In the fall of 1967, I wanted to finish writing a novel I had been working on for several years. So I found a two-bedroom apartment to rent for a dollar a day on the Balearic Island of Menorca. Over the years, a number of things have happened to me, but I have always managed to return every year to Menorca.
The island lies 130 miles off the coast of Spain. It’s the northernmost island of the Balearic archipelago. Less than 32 miles long and only 9 miles wide, it has more than 365 sandy beaches, rocky coves, and tiny inlets. The abundance of warm blue water beaches is the island’s greatest but not its only attraction.
When I arrived in 1967 in the town of Mahon from Barcelona on a DC-3, there were only a few telephones and no televisions. It was a golden time, and I thought it might last forever – a small island in the Mediterranean overlooked by the hurricane rush of summer tourism. But of course, I was wrong. It was the last year before the island’s new airport opened for jets and package tours from other parts of Europe.
On that first evening, I walked from my small hotel through the tight, winding streets to the ridge that overlooked the harbor and thought for some odd reason that I had come home, although I had never seen such a beautiful sight before except in my fantasies.
Having grown up on a farm in the Midwest, it was overwhelming to have the Mediterranean within view, to see the sea and smell the water on the night breeze.
One of the great gifts of the island was that there was nothing to do but go to the beach in the late afternoon after starting the day in the Cafe Andalucia Bar (then call the American Bar) at the Place Reial in the center of Mahon. I would order café con leche and the sugar-dusted ensaimada pastry, read the International Herald Tribune, and watch the town slowly awaken in the morning sun.
Menorca’s History
When I first arrived in Mahon, there were only three Americans living on the island. Menorca is not, however, without its own American history.
In the center of the harbor is Quarantine Island. It was leased at the beginning of the 19th century by the Mediterranean Squadron of the U.S. Navy, the forerunner of our present Sixth Fleet. For 26 years, Americans used Port Mahon as their fleet headquarters. Midshipmen were trained there until the Naval Academy opened at Annapolis in 1845.
Few Americans had even heard of it, though St. Augustine, Florida was first populated by indentured servants from Menorca. When the 1763 Treaty Paris ended the French and Indian War and control of Florida passed from Spain to Britain, a Scottish colonist, Dr Andrew Turnbull, decided to bring Greeks to Florida to farm his plantations.
He headed to Greece in 1767, but docked first in Menorca, which was under British possession. Next, he went to Italy, recruited 100 men, and dropped them off in Mahon before sailing to Greece. Returning to Menorca, he found that some of the Italian men had married Menorcan women. He brought those men and their new wives, as well as a few Menorcan families, to Florida.
Today, there’s a Menorcan Society in St. Augustine, and more than 35,000 descendants live in the city. The most famous descendant of these Menorcan indentured servants of Turnbull was our Civil War Admiral David Farragut. His father was from Mahon, and Farragut Square in Washington, D.C. is named after him.
Because of its deep harbor and the island’s strategic location, Menorca has been a prize in the Mediterranean through centuries of sea warfare, and each conquering army left something behind.
Lord Nelson sailed into the port of Mahón in 1799, arriving with a squadron and seizing the Golden Farm, a red-brick mansion with a classical portico that overlooked the harbor. There is documentation that Lord Nelson wrote part of his memoirs while on the island. The Golden Farm is still visible on the cliffs overlooking the city.
Ancient Menorca
Menorca’s history, like that of all the Balearics, reaches back into prehistory, as is evidenced by the extraordinary number of well-preserved religious megaliths on the island. Bronze Age Celts erected megalithic monuments as complex as Stonehenge.
An ancient fort city, Mahon was built by the Carthaginians high up on steep cliffs, and parts of the former walled town remain. The town is full of Georgian townhouses and tight, narrow cobblestone streets that twist and turn through the hills, leading from one plaza to the next.
The word “Mahón” is actually a corruption of Portus Magonis, the name of Hannibal’s brother who spent the winter of 206 B.C. in Menorca. He was on his way from the Spanish mainland to Italy, bringing reinforcements to the Carthaginian armies.
More than 100 stone burial sites, altars, and astronomical observatories are scattered across the southern coast. The best example is on a backroad just beyond Binicalaf. You’ll see signs for it. Because of these ancient sites, I’ve often had the feeling of being in an open-air archaeological museum while driving along the southern coast of the island.
Among the best is Trepuco. This taula, one of the largest on the island, was excavated from 1928 to 1930 by scholars from Cambridge. It’s dated from around the mid-1st century B.C. The most spectacular ensemble of that era is the Talati de Dalt. This megalithic settlement has a taula, a talayot, and underground caves. The best-preserved talayot is the Torrellonet. See them all!
Across the length of the island – 45 minutes from Mahon – is Ciudadela, the second largest city and the ecclesiastical capital of Menorca. Ciudadela means fortress in Menorquin and was a Phoenician city. It has, however, some typical Catalan architecture from the 15th and 16th centuries, as well as Italian and English buildings of more recent vintage.
The city was constructed out of limestone and has a reserve about it that is reminiscent of an elderly, aristocratic Spanish woman.
While in Ciudadela, have a harbor-side lunch at Casa Manolo. Go early and make a reservation, as this outdoor restaurant is busy. Manolo is the perfect place for boiled crayfish, lobster, fried squid, mussels marinated in sherry, baked oysters or clams, and all sorts of grilled white fish.
For dessert (here and everywhere else on the island), there are Spanish fruits – oranges, lemons, or pineapple – all stuffed with orange, lemon, or pineapple ice cream.
Then, there’s Cala’n Porter, a British holiday location, which doesn’t have much to offer except for the discotheque, Cova d’en Xoroi, carved out of megalithic caves and clinging to the side of a cliff. Legend has it that the caves, perched high up on a steep cliff, were once the secret hideout of a Berber pirate who was washed ashore on Menorca.
He purportedly used the caves as a refuge, stole food, goods, and then a young girl who bore him children from the nearby town of Alayor. He was finally caught when the island experienced a rare snowfall, and armed farmers tracked him to the unknown caves, now the site of the discotheque.
Nearby is the town of Mercadal, which is at the foot of the highest spot on the island, Monte Torro (357m). This was once a monastery and has a breathtaking view of the entire island. The church itself is built in the Ionic-Byzantine style.
South of Mahn and beyond Es Castell is Sant Luis, a small village founded by the French. They were on Menorca for a short period in the 18th century. There are several white sand beaches there: Cala Alcaufar, Cala d’es Rafalet, and Punta Prima, all now surrounded by urbanization.
Today’s Menorca
The capital, Mahón, only had a population of 25,000 when I first arrived in 1967 – half the island’s population. Today, more than 30,000 people live in the city, and 100,000 live full-time on the island.
From the air, Menorca lies open like your palm – smooth, pink, and crisscrossed with twisting and narrow roads that appear like so many lifelines. You also see the high-rise hotel complexes and sprawling urbanizations crowding the rocky coves and beaches, leaving the interior towns and farmlands looking empty.
Now, someone publishes a monthly English magazine for the island called Roqueta. There is a Masonic Lodge, a cricket team, and several clubs. The English love to retire on the island. There are endless summer package tours from Europe, a new golf course, windsurfing clubs, discos, crowded summer beaches, and expensive hotels. And the airport is even big enough to get lost in.
The island, like life itself, has lost some of its charm, especially around Mahon, but there are still many of the old ways to be found behind the high gloss of developments, and some of what is new is very good, like the network of paved roads.
You can wander aimlessly, accidentally discovering the eccentric collection of historical sights. In the Plaza Generalísimo Franco, for example, is the Baroque church of Santa María, built in 1748. Farther along a cobblestone side street is a section of the medieval stone fortification walls that were erected around Mahón during the reign of King Alfonso III, who conquered Menorca in 1287.
Most of the island, however, is still farmland. The gentle, rolling hills are dominated by large red-tile-and-whitewash houses built to overlook acres of green fields. The land is squared off with long walls of rock, cleared from the fields and built up through centuries of manual labor.
These walls stretch to all horizons in checkerboard fashion, and when you drive the narrow backroads, you feel caught in an endless maze until quite suddenly, bright blue water comes into view. Every road in Menorca leads to the sea.
Within 30 minutes of Mahon are dozens of beautiful rock coves, such as Cala Mitjana, where part of Lina Wertmuller’s Swept Away was filmed. For long stretches of sand, there’s Santo Tomas or Cala Santo Galdana, which can be crowded, or Son Bou with the whitest sand.
I favor coves or calas with their small beaches. They’re less crowded, and the coves form natural and deep swimming pools. While the larger beaches have bars, it isn’t difficult to pack a lunch and just step back after swimming into the shadow of pine trees that hover at the water’s edge. People linger until dusk at these beaches, as the Mediterranean summer evenings are long.
North of the island and at the other side of a high woodland road is the quiet village of Fornells and another waterside restaurant, Es Pla. It’s no ordinary restaurant. It was a favorite of King Carlos of Spain, who regularly visited it. The specialty here is calderate de langosta, a mountain of crustaceans toppling a bowl of lobster broth. Oh, and after lunch, take a tour of the nearby spectacular caves of Cavallería. Or perhaps, you may just want to stay home and sit by the pool. Either way, in Menorca, you’ll have a great time.
John Coyne is the author of 28 books of fiction and non-fiction, and his short stories have been included in several “best of” horror anthologies. His most recent book is Long Ago and Far Away, a love story set in Africa, Europe, and the United States spanning 40 years. A lifelong lover of golf, he has published three novels on the sport and edited three books of golf instruction. He is also a former college professor and college dean at Old Westbury College of the State University of New York and the coauthor of books on education. His articles have appeared in dozens of national publications including Smithsonian, Travel & Leisure, Glamour, Foreign Affairs, Redbook,The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. John lives in Westchester, New York with his wife Judith, a former book and magazine editor.
One truth that all travelers will endorse is that there are always cultures and countries that become our lodestars, and we keep coming back. For John, one of those places is Menorca.