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SPAIN | Mallorca, Spain Travel Guide
Saturday, December 21, 2024
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Sierra de Tramuntana
Sierra de Tramuntana and Its Mountain Villages
In the winding heights of the Sierra de Tramuntana, a network of scenic hiking trails links the mountain villages to each other and the Mediterranean Sea. On the beaten path, the mountain roads are in exceptional condition, but narrow and constantly winding. Watch out for mountain bikers (and if you’re one of them, watch out for cars) and speeding motor bikes. At almost every turn there seems to be a mirador where one can park the car and take in the surroundings of the green interior valleys or the jagged, barren cliffs of the Costa Nord.
Valldemossa
A great deal of romanticism is attached to Valldemossa in the Tramuntana Mountains. No doubt it is one of the prettiest villages on the island, a terraced setting of hewn-stone homes surrounding the Moorish minaret of the old Franciscan monastery, laced through and trimmed by the colors of the valley’s almond, olive and fig trees. In 1836 the French novelist George Sand (1804-1876), an avowed feminist who scandalized France with her independently-minded novels, plays and conduct, spent the winter in Valldemosa with her children and lover, the Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849).
Deià
Like Valldemosa, neighboring Deià has been influenced considerably through the attention given to it by artists and those fond of tracing their paths. On advice from the writer Gertrude Stein, the English poet Robert Graves traveled to Deià in 1929, where he spent much of the rest of his life living among the locals. Something about this village seated in a rocky mountainside bowl just inland from the sea has continued to entice artists in the time since Graves was buried in the graveyard of the town’s Catholic church. Though he was not of the prevailing Spanish faith, the author of, most notably, I, Claudius, had developed such a rapport with the locals that they were proud to lay him among their own, beneath a headstone that reads, “Robert Graves Poeta.” Among the other artists to have followed Graves’ lead are Anthony Burgess, Richard Hughes and the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.
Sóller
One of the larger towns of the Tramuntana Mountains, Sóller lacks the quaint subtlety of the surrounding villages. Unlike its neighbors, Sóller has been privileged to have been linked since the turn of the 20th century with the city of Palma by what was the island’s only train.With it came prosperity enough to create Modernist façades like that of the Banco Sóller and the local church, both designed by the Gaudí protégé Rubió i Bellver. Foreign transplants built palatial homes and, gradually, as more and more tourists came to visit, the population reached 100,000. The Tren de Sóller, a beautiful scenic rail jaunt from the capital city through the mountain valleys to Sóller and back, runs throughout the year, every half-hour during high season and every hour during the other months. From Sóller a train continues on to the Port de Sóller, which is a short half-hour walk otherwise. Once there, boat trips are offered to the Torrent de Pareis in La Calobra, a canyon frequented by sightseers and explored by serious hikers.
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