The Secrets of Mallorca's Streets

The streets of any of Mallorca's towns are at their best during the quiet of a summer's afternoon. It may be broiling hot but siesta, away from the bustle of main squares and their cafés and restaurants still alive with the clinking of plates and the chatter of locals and tourists, silences the streets of tall, old townhouses with their solid wooden doors and green shutters and the bougainvillaea that hang over walls.

Away from the bustle, at fiesta time all that can be heard is the rustle of the white bunting. Caught in the breeze, the bunting creates an afternoon lullaby that soothes you from the heat if only by the suggestion of a cooling breeze.

The house-lined streets of the towns are more than just places of residence. They are historical artefacts. They contain all manner of mystery and they reveal all manner of historical detail. They are repositories of the past and in the names of some of these streets, the past comes into the present day.

The streets are named for all sorts of reasons: the winds of the Mediterranean, the saints, the planets, the flowers, the birds. They are also named after people, yet most of these people are as mysterious to visitors as the streets themselves are mysterious in concealing their own mysteries.

Who are some of these people? In any town a street sign will offer the name of someone obscure, a total unknown, but they are of course not unknown.

It isn't only the streets it is also the squares and the various "paseos" that are sometimes not really walks or streets at all. These paseos just melt into the heat of other streets, roads or squares. No one knows where they go, where they start or finish, they are just there because a name has been given to something which doesn't seem to obviously exist. But the name, always assuming you can see a name on a sign, and this isn't always the case, tells its own story.

In Alcúdia town what approximates to the car parking area by the church and walls has a name. It is the Paseo Pedro Ventayol. In Castellano anyway. It is always referred to in Catalan, the Passeig Pere Ventayol. You can't see a sign which announces this name (or at least I don't think so, as I've never been aware of one), but this is the name nevertheless. But who was Pere Ventayol?

In one of the streets with fiesta time bunting, Església, is a small, boutique-style hotel. It is called Can Tem. Ventayol was born in Can Tem a long time before it became a hotel. In 1873 to be precise. He became the town's apothecary, Alcúdia's chemist. But as importantly if not more, Ventayol wrote one of the most important histories of Alcúdia, simply called "Historia de Alcúdia". Much of what informs, for example, today's background knowledge of the Roman town of Pollentia was contained in its first volume. Ventayol is an historical figure twice over. Someone from history who was a history man.

If you walk from Pere Ventayol's paseo, go behind the walls along Moll (port), turn into Cristofol Colom (Columbus) and then hang a right, you will find yourself in Antoni Qués. Or to give him his full name, Antoni Maria Qués Ventayol. Another one! So who was Qués?

He was one of the original shareholders in the shipping line Trasmediterránea, which still exists, but despite this business background, he was one of the founders (in 1934) of the Balearics Republican Left, one of the first political organisations to lay claim to Balearics nationalism. He was subsequently detained by Franco's forces and in 1937 on 24 February, he was shot along with the mayor of Palma.

By coincidence, 24 February is also often a street name, one that can relate to the quelling of the 1981 coup or, in Alcúdia terms, the date attributed to the miracle of Sant Crist. Or maybe to the execution of one of its own.

The streets don't always take their names from sons or daughters of their towns. Alcúdia has an Anglada Camarasa and a Tito Cittadini, but these two artists are more usually associated with Pollensa, as is the poet (Miquel) Costa i Llobera, while Pere Quart, and his street is out of the town and in Barcarès, was a poet from the town of Sabadell in Barcelona province.

But from wherever they came, the streets to which they have lent their names afford a rich history of towns such as Alcúdia. Always assuming, that is, they've bothered to put a street sign up.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.