Born in Sóller, our new author Concepción Martorell Sánchez shares her reflections on the Tramuntana — its quiet rhythms, its hidden stories, and the way the range holds the valley and its people close.
The Tramuntana mountains have been part of my landscape since I was born. They are always there, shaping the valley and the people who live within it. For years, I wasn’t even conscious of their presence — until one day, long ago, I was speaking with Miquel, who was born and still lives in Montuïri.
He told me that whenever he came to play football in Sóller or Port de Sóller, “the mountains weighed on his back.” As he said it, he even hunched over, as if reliving the sensation. In that moment, the Tramuntana became fully present for me.
For me, they are a feminine force. I feel supported, cradled, sheltered in this valley. There’s a strength that holds me, sustains me. And when I cross through the tunnel and the mountains disappear, I miss them — the horizon feels strangely naked without that frame.
We Sollerics live by the rhythm set by the Serra. With it, and within it. We are part of its cycles. Summer means the little boat, the sea, the beach. Winter means the olive grove — repairing dry-stone walls, pruning olive and carob trees.
It’s a way of life.
When I was a child, weekends meant going to my parents’ olive grove in the craggy gorge we know as the Barranc de Biniaraix. At the time, it felt like the most ordinary thing in the world. Only later, seeing it through the eyes of people who didn’t grow up here, did I come to value what we had.
I love seeing Sóller through the eyes of visitors — tourists, foreign residents, or anyone discovering it for the first time. I catch the sparkle in their gaze. Sometimes, when I see someone photographing an old doorway or a quiet street, I stop to see what they’re seeing. More often than not, it’s a street framed perfectly by the mountains.
The Tramuntana holds a thousand stories, some whispered, some hidden.
The other day, I went down to the Port, to the beach, the one we call El Mónaco — one of my favourite spots. There, the sea and the mountain meet, and it amazes me every time. I feel at home. I can breathe. I can write. In fact, I drafted this very piece that morning, sitting on the sand, when the day and the beach were still untouched.
From that spot, you can see the Muleta headland and the Ma-1150 road up to the lighthouse. Few people in Sóller — and even fewer tourists — know that this road was built by political prisoners during the Spanish Civil War, between 1936 and 1938.
That’s another story for another day — a darker chapter in Sóller’s history.
