Mallorca never ends
Pequeñas Cargas passes through some of the places that have appeared along my path during all these years on the island. But it never set out to be a map of Mallorca, much less to contain everything I have lived here.
Mallorca has a curious quality: no matter how much you travel across it, it never seems to finish revealing itself. Beyond a bend there may be a path you did not know, terraces held by stone walls, a cave, a hidden cove, an estate, a forest or some corner that seems to have been there waiting for you to pass.
And over time I discovered something else: the places you already know do not end either. Sometimes you return after years, and all it takes is a stone wall, bougainvillea spilling over a terrace, the shade of some trees or sitting down for a coffee for something that seemed asleep to become present again. Places hold memories too.
Over the years I accumulated many of them. Mountains, paths, villages, beaches, houses, people, conversations and small moments. Some eventually became part of this book. Many others did not.
And that is as it should be.
They were not left out because they were missing. A book needs to choose. It needs to follow a path and, at some point, close its pages.
Sometimes nothing extraordinary needs to happen. Some places remain simply because of their beauty: because of the way a wall is built, because of trees growing on a terrace, because of a particular light or because of that difficult-to-explain feeling that makes you stop for a moment and look.
Perhaps that is why this website can continue a little beyond the book. Some of those places, photographs and memories can appear here, still part of the same journey, even though they never needed to become a chapter.
After all these years, I still have the feeling that Mallorca holds more places —and more memories— than one person can ever discover.
A book ends at some point. Mallorca does not.
