Autor:    Enrique Arroyo Villegas

THE EYES THAT LOOK AT ME - PAPERS OF MALLORCA

The mansions of the sixteenth and seventeenth century watch me. I was blind to their eyes for so long.

Mallorca was living its golden age and we were all looking towards Europe; Paris, London, Venice. It was the time of our modernity; still in the last forays of freedom during the dictatorship.

Those old mansions, like for to the rest of the Majorcans, had passed unnoticed by seeing them, for being always there.

I contributed to modify the appearance of the city —the old shops that had nothing to do with our culture— from my interior architecture studio.

And the people of the north —who fell in love with the arched stone arches, the cobbled cavalry patios with round edges— created underground nooks and crannies, and where once there was only a winery, they set up art galleries, artisan shops jewelers, and goldsmiths.

The grandeur of the German nouveau riche wanted to imitate Dusseldorf, but with the patina of an ancient culture of Arabs and Jews.

Several dozen years later, those locked houses, in popular neighborhoods where humble people lived, became jewels of the city.

Today I walk through the alleys with commemorative plaques that say that here lived such and such, once placed with their heraldic emblems by a town hall that did not distinguish between corsairs and men of letters.

Many of those nobles who arrived with the troops of the king of Christendom, built those possessions, as the places are called here, following the Italian fashion, with lodges that make us travel back in time.

This mixture of the popular, with the clothes hanging on the balconies, and the emblematic manor, resembles a strange combination between Naples and Florence; and if we add the tall palm trees that grow in the interior gardens, it will seem to us to be taking a walk through Trastevere.

Silence, my beloved silence, child of the pandemic, envelops everything; I believe that I am one of the few who walk with the eyes open so that the ghosts of the old houses contemplate me.

I am satisfied to rediscover my Mediterranean, although longing for Cartagena de Indias that has so much to teach my experiences.