Letters from Mallorca
It was 1993, I was 21 and spending the summer working in Palma de Mallorca. My parents kept my letters home & discovering them sparked all sorts of thoughts when I returned to the island this summer.
Hola amigos, que tal?
I tapped the bones of this post into my phone in the morning heat while waiting for the coach to take me, my husband, teenage daughter and friend back to Palma airport after two weeks on the beach in AlcudÃa. The thoughts that sparked this writing though started forming a month or so ago when I discovered a bundle of letters I wrote home in the summer of 1993 while living and working in Palma de Mallorca. My parents kept those letters (amongst many others) and it’s been a true voyage of discovering reading them.
Airmail letters on flimsy see through paper, others on cream paper and matching envelopes but all in navy ink. Written, I’m imagining, from my bed in the second floor flat on Calle Gabriel Alomar where I was living. I was 21 and had just finished my fourth and final year at Newcastle Poly** studying French and Spanish.
My bedroom was at the back of the flat I shared with two young Spanish women and had whitewashed walls and a tiled floor, an iron bedstead, table and chair for my books and cassette player with shutters to keep the room dark and cool against the 37c heat outside. The cooling sea breeze from Palma beach was a few minutes-walk away, as was the cathedral.
I’d found work experience at Texas Hiperhogar the DIY superstore in Palma after spotting an index card pinned to the Modern Languages noticeboard not long after my final exams.
‘Summer work experience, Texas Homecare, Palma de Mallorca. Contact Mike for more info’
Spending the summer in Spain felt like a smart move, It would delay the return home to mum and dad and if it came with the chance to recreate even a fraction of the fun I’d had in Málaga the summer before in my third year, it was too good an opportunity to ignore.
Three decades on and reading the letters as a 53-year-old I’m taken back by their lightness. There’s a playfulness to them even when I’m writing about the flatmate who took an instant dislike me, shouting at me for sitting in ‘her chair’ and who’d switch TV channels midway through a film I was watching.
If you’d asked me about that summer (before discovering those letters) I’d mention spotting the British actress Imelda Staunton at baggage reclaim on arrival at Palma airport or Brian, my boss-to-be and and manager at the DIY store, not turning up to collect me from the airport because he didn’t receive the fax I’d sent with my flight details. I’d talk about the hostile flatmate and a random roll out the red carpet moment in honour of Dennis Thatcher visiting the store (thankfully he left Maggie at home).
I wouldn’t spend too much time talking about it though. Málaga was my Spanish story. That was all Semana Santa, la FerÃa, cafe con leche and tostada in the cafe across the road from the university, the Picasso museum and all nighters in Pedregalejo. Not forgetting tÃa Pilar my live-in landlady who rented rooms to ‘nice Spanish girls from good families’ (her words not mine, and I can’t remember how I ended up there) in her flat on Calle Larios where she’d keep a close eye on us all.
The Palma memories slid off me and I didn’t pay them too much notice, it felt like a summer without colour and my face wouldn’t break into a smile as it does on hearing Málaga mentioned.
But unfolding these piece of paper reveal colour and texture to that Palma summer that I’d forgotten, or not acknowledged.
The letters also reveal a connection with my dad in particular that surprises me. Me writing directly to him and enlisting his help with job hunting while mum was away on holiday with her girlfriends shows a side to our relationship that I’d forgotten, especially in the latter years of his life.
And they are stuffed with anecdotes from my days spent in the superstore. Stories about the Canadian customer who wanted to replace the desk fan he’d bought a few weeks earlier because he was worried it would take off, saying it ‘went like the clappers’ even on the lowest setting.
How would I translate ‘went like the clappers’ I wondered.
There’s a detailed account of the hour I spent helping a spritely 83-year-old English woman buy a bedspread only for her to return it the next day with an apologetic smile saying it didn’t suit after all and a bag of sweets for me as a thank you.  And for balance, there’s the British Jaguar driving customer who blasts me for keeping him waiting for too long.
I write about my colleagues from the Information desk, Catalina and Feli, who take me under their wing and on one occasion rescue me from the wood cutting section where I’d been banished (after the rollocking from the Jaguar driver I think) bringing me back to the safety of Information desk, with its multiple phone lines ringing and builders loitering with their plastic bags full of peseta notes waiting to pay for planks of wood, taps, basins and other bathroom fixtures and fittings.
And there’s Antonio who explains that his flawless English is thanks to his Newcastle born and bred mum. It turns out that the grandparents he visits every summer live in Heaton around the corner from where I lived as a student.
Back in Mallorca, memories of Palma and Málaga have bubbled to the surface these past two weeks and I notice how content I feel speaking Spanish again. It takes a few days for my mouth and brain to warm up and work together to form the words and phrases, for me to get used to the vibrations the sounds make again.
It’s a muscle memory that’s weak through lack of use but my voice soon remembers how to soften and move to accommodate the Spanish sounds.
I love the soft ‘v’ and ‘d’ of ‘verdad’, I love the letter ‘j’ and a simple ‘no pasa nada’. Sometimes I have complete memory blanks mid-conversation but hey, I’m 53 and that’s just as likely to happen in English as in Spanish.
On our early morning trips to the beach in AlcudÃa I find myself adopting the hands-on hips stance just like the small group of Mallorquin women meeting for their morning dip and natter. We’re in a tourist hotspot and my ears pick out German, French and Dutch and English but there’s plenty of Spanish too especially when families and friends gather gather under the shade of the palm trees and set up tables and chairs groaning with food. Hours spent chatting and laughing, working their way through the multiple cool boxes they’ve pulled along on a trolley.
And as the days pass my feet sink deeper into the hot sand, I let the salty sea support me as I let go and give my brain space for the Spanish words and phrases to float to the surface.
Reading the letters remind me of that in between phase I was in back then in 1993. On the cusp of adulthood – not fully in the world of salaried payslips, tax codes and pension plans – but not completely out of student life either. Within the upright handwritten words I feel myself wanting to slowly loosen the threads connecting me to home.
All I had to do was catch the bus to work, smile and chat with my colleagues and customers, catch the bus back home for lunch, have a siesta and wander down to the beach, walk along the sea front or head to the shops in the centre of town.
In one of the letters I write, ‘I think looking back, that I was very spoilt with Málaga. I didn’t have to do anything, I had ready made friends through the university and tÃa Pilar and her granddaughter Marta.’
It’s the only time I hint at the loneliness I sometimes felt in Palma because despite my hopes, there were far fewer nights out blagging free shots and beers like we did from the barmen in Cien por Cien and el Barquito in Málaga. Maybe that was a good thing.
When I found the letters my instinct was to bury them at the back of a very deep, dark cupboard because I wasn’t sure I wanted to face my 21-year-old self.
I should have given myself a little more credit.
I’ve also learned through memoir writing to lean into the friction of these uncomfortable feelings and hold memories and moments up to the light. I know that when I do this I see something different, something fresh, almost always new and often surprising. It also helps me to let go of stale, unhelpful, unchallenged memories, and that is refreshing
As for the Spanish speaking and heading back to Spain, well I’m hoping that my 56-day streak on Duolingo (at time of writing) will help me to keep flexing my Spanish speaking muscle.
And whisper it, but there are signs that my 15 year old daughter wants to carry on studying Spanish after GCSEs next summer and I’m thrilled about that. I’m plotting a return to Palma probably next year now because despite best laid plans we didn’t make it there this time, and if I’m going to visit Palma I’ll also need to head back to Málaga too. Maybe I’ll take my teenage daughter with me.
Thank you, as ever for writing and subscribing. I’d love to hear from you so please jump into the comments. I’d love to hear about your letter writing memories or reflections of life as a young adult.
Hasta luego, Harriet
**I went to Newcastle Poly in 1989 and graduated in 1993, the year it became the University of Northumbria. Technically I graduated in French and Spanish from the University of Northumbria, but I’ll always be a Newcastle Poly girl….
I loved reading this, Harriet! It's made me think of the exchanges I went on to France and Germany and how maybe I could hold these up to a light and see more in them than the face value of nearly getting deported for bad behaviour!
My brother was a Newcastle Poly student too! But a wee bit earlier than you.
I loved reading this Harriet, finding out about the Newcastle Poly girl, her take on Mallorca and her grown up self looking back fondly. It was privilege to get a sneak peek during the writing sprint at the behind the scenes genesis of this piece, how you grappled with your Substack pause and gaining the confidence to post again.