Why I began to write

Things I do and have done in Mallorca that I would like to share with you: that was the simple idea behind this blog. I learned to write as a child, watching my father, a journalist, typing on an Olivetti typewriter. Writing was never an abstract exercise in our house. It was a way of looking carefully, choosing what mattered and trying to tell it honestly.

Years later, after coming to the Balearic Islands, I began recording places, walks, meals and encounters. They were not intended to be a catalogue of tourist recommendations. They were the pieces through which I came to understand the island. And, ultimately, these articles and journal entries express some of the reasons why I had decided to stay.

The island of calm

Few places in the world offer what Mallorca does: climate, security, multiculturalism, healthcare, connections with the world, beaches, mountains, city life, village life and an extraordinary range of small daily pleasures. We sometimes fail to value them precisely because they become familiar.

Mallorca is called the island of calm. That phrase can sound like advertising until you experience what it means to finish work and reach an almost empty beach, or to leave Palma and find yourself among fields and sheep a short time later. The island is not small when measured by the number of different lives it makes possible.

The property choices reflect that variety. Beach, mountain, city or village: the right answer depends on the way a person wants to live. The photograph illustrating this post, of the sheep looking at me in front of the house for sale, expresses and says more about Mallorca than a list of features.

Real estate allowed me to cross the island and enter homes. Daily life taught me to read what surrounded them: the weekly market, the winter wind, the road to the sea. A home is never only a building. It is also the life that becomes possible around it.