Inca

The smell of fresh leather hits before the cathedral bell finishes striking nine. By then, Avenida Josep Tous i Ferrer is already a slow-moving queue of carrier bags and canvas shopping trolleys: German cyclists after discounted boots, Palma families restocking school shoes, British day-trippers hunting the €39 Camper outlet rack that costs £95 back home. Thursday is market day in Inca, and for twenty-four hours the island’s third-largest town forgets its usual industrial rhythm and lets commerce spill onto the streets.

A Town That Makes Things

Inca sits 120 m above sea level in the fertile Raiguer valley, a 25-minute train ride from Palma and a world away from the coastal condo strips. The altitude keeps summer nights fractionally cooler, while winter brings the occasional frost that browns the surrounding olive terraces. Forget the honey-stone hamlets of the Tramuntana – the approach is flat, the architecture functional, the traffic steady. This is where much of Mallorca actually gets stuff done: shoemaking, wine bottling, furniture assembly. Even the bell tower of Santa Maria la Major looks more like a factory chimney than a celestial pointer until you’re close enough to spot the Gothic rose window.

Inside, the church is darker and calmer than the coastal baroque excesses. Opening hours shift with the liturgical calendar; if the oak doors are shut, the convent of Sant Bartomeu two streets south usually keeps its cloister open for quiet minutes among orange trees and 17th-century brickwork. From here the old town unravels in a grid tight enough to stay in shade at midday. Peer through half-open portals and you’ll catch glimpses of stone staircases curling around patios where washing flaps above cellar mouths carved into the sandstone. Most of these mansions are still private, their ground-floor bodegas now garages or storerooms, but the municipal tourist office runs a free patio route on the first Saturday of each month – worth reserving if you like wrought-iron balconies and renaissance graffiti.

Eating Underground

Come noon the market crowd thins and the cellers open. These former wine cellars – vast, low-ceilinged caves with metre-thick walls – are Inca’s best eating secret. Ca’n Ripoll fills first: whole lamb slow-roasted in wood-fired ovens, the meat pulled apart with the edge of a spoon, served alongside tumbet (the island’s answer to ratatouille) and a glass of Ribas house red that costs €3.50 and tastes like Beaujolais on a Mediterranean holiday. English menus appear without request; portions are built for farmers, not influencers. Book if you’re more than two – locals keep tables for birthdays and retirement lunches, and Thursday is prime time.

Afterwards, the bakery two doors down does coca de patata, squidgy iced buns that dissolve into sweet bread-and-butter pudding in your mouth. Buy two for the train back; they survive the journey better than croissants and cost 90 cents each.

Market Day Maths

The Thursday leather market is not picturesque: white awnings, folding tables, euro-pop from tinny radios. Yet the goods are real – jackets stitched in neighbouring workshops, handbags cut from hides still smelling of tannin. Haggle, but politely: knock thirty percent off the opening price and you’re in the ballpark. Serious bargains appear after 13:00 when traders would rather discount than reload vans. The rest of the week Inca reverts to a normal Spanish working town: shops close at 13:30, reopen around 17:00, and by 22:00 even the kebab stall on Plaça d’Espanya has pulled down its shutters. If you’re after nightlife, catch the 22:28 train to Palma and be in the Born barrio before midnight.

Using Inca as Base Camp

Staying overnight makes sense only if you’re touring the island by rail. The Ferrocarril de Sóller line skirts the Tramuntana foothills from Palma to Sa Pobla, stopping at Inca’s handsome modernista station. €4.10 buys a day-return to Palma (30 min), €3.60 reaches the beach at Alcúdia (25 min). Parking at the eastern industrial estate is free and unrestricted – leave the hire car there and let the train do the coast, saving both fuel and the circular hunt for Thursday street space. Rural hotels and agroturismos lie within a ten-minute drive among olive groves towards Selva and Caimari; expect stone cottages, pool towels in Mallorcan stripes, and cockerels instead of club beats.

For walkers, Inca is the gateway to the island’s interior plain. A signposted lane heads north-east to the monastery at Lluc (17 km, 500 m ascent) through terraced almonds and holm-oak woods; spring blossom turns the route snow-white in February. Summer hikers should start before eight – the plain offers little shade and temperatures can hit 38 °C by noon. In winter the same paths are empty, the air sharp enough for a fleece, and the cafés in Caimari still serve thick hot chocolate for €2.

What Inca Doesn’t Do

Do not expect cobblestone romance. The centre is pedestrianised and pleasant, but the outskirts are a sprawl of tyre fitters and wholesale warehouses. Come mid-afternoon in August and the heat ricochets off the concrete; most sensible folk retreat indoors until the siesta ends. Even on market day the town winds down after 14:00, and if you arrive hoping for evening buzz you’ll find only a handful of bars showing football and a single Irish pub whose Guinness is €6 a pint.

Equally, do not write Inca off as “nothing special”. It is special in the way that Luton or Bologna are special: a place where people get on with living rather than posing for postcards. Accept that, and the town repays with proper coffee for €1.20, shoes that last, and a Thursday morning buzz you won’t find in any hill-top village, however pretty the view.

Getting There, Getting Out

Drivers take the Ma-13A from Palma, exit 18, follow brown signs to “Centre Històric” and aim for the Polígono car parks before 10:00 on Thursdays. Everyone else hops on the train – services every hour, half-hour at peak, air-conditioned and bicycle-friendly. The tourist office on Carrer de la Pau 1 opens 09:00-14:00 weekdays (closed weekends), stocks a map of the patio route, and will phone ahead to check which cellers have tables left. One hour is enough for the church and a coffee, three hours covers lunch and a lap of the leather stalls, a full day lets you walk to Selva and back before the last train departs at 22:28.

Leave space in the suitcase. You may arrive thinking “just a look”, but Thursday has a way of turning browsers into baggage-laden converts – and the rack on the 20:28 to Palma is famously forgiving of overspill shopping.