet fields and trees. The engine hooted optimistically now and then, and we waved to the occasional shepherd who waved back.
On Easter Sunday, after a bus ride along the Palma beachfront, and uphill through many apartment houses and residential hotels, we found a church filled with modern stained glass windows, where services were being held. A sign of the lifestyle on this island: four Masses were listed, two in Spanish, one in English, one in German.
After a few minutes listening to German hymns, we walked down to the beach to enjoy the polyglot crowds. The sea was high, and looked rough and cold, but a few diehards were out on sailboards, and a few dozen more were digging pits in the sand to keep off the wind while they sunned themselves.
The strollers on the beach at Mallorca are endlessly entertaining, because they're so diverse; all Europe comes here, and all age groups, and it's routine to see bikinis next to fur coats, barefoot boys passing natty boulevardiers wearing fedoras and cufflinks. It's liberating: you can't be dressed wrong in Mallorca.
On the return trip to Barcelona, we were introduced to the Spanish practice of extending the final day of a holiday until evening, ticketing tourists "por la madrugada," which translates, for me, into "much too late at night." Our tickets were for a departure at 12:20 a.m., but the hotel bus obligingly took us to the airport two hours early, so we could stand in long lines waiting to confirm our preconfirmed seats.
The plane was an hour late, probably representing heroic staff effort on the last night of Semana Santa, when all Spain is traveling homeward. The crush at the luggage carousel in Barcelona was exacerbated by the custom of bringing home many boxes of Ensaimada, a light sugary roll that's a Mallorca specialty; they are packaged in flat, fragile boxes that all look alike, and break open easily. At 3 a.m., sleepy Barcelonans, working in poor light, debated their ownership of Mallorcan sugar buns while our luggage circled just out of reach. It was 3:40 a.m. when we unlocked our door. We didn't unpack.
by CNB