That morning in April 1967, the walk to the principal’s office seemed longer than usual for Maribel. “I was about eight or nine years old and it wasn’t the first time they had called me to the principal’s office because I was great,” she recalled. In the hallway, she continued to review everything that had happened in the previous days, trying to figure out what mischief she had been caught up in. When he finally entered, he didn’t find the serious faces of before, but many eyes turned to the newspaper open on the table. “You have to go home because your father appeared in the newspaper,” they told him.
He only learned the reason after he had hurriedly walked the six streets that separated the Escolàpies school from his house. The atmosphere there didn’t seem too serious either. They had the same newspaper open on the living room table. On page 21, he saw a photograph of a group of men in suits sitting around a table with a linen tablecloth and a flowery centerpiece. “The urbanization that NASA is carrying out on the Sa Font Seca estate already has a name: it will be called Urbanization Palmanyola,” said the owner. His father appears a few lines below: “The lucky winner of the competition is Don Juan Garcías Berga, who lives in Palma,” he read.
The story had begun a few months ago. The businessman Pere Nadal Salas had acquired part of the Sa Font Seca estate, located at kilometre 10 of the Sóller road. A farm that, as the future rector of the region, Joan Soler Planas, described it, was little more than a “dry field with carob trees, almond trees, wild olive trees and a few olive trees” where sheep grazed. His intention was to build a new complex with the help of his construction company, NASA (Nadal Salas Sociedad Anónima), which would even have a golf course.
A contest to choose a name
At the beginning of 1967, the company began selling land at 200 pesetas per square meter. Meanwhile, Pere Nadal Salas continued to look for new ways to promote the project and find buyers. And he, who had built the Press Palace – inaugurated two years earlier and located on the Paseo de Mallorca – thought that the press could be a good ally for his marketing operation.
His idea was to hold a competition to name this new urbanization in Palma and to offer as a prize a 500 square meter plot of land in one of its streets. Each participant could submit as many proposals as they wanted, but there would only be one winner. In March, the newspapers began to fill with announcements about this curious competition while the headquarters of the construction company received hundreds of letters.
Businessman Pere Nadal Salas launched a competition to name his new project in Palma and offered as a prize a 500 square meter plot of land in one of its streets. The headquarters of the construction company was filled with hundreds of letters of proposals
On the night of the 27th, the jury – which included, among others, the lawyer Luis Matas and the director of the newspaper Balearic Islands, Francisco Javier Jiménez, as well as Nadal Salas himself, met at the Hotel Fénix in Palma. The snapshot that immortalized this conclave was the same one that Maribel saw the next morning. These gentlemen in suits unanimously decided that the winning proposal was that of Juan Garcías Bergas, a 41-year-old man from Palmanyola who had proposed the name Palmanyola: an acronym that united the toponyms of Palma and Bunyola, since it was located on the border of this second location.
A day later, Juan’s photo, the new winner, appeared in the press. After signing the ownership of his 500 square meter plot, he explained that it was precisely in Bunyola where he had lived with his family for a few seasons during the early years of the Civil War. “He spent the rest of his life in Palma and, as he was the eldest of three brothers, his parents wanted him to continue his studies even during the war. Sometimes he would say he heard the bombs falling on the way to school,” recalls his daughter Águeda.
A man returning to land
“It was a huge emotion. I’ve never had any luck in games or lotteries. “It’s the first time something has touched me,” Juan said in an interview with the newspaper. Balearic Islands. “He always told the story of the competition, he was very proud. He said he had seen other names that had been proposed and that they were much worse. Several suggested calling the project Nasalandia, in a play on words with the name of the construction company,” his daughters explain.
In the interview, Juan Garcías introduced himself as a married man, father of three children – Maribel, Águeda and Pedro – who worked as a telegraphist at the coastal station of Can Pastilla. This was in reality the life that had just begun after more than a decade as a telegraphist for the merchant navy, sailing to Fernando Poo, Spanish Guinea or Newfoundland, “spending very long periods, sometimes a year, without seeing mine.” he admitted.
“When he came home, he stayed for fifteen days, then he left for months. That’s how it went for ten or fifteen years. When he appeared, I said that he wasn’t my father, that my father was the man in the photos we had in the living room. Because sometimes, it didn’t even look like him,” admits Águeda. “I think I started to know him in my communion,” adds Maribel. A series of absences upset his wife, Catalina, because he had three children who were growing up without him. And Juan ended up changing boats for the telegraph tower in Can Pastilla, when the area was still a paradise.
Juan Garcías was a telegrapher for the merchant navy for more than a decade. “When he came home, he stayed for fifteen days, then he left for months. That’s how it went for ten or fifteen years. When he appeared, I said that it wasn’t my father, that my father was the man in the photos we had in the living room. Because sometimes he didn’t even look like himself,” recalls his daughter Águeda
A land without a house
In this return to the land, the acquisition of a plot of land in the already named town of Palmanyola – which in 1985 would become a Minor Local Entity – seemed to be the piece that completed the puzzle. Juan’s dream, he confessed to the newspaper Balearic Islands, It was about “building a small house, having a garden” for his wife and children and having “the expansion” that they could not have in the apartment in Santa Catalina where they lived. At that time when gentrification seemed light years away, they remember, in the neighborhood, anyone who was not a sailor was an officer or a fisherman.
“I remember coming home in the following years and, at night, the architect or builder would be there with the plans on the dining room table. But the truth is that with one salary and three children, it took several years to be able to build the house, about ten,” Maribel explains. Little by little, he designed the ideal house: a house with two bathrooms because they hadn’t had one for a long time, a large kitchen and four bedrooms so the children could have their own. And outside, in the garden, I planted a jacaranda, a lemon tree and a pine tree.
I remember coming home in later years and at night the architect or builder would be there with the plans on the dining room table. But the truth is that with one salary and three children, it took many years to be able to build the house, about ten
Maribel
— Daughter of Juan Garcia
Every time they visited the factories, they noticed that Palmanyola was gradually being populated with houses, even though only three had been built on their street. On New Year’s Eve 1968 – the same day that the newspaper column highlighted Balearic Islands, Son Sant Joan airport welcomed the 19 millionth tourist – the Minister of Information and Tourism, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, handed over the keys to twenty chalets purchased by journalists and inaugurated the works of a golf course under construction which was named after him.
In the mid-70s, some newspapers were already describing Pere Nadal Salas as a developer who had promised “gold and more” in an urbanization that, in reality, left much to be desired. “There was no market or school and the means of transport to get to Palma were scarce and complicated,” explains Águeda. The problem went further: the lighting was constantly broken, in 1976 they spent months without running water due to the drought because they drank from a private well and were still not supplied by the municipal company. But when it rained, the houses flooded by the dozens. It is said that this is why Palmanyola took so long to finish the work. The municipality of Bunyola itself had given NASA the land to build the sports facilities in exchange for maintaining them. But it was 1980 and the problems persisted. And the Manuel Fraga Iribarne golf course ended up languishing.
Two years earlier, in 1978, and in the middle of this panorama, Juan Garcías had officially inaugurated his chalet. The two bathrooms, the large kitchen, the jacaranda, the lemon tree and the pine tree arrived. And, in 1983, his grandchildren, the children of Águeda, were the first to be baptized in the church of Palmanyola before it officially became a parish.
However, this delay in construction and the 24-hour guards at Sa Costera ended up transforming the chalet into a sort of summer residence at the foot of the Tramuntana. His children had not been able to grow up in this “expansion” that he had dreamed of. He and his wife Catalina began to spend their summers there, and then, after retirement, half the week.
When Catalina died in 2011, that dream of a family home with a garden ended up losing all meaning, even though his grandchildren ran around there on weekends. “Two years later, he didn’t want to come back for sentimental reasons,” they explain. And that winning lot on Geranis Street, now with its little house in the shade of a huge jacaranda tree, ended up being sold.
