Holidays ideas for Mallorca off the beaten track

Pernilla Danielsson

It is said that on any given day, in the high season, a plane touches down at Palma de Mallorca airport every 60 seconds. In the summer, the island’s once dreary capital, now a sparkling Mediterranean-style hub, heaves with visitors from every corner of Europe. Trying to get a table at one of the fish shacks on the beach at Deià – the north coast enclave where bohemia rubs shoulders with big money – becomes a fruitless task. Meanwhile, the tour buses come and go, ferrying their charges to the rumbustious resorts of Magaluf and S’Arenal.

Take the low road north out of Palma, however, and the cruising speed shifts down a couple of gears. The Ma-3011 leads through a bucolic landscape of almond and olive groves bounded by meandering dry-stone walls. Windmills, like miniature castles, stand guard among fields grazed by flocks of scrawny sheep. Tiny towns like Pina and Ruberts have none of the manicured prettiness of Deià or Pollensa, but instead are rustic splotches of stone and terracotta clustered around Foursquare churches with pepperpot bell towers.

May we suggest: The best villas to rent for a summer in Mallorca

On an island where visitor numbers reached 12 million a year in the pre-pandemic era, it is hard to believe that there can still be pockets of authenticity. Yet the central plains, framed by the mountains of the north west, the bay of Alcúdia and the Artà hills in the north east, are a reserve of rural life that have rarely featured in the travel plans even of committed Mallorca-philes.

Until now. The less-traversed interior has swum into the spotlight as visitors crave country quietude over the hurly-burly of the coast. Wise travellers are heading away from the Tramuntana mountains to historic Sineu or honest-to-goodness towns (Algaida, Porreres, Campos) where the only crowds are found at the produce market.

Tourism on any scale has yet to find a foothold in these back- waters, but change is coming. Finca Serena, a gorgeous converted farm outside Montüiri – the inland town where Tomás Graves, son of the writer Robert, took refuge after leaving Deià a few years back – opened in 2019 and is one of the island’s loveliest hotels.

The interior is not just Mallorca’s geographical heart, but also the guardian of its pastoral soul. The foreign presence in these parts is limited and most of the big estates remain in the hands of local families. The towns and villages have warren-like streets of houses in dust-pink sandstone, their shutters painted a utilitarian green. Some, like Sineu and Porreres, echo a prosperous mercantile past; others are sleepy hamlets with little more than a shop and a café.