Santiago Rusiñol spent long periods in Mallorca, especially on the North Coast, and in this fragment of La isla de la calma he describes Calobra as a mineral landscape.
Heading to Torrent de Pareis, when the boat leaves Port de Sóller, there are still woods high up on the rocks; still the odd pine defies the challenge of the wind, and its branches fall on the waves themselves. After that you see nothing other than thorns with the odd solitary flower, and once you are in the torrent, nothing more. As though a volcano had burned the lot; stone, and nothing more. From top to bottom, an immensity of stone. The Torrent de Pareis is formed by two vertiginously tall cliffs, and they leave the tightest of spaces for a rocky ravine to drop down from the immense mountains. So many rocks drop and roll down, heading for the sea, that the torrent cannot swallow them all, and the gigantic blocks pile up one on top of the other, forming a great tumble of rocks, which seem like they have fallen from the sky.
L’illa de la calma (The island of calm), 1922
Translated by Richard Mansell.
(Barcelona, 1861 – Aranjuez, Espanya, 1931). Rusiñol was a dramatist, novelist, essayist and artist, who instead of following his family’s industrial tradition, opted for art and literature, and also a Bohemian lifestyle. He became very knowledgeable about his country through travelling in his youth, not only on foot but also by carriage throughout Catalonia. He finally swapped Barcelona for Paris, where he spent long periods, occasionally accompanied by the artist Ramon Casas, which allowed him to observe impressionism first-hand. He fell in love with the seaside town of Sitges, where he bought a house known as Cau Ferrat, and organised its festivals of Modernism between 1892 and 1899. He travelled to Majorca with some friends, amongst them the writer Ramon Casellas, in February 1893. This first trip there was the start of his relationship with the island, culminating in his book L’illa de la calma (The island of calm, 1922). He spent long periods there, both alone and with his family, to paint and cover the whole island. Among his descriptions there is this passage on La Calobra, the mouth of the storm channel, described as a rocky, almost lunar and lifeless landscape, with rocks and pebbles dripping from the peaks.
His most representative work, L’auca del senyor Esteve (The auca about senyor Esteve), published as both a novel (1907) and a play (1917) is both an amiable and acerbic ode to Barcelona’s working classes, who were driving the city’s growth at the time.
Rusiñol wrote a kind of guidebook of Majorca, imitating the classics, beginning with his arrival by boat in Palma and a journey around the parts of the island he already knew well and liked. The book is titled L'illa de la calma and the title is entirely appropriate, since in a certain way Rusiñol creates an almost exaggerated calm, which was doubtlessly self-interested, as has been said more than once and somewhat sarcastically until recently. In the book there is an abundance of observation that contradicts stereotypes, affectionate impertinence (making the book a joy to read), as well as some truly spectacular descriptions that rise from the melting pot of feelings created by some of his favourite places. Rusiñol's twin tasks of writer and artist led him to Torrent de Pareis, a pilgrimage he shared with many other artists (Joaquim Mir, Antoni Gelabert, Francisco Bernareggi, and more). Rusiñol did not reach Mir's extremes, delirious in his search for the most inaccessible places to be able to capture unseen views, but rather he wanted to capture the landscape from a pictorial and also literary point of view without devouring it, surely owing to his different character and education. Torrent de Pareis is now a classic trip, with names for almost every ravine, names that often commemorate events that have happened there, such as "Gorg des Capellà" (Priest's ravine) or "s'Estaló" (Prop ravine). Since 1964 there has been a spectacular yearly concert in July amongst the cliffs of "sa Calobra".
