Valldemossa

Valldemossa is the kind of place that makes you instantly distrust your own eyes. Lia and I drove up into the Serra de Tramuntana from Palma, the road coiling through olive terraces and pine, and arrived at a village of golden stone houses stacked up a hillside, every windowsill rioting with geraniums, the whole thing crowned by a monastery. It is almost too much. I kept waiting for the seam to show, the moment it revealed itself as a stage set. It never did. Valldemossa is just genuinely, irritatingly beautiful.

Chopin’s grumpy winter

The village’s claim to fame is a wonderfully glum one. In the winter of 1838–39, Frédéric Chopin came here with the French writer George Sand and her children, hoping the mild Mediterranean climate would help his failing lungs. It rained relentlessly. The locals, scandalised by the unmarried couple and frightened of Chopin’s consumption, treated them as pariahs. The piano took weeks to arrive. Sand later wrote a book about the experience that was, essentially, an extended complaint about Mallorca and its people.

And yet, in their cold cells in the Real Cartuja — the former Carthusian monastery — Chopin composed some of his most enduring work, including several of the Preludes. You can visit the cells today, see a piano of the period, and stand at the window where he looked out at the weather he hated. I found it oddly moving: proof that misery and beauty are not mutually exclusive, and that a man can produce something immortal while thoroughly wishing he were somewhere else.

Cobbles, cats, and coca de patata

Beyond the monastery, the pleasure of Valldemossa is simply walking it. The streets are steep, cobbled, and impossibly photogenic, and they fill with day-trippers by mid-morning, so we did what we always do and arrived early. At eight in the morning the village belonged to us, a few cats, and an old woman sweeping a doorstep who nodded at us as though we had passed some test.

The local speciality is coca de patata, a soft, sugar-dusted potato bun that has no business being as good as it is. We ate them warm from a bakery near the main square, dunked in thick hot chocolate, while the church bells did their thing. Lia, who is not easily impressed by pastries, went quiet, which is the highest compliment she gives food. We bought four more for the road and finished them before we reached the car.

Getting there and getting out

Valldemossa is about 30 minutes by car from Palma, and there are buses too, though a car lets you carry on along the spectacular Tramuntana coast road afterwards — Deià and the sea are close. Come early or come late; the midday crush is real and it flattens the magic. Spring and autumn are ideal, with the terraces green and the crowds thinner.

It is a small place, easily seen in half a day, but I would argue against rushing it. Valldemossa rewards the visitor who lingers over a second coffee and lets the village empty out around them. Chopin hated the weather here. I suspect he would have loved the mornings.