License to do nothing.

From worthless to plaice fillet expensive piece: Mallorca's beaches have an almost unparalleled career lying. No wonder - but are they the best Wellness idea of nature. The story of the invention of a Badeparadieses.

 

The "Brünnchen of Kuhhirten" - is a name not fit for travel books and postcards. But when Oliver Francisco Berga around the year 1915 his hotel "Terminus" at Pouet d'en Vaquer opened, thought the fisherman from Palma also not yet in mass tourism and charter flights. However, Berga Oliver sensed the potential of the border strip between the water and earth. Although he too close to the sea was unpredictable and was sandy and salty, as it for the benefit of a substantial landowner had. Coastal land was worthless on Mallorca, so it was always the younger inherited.

That changed after ebenjener poor overseas Fischer Berga Oliver the beaches of Cuba and Jamaica had seen, equipped with beach chairs and Badeschaluppen for the European nobility. He knew: We can do this too. So he put a single house on the deserted beach of Palma - in the desert, between flat sloping rocks, sand seegrasbedeckte surfaces and scrub. Along the sea line he planted North African date palms and waited for the first summer. You, he presented the Caribbean on your doorstep.

FOUND IN ...

MERIAN
Mallorca

Heft bestellen
www.merian.de

Today is called the region for the sake of simplicity Arenal, Sandy, 40,000 beds are made for the visitors. The bay is the prototype of a vacation model, which itself has survived several previous occasions: Sol y Playa, time and again fallen into disrepute, but not totzukriegen. Why?

Because there is nothing better than an afternoon in the warm sand to spend. No other natural experience is so much associated with relaxation, all other outdoor recreation activities call muscle working and push sweat. When you sweat, the sun also, but that is only cause to swim in the waves. Warm sand and cool water - the best wellness idea of nature and the perfect invitation to idleness. Faul, which we must now only be on the beach.

Beaches were fishing because

"Your footprints in the sand? Which I found yesterday?", Sang Howard Carpendale 1975. At that time in Germany linked to the beach idyll with, leave, brown skin. And Mallorca was synonymous with the beach. Those who already knew the island inside? Who knew about the possessions, the vast country estates, where until the 1950s was beneficial gewirtschaftet? Who knew from the peasant families that their Selbstversorgerhöfe only once every holy time left, perhaps for a vigil on the Nachbarhof to stand?

Palma? This was of some place a multi-trip away. The sea? People died, without ever seen up close it. The beaches? In Sa Ràpita outdated with the oxcarts Alluvial seaweed fertilizer to the fields. In Ses Salines salt is collected. In one shot Estellencs seals in the Cala of the camp appeared to get to pops, octopus, after raors, sword fish knife, after llagostas, crawfish. When you plucked Son Real fonoll Marí, sea fennel, so great to Mallorcan lunch plate pa amb oli fits. But swimming? Baden? Sunbathing?

Upon arrival of the first tourists in the two-parter, the Mallorcan really need to avert their eyes - even in the 1950s forbade the government in Madrid, out of water swimming clothes to wear. Did you move in the bathhouse. Were men and women in separate sections of beach. On Sunday afternoon, they joked with each other, drank geeiste almond milk, sang. In full clothing. Bikini, what then? Brown, why?

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL-QUIZ

AP, DDP, Antje Blinda