Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
Coca Cola competes with castle for attention as the ship arrives.
The castle, sign and Maasdam overlook an extraordinary collection of yachts.
As usual, I head for the backstreets.
The old dear with the nowadays unusual fan is, I stress, not hiding from the nasty tourist with a camera (me). She’d been shielding her none-too-good eyes from the sun.
An unprepossessing street is named for one of the 20th Century's best-known English writers. I walk the length of Carrer de Robert Graves. Graves (I, Claudius, Goodbye to All That) moved to Mallorca after the Great War.
The Spanish Civil War and the Second War forced Graves to leave Mallorca for a decade. The Italians arrived and murdered thousands of Mallorcans who were Communists or accused of Communist sympathies.
(January 2016: Returning to Toronto, I find my copy of Goodbye to All That, Grave’s classic memoir of the Great War. A British officer, he was badly wounded on the Somme and so in 1918 was in Wales: ‘In November came the Armistice … the news sent me out walking … cursing and sobbing and thinking of the dead.’)
Who or what was ‘Margarita’? A wife, a mistress, a favourite drink?
Parroquia Nuestra Señora de la Salud el Terreno.
It’s apparently an unusually warm autumn in Toronto, but not this warm.
I return to the ship for lunch. A quiet table, excellent hamburger and splendid view.
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Palma 2014:
