Where Common People Go: Lloret

The region known as the plain of Mallorca (Pla de Mallorca) extends from Algaida to the bay of Alcudia. For administrative purposes, the two coastal municipalities - Muro and Santa Margalida - are not part of what is referred to as the "mancomunidad" of the plain. This "commonwealth" of municipalities is the most active of ones that exist in Mallorca, and one of its activities is trying to attract more tourism.

Once upon a time, in the days before mass tourism, the plain was - all things being relative - well populated. The migration to the coasts in search of employment and the dramatic shift away from an agrarian economy changed this. While populations elsewhere have risen markedly by comparison, those of the plain have stood still or even declined.

Ambitions that the mancomunidad has for tourism are based principally on agrotourism and rural hotels, but this is a region where there is more than quiet villages and farming. It is one with echoes of long-ago spirituality, as with the Cura Sanctuary and the Puig de Randa in Algaida, where the thirteenth-century religious philosopher Ramon Llull went to experience an hermitic existence. There is also Petra, the birthplace of Father Junipero Serra, now a saint, the founder of many of California's missionaries. In a more secular sense, there is the one-time palace of the Mallorcan kings in Sineu.

The common interests of the mancomunidad were at variance with its two most northerly members. Despite their own long and rich agricultural traditions, Muro and Santa Margalida with their respective tourism-resort economies found, or thought they did, greater common purpose with other coastal municipalities. Together with Alcudia and Pollensa, they formed a separate mancomunidad, which broke down through lack of interest, or rather because of the specific interests of resort towns to a degree in competition with each other.

Common purpose on the plain might be said to be no more typified than by one of the smallest of the municipalities. Lloret de Vistalegre is at the heart of the mancomunidad. It's not the nominal capital - Sineu is - but it is surrounded by five other municipalities, and one of its principal claims to fame, confirming its place at the heart of the region, is that it is home to the geographic centre of Mallorca. This is in what is called Sa Comuna. Sometimes translated as "commune", it is a common and was for the use of the common man. It still is. As a communal space, it dates to the twelfth century when it formed part of the farm estate of Manresa.

Lloret may be tiny, it may be easily overlooked, but as with many places in Mallorca it has its own complicated past. Manresa gives a clue, as this is what Lloret used to be known as. At the end of the sixteenth century, Manresa was dropped, not in an official way but because the common will determined that it was substituted. The new name was Llorito, and there are plenty who nowadays still refer to this. As ever, there are arguments as to the derivation of this name, but the definitive one has to do with the founding of the convent to Our Lady of Loreto.

The Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto on the Italian east coast contains the house of the Holy Family, which was supposedly and miraculously transported to Loreto at the time of the Crusades. Anyway, this led to the devotion of Our Lady and ultimately to the founding of the convent in what was then Manresa. With the arrival of the convent, Llorito was adopted, though there were different versions, such as Laureto and Lloret. It is argued that Lloret was the original Mallorquín name.

But how did it come to be Vista Alegre as well? Having officially adopted Lloret in 1927, the town hall added this in order to distinguish it from other Llorets. Pretty simple really. Just call it Lloret with a nice view. In 2000, the Vista and Alegre were officially joined and became Vistalegre.

The parish church of the Virgin of Lloret is one of the typically colossal structures that seems out of proportion to the demands of what has never been a large local population. Nevertheless, as with other such churches, it is one for which we should be grateful on account of its splendour. The Virgin is, though, only one patron. The other is Sant Domingo - Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order. He died on 6 August, 1221. It is therefore fiesta time in Lloret, and tonight the demons will be marauding.

The story of Lloret is, above all, one of the common people. Now part of a "commonwealth", it has its famous common, while its name owes everything to the common will.

The Middle of Nowhere: Mallorca's middle

The village of Meriden in the West Midlands may only have a population that is slightly greater than 2,500, but the good folk of this village used to be able to boast something that no other folk in England could. They lived in the geographic centre of England. Then one morning not very long ago, the Meriden folk woke up and found that their sleepy village (one assumes it is sleepy, as cliché tradition demands that a village is) was no longer the centre of the English universe. The centre had been moved some eleven miles away. What's more it was no longer in the non-traditional county of the West Midlands but in an altogether more traditional county, Leicestershire. Boffins at the Ordnance Survey had determined that a field at Lindley Hall Farm in Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire was the geographic centre. How the good folk of Meriden must have wept and feared for their property values. And what were they going to do with the memorial which declares Meriden centrality?

There have been other pretenders to the centrist crown of England. Morton in Derbyshire is one such place, but there can now no longer be any debate or rival claims. Fenny Drayton it is. And just as the Ordnance Survey has decided that a field in the middle of nowhere is the English middle, so the Universitat de les Illes Balears, Eptisa (a company which undertakes map-making on behalf of the islands) and the National Centre for Geographic Information have all agreed that Mallorca's geographic centre is also in the middle of nowhere - in the common woods (Sa Comuna) of Lloret de Vistalegre.

The good folk of Lloret - the "lloritans" - can now, once and for all, thumb their noses at the pretenders in the next pueblo. Sineu, often and erroneously referred to as being the geographic centre, can now only claim to be slightly off-centre, and as a consequence many a website is going to have to update its information, which will be more than slightly inconvenient. There was an advantage to the Sineu middleness for the touristically-minded promotion. It has certain attractions - its well-known market, its church dome designed by Joaquín Pavía y Birmingham, its one-time Palace of the Kings of Mallorca. Lloret, on the other hand, doesn't have any of these. Only a 1.74 metre high stone in some woods. Here lies the centre of Mallorca; it doesn't say.

At least this geo-centricity affords Lloret a claim to fame that it previously hasn't had. It places the village firmly on the map, where it has always been, but which hasn't been sufficient to entice anyone to go there. Being in the middle of things might be deemed advantageous but not necessarily in Mallorca. The middle is the middle of nowhere, regardless of whether it's in the middle of a wood or not.

However, now that Lloret can point to the authority of the university and its partners and so to its enviable location, will there be a surge of tourist interest? Surely any self-respecting tourists would wish to beat a path of an off-the-beaten path variety in order to take selfies next to the stone of Mallorcan middledom; wouldn't they? Well, possibly. Just as possibly tourists to England will wish to trample across the fields of Fenny Drayton and stand with a beaming smile next to an old railway sleeper that has been stuck in the ground along with a sign replete with the cross of St. George which states that the Ordnance Survey defined the spot as the geographical centre in 2002 (it took eleven years for this definition to be officially marked). The owner of the farm is, remarkably enough, called Farmer. Stephen Farmer believes that the sleeper (which in fact is 150 metres from the exact spot, which is in a field) could become a tourist attraction. As visitors go to Land's End to have their photos taken with the famous sign, then why wouldn't they want to come to Fenny Drayton and do likewise? But then Land's End does have some additional appeal. Firstly, it is land's end and secondly, there's a ruddy great ocean next to it. 

Still, councillors at the Borough of Hinckley and Bosworth live in hope of new-found tourism riches. So should the leaders of Lloret be shouting the geographic centre from the tourism rooftops? Maybe, but there will always be those who reject the sudden appearance of inquisitive tourists because they might cause harm to the common and its flora and fauna, while the town hall has bemoaned the fact that it already costs 3.6 million euros to pay for rubbish collection (a cost shared with other town halls). The chances are, therefore, that the stone marking the geographic centre will remain unmolested. In the middle of nowhere.

For photo of the Lloret stone, go to: http://ultimahora.es/mallorca/noticias/part-forana/2014/135350/piedra-metros-reivindica-centro-geografico-mallorca-lloret.html