Postcard from Old Mallorca

POSTCARD FROM | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA

Although Mallorca, the largest island in the Balearic archipelago, has been enjoyed "almost to exhaustion", this green jewel off the east coast of Spain is evolving, pushing back on package holidays to protect its true soul: monasteries, citrus groves, Moorish ruins, and narrow cobbled streets. The new luxury is a return to (sumptuous) simplicity, finds writer and photographer, Sam Parkes.

BY SAM PARKES | CABANA TRAVEL | 15 NOVEMBER 2025

The loveliest places, like people, are often the most vulnerable. Anything beautiful carries the seeds of its own destruction – first in adoration, then in appetite.

Mallorca, the largest island in the Balearic archipelago, a green jewel set in turquoise waters and pinned like a brooch off the east coast of Spain, is no exception. It has been enjoyed almost to exhaustion. Loved to death.

The numbers are staggering: 13m visitors a year for a population of just under one million. We don’t talk about the soul much these days, but places have souls too, or rather, like us, they don’t have, but are, ensouled; and like silence, it is most sharply defined by its absence, and as easily damaged.

What was once an island of monasteries and citrus groves became a shorthand for leisure, synonymous with cheap hotels and the daily struggle to secure proximity to the pool. And nothing quite invokes the lower angels of our nature like the all-you-can-eat buffet. But Mallorca began to push back. ‘Alcohol tourism’, stag-parties, and the all-night revelry that made the Balearics the epitome of package holidays, have been limited.

It has marked a decisive shift in tone for Mallorca, a statement that it no longer wishes to be Europe’s “cheap party playground,” but a destination for cultural, family and sustainable travel instead. Yet Mallorca is no stranger to transformation: Romans, Moors, Catalans, and in more recent years, budget airlines, have all left their mark.

What’s happening now feels like another turn of that wheel, but gentler; an attempt to redress scale and rediscover the rhythms that first made the island so desirable.

The narrow cobbled lanes and bohemian allure of Deià, surrounded by sea and mountains, have long attracted artists and writers, including DH Lawrence, Joan Miró and Anaïs Nin. At La Residencia, a Belmond Hotel, a villa of paired-backed, timeless elegance is named after the English poet and long-time resident, Robert Graves. But the best stays are no longer entirely on the coast but in deliberately remote, reclaimed rural estates.

The new luxury is a return to simplicity—but a sumptuous simplicity. At hotels like Son Xotano, Hotel Corazon, Cal Reiet Holistic Retreat and Es Racó d’Artà, unadorned walls, simple color palettes, olive groves, orange trees and silence make the experience less escape, more recalibration; the soul reemerges not by adding but by paring away.

Palma, the capital (home to the studio of Joan Miró), is just large enough to feel cosmopolitan but small enough to retain its Mediterranean charm. Tucked away down a quiet, unassuming street, is perhaps the most beautifully curated store I’ve ever seen.

Arquinesia, a perfumery, was conceived by two Swiss interior designers who restored a dilapidated former furniture workshop. Entranced by the wild nature of Mallorca, they set about creating soaps and candles and lotions that reflect the island’s heritage with names like Sea Breeze, Secret Garden, Orange, Fig and Scent of History.

When one thinks of a symbol of Mallorca, it would be all too easy to think of somewhere grand and exemplary, like the faultless Neuendorf House, designed by John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin, a sublime architectural symbol of elemental beauty; nothing superfluous- light, stone, and sky. But instead, I think often, and with longing, of the humble wooden farm gates visible across the island – both a welcome and necessary threshold, each one handmade with care. They are functional and stylish, and yet deeply evocative of the best of Mallorca: simple, understated, natural and beautiful.

In writing about Mallorca, I realise the irony- the hypocrisy, even- of extolling the virtues of a place already overwhelmed by tourism, where anything other than acknowledgement feels like complicity, and any attempt to convey caution feels condescending and exceptionalist, about as futile shining a torch on a field already lit by floodlight. But everything has its decorum, its right way of approach.

I think of the words of the poet Wendell Berry: “there are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” So yes, visit Mallorca, but tread lightly.