There is a moment in the year, towards the end of October, when Mallorca breathes deeply, turns off the lights and pulls down the shutter with an invisible sign reading: “closed for staff rest.” The season is over. And with it, apparently, civilisation.
Suddenly, the restaurant you used to go to closes until April. The beach bar vanishes as if it had never existed. The ice-cream parlour bolts its gate. And you, a year-round resident, are left staring at it all with a face that says “but I live here, what am I supposed to eat?” Because in winter the island is yours, yes, but it is an island with half its shops hibernating.
It has its good side, I won’t deny it. You park. You stroll without elbows. You find a table. The beach becomes a contemplative place again and not a campsite. You recover your town, your rhythm, your peace. For two weeks it is a delight.
By the third week you begin to miss the bustle you so criticised in August. It is the great paradox of the islander: in summer you curse the crowds and in winter you curse the silence. We are never happy, and perhaps that perpetual dissatisfaction, that ability to complain as much about their arrival as about their departure, is the most authentically Mallorcan thing we have.