Felanitx

The Sunday market spreads across Plaça d'Espanya like a living map of the island. One stall displays pyramids of Felanitx capers, milder than their Italian cousins; another offers Callet wine drawn from a barrel that arrived by tractor at dawn. By half past ten the coach tours begin to arrive, but the locals have already done their shopping. They lean against the bar at Forn de Can Bauló, arguing about football in a mixture of Catalan and Spanish while the baker loads almond ensaïmadas into paper bags. This is not a show put on for visitors. It's simply how Felanitx starts the week.

The Town That Works When Others Sleep

Most Mallorcan coastal settlements roll up their towels in October. Felanitx, set back eight kilometres from the nearest cove, keeps its own calendar. The agricultural supply shops on Carrer Major still open at eight. Children cut through the arcaded passageways on their way to school, past stone facades blackened by centuries of diesel and almond blossom. You notice the difference immediately: fewer rental cars with German plates, more elderly men wearing the traditional espardenyes rope-soled shoes.

The heart is the thirteenth-century church of Sant Miquel, its Renaissance portal grafted onto an older Gothic shell. Step inside mid-morning and the only sound is the tick of the cheap wall clock above the confessional. The convent of Sant Agustí next door houses the town library now; students sit beneath cloister arches, laptops open beside a seventeenth-century well. Walk two minutes east and you'll find the modernist Casa de la Vila, its tower clock forever seven minutes slow. No one seems in a hurry to fix it.

Up the Hill That Watches Everything

The road to Sant Salvador monastery switchbacks for 5.2 kilometres, climbing 500 metres through pine and wild rosemary. Cyclists treat it as a personal challenge; the sensible drive. At the summit, the café terrace faces north-west across the island's spine. On clear days you can pick out the Tramuntana's highest peaks and, beyond them, the glitter of the Bay of Alcúdia. When the sirocco blows, the view dissolves into a yellow haze and the waiter brings blankets without being asked.

The monastery itself is fourteenth-century fortress architecture: thick walls, small windows, a refectory that could withstand a siege. A handful of rooms operate as the simplest hotel on Mallorca – no televisions, shared bathrooms, dinner at seven sharp. Guests are woken at dawn by the resident monks' chant, an alarm clock that no smartphone can match. Even day-trippers fall quiet inside the church. Perhaps it's the altitude, or the realisation that every road in sight eventually leads back to this rock.

Vineyards, Almonds and the Wrong Sort of Beach

Felanitx municipality contains two distinct landscapes. Inland, the fields roll between dry-stone walls, each planted with almonds, olives or the low bush vines that produce DO Pla i Llevant wines. The bodegas are family affairs. At Ànima Negra, the tasting room is a converted sheep shed; Toni Gelabert's cellar occupies his great-grandfather's townhouse garage. Phone ahead – both close without warning when the winemakers need to spray or bottle. British wine writers have taken to the soft, peppery Callet reds precisely because they aren't shouty Rioja impersonators. A bottle of the rosé costs around €9 at the cellar door, half shop price.

Then there's the coast, twelve kilometres south, and this is where expectations need recalibrating. Cala Mondragó, within the natural park, offers white sand and turquoise water straight from a brochure. It also offers several hundred towel spaces and a summer shuttle bus from the car park. Arrive after ten in July and you'll queue to squeeze between two German families. The trick is to continue west to the urbanisations of Cala d'Or, park above Cala Ferrera, and follow the coastal path east for fifteen minutes. Smaller coves appear – rock ledges rather than beaches – where local teenagers dive from pines into water clear enough to count your toenails.

What to Eat When the Market Shuts

By two o'clock the stalls have vanished and the plaça smells of pine disinfectant. Lunch options divide neatly between workers' bars and harbour restaurants five kilometres away in Portocolom. In town, Bar Central serves frito mallorquín – lamb, liver and potatoes fried in olive oil – for €9.50, garnished with a lemon wedge and zero apology for cholesterol. The tumbet, Mallorca's answer to ratatouille, arrives in the same metal pan it was baked in. Pudding is a plain ensaïmada, the lard-based pastry lighter than it sounds, best dunked into a small coffee.

If you prefer a tablecloth, drive to Portocolom's waterfront. Yacht masts clink against each other while waiters fluent in three currencies bring plates of grilled squid. The harbour used to sardine-cure until tourism arrived; a few red-brick warehouses survive between boutiques. Prices rise by thirty percent the moment your feet touch the quayside, but the view across the inlet is free.

The Quiet Months and the Noisy Ones

August turns Felanitx into a festival calendar. Sant Salvador on the fifth brings pilgrims hiking up the mountain overnight, candles in jam jars. Ten days later Sant Agustí fills the streets with dimonis – devils running with fireworks – and the smell of gunpowder drifts through stone corridors until dawn. Accommodation within the town itself is limited: two small hotels and a handful of legal rentals. Most British visitors base themselves in rural villas sprinkled across the almond groves, driving in for supplies and Sunday mass-market people-watching.

Spring and autumn deliver the sweetest compromise. Temperatures sit in the low twenties, ideal for the signed vineyard walk that begins behind the cemetery and ends, conveniently, at a bodega door. Almond blossom peaks in late January; by mid-April the petals lie like confetti along the lanes. October brings the grape harvest and the first wood smoke. British number plates reappear, but the drivers wear walking boots rather than bikinis.

The Things That Catch You Out

Felanitx has no beach, whatever the estate agent's map suggests. The coast belongs to other parishes; you'll still pay municipal parking fees, but the sand is a twenty-minute drive away. Wineries shut on Sundays and Mondays, and most close for lunch even when advertised as open. The road to Sant Salvador is single-track in places; reversing uphill to let a hay lorry past concentrates the mind. Finally, the Sunday market starts packing away at noon. Arrive at twelve-thirty and you'll find only pigeons and lettuce leaves.

Stay longer than a morning, though, and the town begins to reveal its rhythms. The baker emerges at five with the next day's dough. The pharmacy grill rattles down at siesta time, reopening precisely four hours later. Evenings, teenagers circle the plaça on scooters while their grandparents occupy the same benches their own grandparents once used. Felanitx does not need to impress you; it simply continues, confident that the island will still rotate around its hilltop monastery long after the last tour coach has departed.