When we were connected by the sea alone

We are in the port; the arrival of the steamer, ‘el vapor’, is one of the great events of Palma and the quays are alive with people. A shoal of small boats gathered round our vessel, while numbers of galeras, small carriages drawn by mules or horses, galloped up and down; a vibration of sheer life under a spotless blue sky in a city bathed in sunlight”. With these words from the collective work coordinated by Palma XXI, La ciudad invadida, the French traveller Gaston Vuillier described the port of Palma in 1893.

The 20^th century was just about to reach the Balearic capital like an runaway tornado of modernity. In 1902 demolition began on the walls that had separated the city from the outlying areas of Santa Catalina or La Soledad for centuries, as part of an ambitious town planning project. In those years the municipalisation and piping of water advanced, something which would drastically reduce disease and mortality. The new architectural tendencies were brought by Antoni Gaudí, whose intervention in the cathedral in 1903 aroused just as much repudiation and incredulity as the bizarre-looking Grand Hotel, the first hotel on the islands designed to meet the demand of the first tourists. In that same year, in s’Hort del Rei, the island’s first cinema, Can Truyol, was inaugurated. In 1897 the first “automobile carriage” – a Celment Bayard acquired at the Universal Exposition in Paris - disembarked in the port of Palma, like so many novelties the new century brought.

It was still a quarter of a century before the first commercial plane was to land in Son Bonet aerodrome, and the port was a constant hive of merchandise, passengers, carriages, industry, passers-by, stevedores and ‘desenfeinats’ (the unemployed) who entertained themselves by watching the operations of the imposing steam vessels which had permanently replaced the traditional sailing ships. In 1891, a merger between two shipping companies had given rise to ‘La Isleña Marítima’, a concessionaire of the communications by sea between Palma and the other islands, Barcelona, Valencia, Algeria and Marseilles. Its majestic, elegant boats, built in Genova, were known as “the swans of the Mediterranean”.

Fifty years before the inauguration of the Paseo Marítimo, Palma’s old port spread out in front of the Lonja and the cathedral. The rest of Palma’s present-day maritime façade, from Jonquet to Porto Pi, consisted of earth cliffs, except for the coves of S’Aigo Dolça, Sa Pedrera and Es Corb Marí, where locals would go to bathe. Son Alegre, El Terreno and Porto Pi were very fashionable with the city’s bourgeoisie, who built their summer residences their.

The port was fundamental for the flourishing Mallorcan economy, which depended greatly on exports of footwear, fabrics and agricultural products. From 1900 to 1920, both exports and shipping traffic doubled in the port of Palma. The volume of goods the port received was so large that from 1877 on there was a train line that linked the port with Plaza España. In 1931 a tunnel was dug to what is now Parc de la Mar, to avoid the complications caused by the train running through La Rambla and El Borne.

The construction in 1912 of the new quay of La Riba was a [...]

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