When one hears the word Mallorca, I would guess that books are probably not the first thing that spring to most peoples’ minds. Except to mine, and maybe yours. We spent one week there at the end of August and - after I had pared down a ridiculously high pile - I still ended up taking six books along:
Johanna Sinisalo – Salattuja voimia
Jonathan Stroud - Bartimaeus. Ptolemy’s Gate (airplane reading)
German-English dictionary
Spanish Pocket Menu Reader (brought over by my dad a few days before we left)
Spanisch für Büffelmüffel(did not get around to looking at this one at all)
I carried two, Ralf carried two and I smuggled the dictionaries into my son Max’s duffel bag. Less than three days after we had arrived, Max complained that he didn’t have enough to read and needed another book. (Silly boy had only taken one along, thinking he’d have little time to read while oscillating between the hotel pool and the sandy beaches of the Mediterranean Sea.)
Luckily for him his mom had done her research beforehand and so when we drove to Palmaon Monday, one of the first addresses we looked up was a shop called simply The English Bookshop, which turned out to be quite the understatement. It’s an absolutely amazing place and I barely had time to even begin exploring, but Max did find two books, one of them on the very subject he was searching for. The owner of the shop moved his 60.000 or so books from England to Palma seven years ago, where they are now crowded together on four floors with all manner of maps and other treasures. (There was even a photo of the owner posing together with Ronnie Wood!)
English Bookshop
c/Morey 7
Palma de Mallorca
Mallorcamust have been a sort of paradise when George Sand spent a winter here in 1838, together with her children and Chopin (and wrote about it in A Winter in Majorca). Certainly less tourists back then… The prolific English author Robert Graves (1895 – 1985) also lived in Deiá for many years and he is buried there. His house in Deiá is open to the public.
And on a side note, do also visit Io gelats artesans, with their sinfully rich and creamy ice cream in Puerto de Sóller should you ever be on the island (shopping for antiquarian English books, most likely!)
