They are Moroccan. No one can resist her charms
There is something dislocated in the bandstand Son Marroig . The carrara marble gloss and its nineteenth-century proportions assert themselves over the landscape like an invading body. It stands on a terrace. Beyond, the mountain falls into the sea in Sa Foradada.
a wedding is prepared . Rows of chairs are arranged to accommodate guests. Between the white and polished columns, I think that the role of the Archduke Luis Salvador, owner and lord of the Tramuntana, it seems closer to me than that of the boyfriend, that of any boyfriend. With cuckoo , which inspects the interior of the possessió, there is something transactional. I imagine us, she in white and I in a cutaway over the reflections of the sea, and I smile.
At the gates of Son Marroig
Two girls tell me that they have to fill the temple with flowers . I try not to stain the rug that unfolds over the terrace and I go into the garden. Pines and palm trees surround a pond that was once a pool. I access the interior of the building through a side entrance. The house is grim. Under a large coffered ceiling, confectioners, Roman amphorae, Greek statuettes and Majorcan fabrics are exhibited. Cuca contemplates the view from the loggia.
We take the car and go to Miramar, the monastery founded by Ramón Llull in the 13th century that the Archduke recreated from its ruins. Cuca thinks that Luis Salvador was a misfit escapist, like his cousin Sissi. He was the son of Leopold II of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany . A popular uprising forced the family to flee the Pitti Palace and settle in brandeis castle , seat of his properties in Bohemia.
During his adolescence, he studied languages and natural sciences in Munich and Prague. He refused to marry and he dedicated his life to traveling the Mediterranean. In 1867 he arrived in the Balearic Islands under the name of Count Neudorf. The Tramuntana was a refuge for him . In Miramar he received princesses from Spain, Russian grand dukes, writers and scientists.
Carrara marbles
As he confessed to the French traveler Gaston Vuillier: “I have always been a nomad, without a fixed residence; I run the seas Driven at first by my hobbies, particular circumstances have later developed in me this vagabond humor that makes me live, so to speak, outside of humanity.
A maladjusted dilettante, as Cuca affirms. In Majorca he acquired all the properties between Valldemossa and Deia . In one of them, S'Estaca Catalina Homar worked as a day laborer. She was nineteen years old when he met her. She was the daughter of a carpenter from Son Moragues.
She became her companion and, by extension, the Madonna of S'Estaca. She served as mayorala, a role vetoed to women . She learned to read and write, improved the conditions of the workers and incorporated technical improvements in the production of Malvasia and Muscatel wine.
In 1888 she traveled with the Archduke to the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona on his steamer, the Nixe, to incorporate new technologies into the operation. As in the rest of his trips, she did not abandon the country dress.
Because when peasants love, they really love
About his meeting with Sissi, Luis Salvador writes: “The Empress, during her last visit to Majorca, came to the Stake. Her slender figure surprised Catalina; it was not her lofty position, it was rather her sweet smile that impressed everyone who saw her. The two women spoke together as if they had known each other all their lives, because in both of them human feeling was simultaneously alive. The sun went to its zenith, the sea shone as if it were gold, surrounding two o'clock with a halo. It was like a transfiguration ".
In Miramar we are received by a Majorcan with an indecipherable accent . As I pay for the tickets, I wonder what language Catalina spoke to Sissi. Noon is approaching. It's hot. The reconstructed gothic arcade, the j byzantine garden , the rhetoric of the epitaphs, make up a romantic landscape that must have been indifferent to the peasant woman. Her territory was the vineyards and the fishing village that fell on the sea.
Archduke Luis Salvador, owner and lord of the Tramuntana
I propose to Cuca a bath in Banyalbufar . Its slopes were also owned by the Archduke. We cross the village and descend towards the sea. We changed in the car, without looking at each other. From the car park, a staircase leads to the cove. The water oscillates in reflections.
We spread our towels next to the escars, the booths where the fishermen keep their boats. Cuca comments that the town of S'Estaca it also hangs over a cove. Michael Douglas bought the farm. He has put it up for sale a few months ago for an obscene price. I think it is ironic that the agrarian efforts of Catherine Homer have fallen into the hands of a Hollywood actor.
Cuca lies down and protests the hardness of the concrete platform. He tells me that Catherine died during one of the Archduke's trips. . When he found out, he dedicated a eulogy to her that was added to his more than fifty publications. He had no children with her. He could be due to syphilis.
Banyalbufar
Rumors about Luis Salvador's sexual life continue the pattern of the myth of the promiscuous invader who fertilizes the territory with his offspring . There is talk of bisexuality and a multitude of illegitimate children that he would have attributed to Antonio Vives, his secretary, heir to his properties on the island. Others say that he was powerless.
I fall off onto the rocks and try not to slip. I jump into the sea and cross to the stream of fresh water that falls from the rock. The waterfall is cold . From across the cove I feel Cuca's gaze and I wonder how Catalina responded to the Archduke's first glance.
Son Marroig or the tale of the peasant archduchess