Valldemossa

The Reial Cartoixa began as a royal residence. James II had a palace built for his son Sancho, hoping the mountain air would ease his asthma. The Palau del Rei Sanç has its origins in that residence.

In 1399, Martin the Humane gave the royal property in Valldemossa to the Carthusians. They celebrated their first Mass on 11 August 1399 and remained until 1835, when the confiscation of church property under Mendizábal dissolved the monastery. The cells passed into private ownership.

Empty cells could then be rented as rooms, allowing a Polish composer to stay a few years later.

Today you can visit the church, old pharmacy with its jars, prior’s cell, cloister, municipal museum and cells 2 and 4 with material relating to Chopin and Sand, alongside Palau del Rei Sanç. The charterhouse and palace are separately managed.

Frédéric Chopin and George Sand arrived on Mallorca on 8 November 1838. They moved into the charterhouse on 15 December and stayed until 11 February 1839, leaving the island for Barcelona by steamship on 13 February. That was just under eight weeks in Valldemossa and a little over three months on Mallorca.

Their stay was difficult. It rained, Chopin was seriously ill, and villagers fearful of tuberculosis kept their distance. His Pleyel upright piano, serial number 666, shipped from Paris, spent weeks held up at customs. It reached him only three weeks before departure. On 22 January 1839, he told his publisher that the twenty-four Preludes, Op. 28, were complete.

The piano stayed on the island, bought from him by Palma’s Canut family, and survives here today.

Sand turned the experience into A Winter in Majorca, or Un hiver à Majorque. Her harsh comments about the Mallorcans helped make the village famous, an irony that is difficult to miss.

Catalina Thomàs was born in Valldemossa on 1 May 1531. At twenty-one, she entered the Augustinian convent of Santa Magdalena in Palma. She died there on 5 April 1574, shortly before her forty-third birthday.

Pius VI beatified her in 1792, and Pius XI canonised her in 1930, making her the first saint from the Balearic Islands. On Mallorca, she is affectionately known as sa Beateta, the little blessed one. Her feast is celebrated on 28 July.

Small ceramic tiles on village houses show scenes from her life. Once you notice the first, you start seeing them everywhere.

Her birthplace beside Sant Bartomeu church is now a small chapel.

Four kilometres north along the coastal road lies Miramar. In 1276, James II founded a missionary school there at Ramon Llull’s request. Thirteen Franciscans studied Arabic and Llull’s Ars. Llull believed that persuasion required understanding another person’s language and way of thinking. He lived and wrote here for almost three years.

Archduke Ludwig Salvator bought the estate in 1872. Museum rooms now recall both figures.

The cemetery at the upper edge of the village is around five minutes away on foot. Few visitors seek it out, yet the view over the valley and terraces is one of my favourites.