Mallorca

With a population of a third of a million, the island’s capital, Palma, is by far the biggest settlement in the Balearics, and a truly cosmopolitan city. In addition, few ticks are missing on its tourist check sheet – a seaside location, a labyrinthine old town, notable architecture, high-quality restaurants, characterful bars and cafés, stylish shops, galleries and museums. It’s got the lot. And it’s an undeniable fact that Mallorca is a stunningly beautiful island, particularly in the west, which is defined by the massive rippling peaks of the Serra de Tramuntana. Here, the ruggedness of the landscape has prevented large-scale holiday development (as has the lack of long sandy beaches). It’s certainly not free from tourists, but they tend to be of a rather more rarefied cast – keen to lose themselves in some of the most indulgent and discreet hotels in Europe, or else to head into the mountains to enjoy some unforgettable, soul-cleansing hiking and solitude.

Here, too, you’ll find expat successors to the writers and artists who have long been entranced by the coast’s beauty and serenity. In particular, the village of Deià, popularised most notably by the poet Robert Graves, remains home to a thriving colony of (these days rather wealthy) arty types.

Further north, likeable towns such as Sóller and Pollença welcome visitors by day, but revert back to the possession of the locals at night when the tour buses leave.

The serra terminates in the dizzying precipices of the Formentor Peninsula, home of the exclusive Hotel Formentor (Platja de Formentor s/n, +34 971 89 91 01, www.hotelformentor.net) opened in 1929. The Bay of Pollença below offers yet another type of holiday experience. Port de Pollença is a relatively low-key family-oriented resort.

On the east coast, too, you find a number of popular family resorts that may lack character, but are at least not as environmentally offensive as they might be. In contrast, the wind-whipped southern coast is largely undeveloped; though flat and barren, it does possess a certain wild, melancholic beauty.

And hemmed in by these foreigner-dominated coastlines is the great rolling interior – Es Pla, ‘the plain’, which maintains its own distinct rural character away from the beaches.

Local history

The Balearics have been attracting invaders for millennia; since prehistory people have wanted Mallorca for their own. The Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines and Moors have all spent time here, before the island unified with Aragón in the 14th century. This heralded a long period of decline only turned around in the 1920s by the coming of the ‘Tourists’.

Local politics

By the mid-1990s Mallorcans were starting to grow tired of the annual invasion of lager louts from Britain and Germany. The Partido Popular led by Jaume Mates put legislation in place to restrict coastal development and a subtle shift crept into the islanders’ mentality towards tourism: perhaps quality really was better and more profitable than quantity.