A Love Letter to Port de Valldemossa

With 555 kilometres of coastline Mallorca has no shortage of hidden gems, but if there’s one special spot that we’ve fallen head over heels for then it has to be Port de Valldemossa. If switchback mountain roads, sleepy seafood restaurant and superlative sunsets are your thing, read on.

First up, this isn’t a beach, so don’t come here expecting sand and sun loungers. This tiny fishing port lies six kilometres from the glorious monastery town of Valldemossa – site of a tumultuous love affair between Polish composer Frédéric Chopin and the French writer George Sand in the winter of 1838 – and is one of the last unspoilt treasures on Mallorca’s popular western coast. 

An eyepopping series of hairpin bends on the swooping mountain road afford extraordinary views across the steep wooded valley and vertiginous limestone cliffs; if you survive the hair-raising drive, what awaits at the bottom is the sleepiest of sleepy coves and an atmosphere steeped in the Mediterranean of yesteryear.

By day, black-clad women hold court at rickety tables perched in slivers of hard-won shade. Their rich Mallorquin dialect echoes through cobbled alleyways as traditional wooden llaüts haul the catch of the day onto the timeworn stone jetty. Come dusk the port springs to life as hip young sunset-seekers throng to the tide break in clapped-out VW campervans, to perch among the rocks, strum guitars and toast the setting sun with cans of ice-cold Estrella. Children dive from the jetty, taking gulping saltwater swims back to shore, chased by invisible sharks. They clamber out among the boats and the nets, as wet and slippery as eels, to sip horchata on picnic blankets and roll marbles up and down the dock.

As night falls, the pastel-hued houses cluster together as though sheltering from the storms that sweep in and cut off the bay over winter. The sunset crowds disperse, back up the hill in a creeping caterpillar of slowly moving headlights. Others head to the village’s longstanding Restaurant Es Port, where silvery slivers of sea bass and hand-cut chips are stacked high among bowls of bitter green olives and tumblers of iced white wine. Cats purr in the street, fat and slick on a diet of stolen scraps, as fishermen mend their nets for tomorrow and the waves crash relentlessly on the shore.