Emili Manzano, Mallorcan journalist and writer. Photo: Piter Castillo.
Despite being “profoundly anti-nostalgic,” Mallorcan journalist and writer Emili Manzano has published Me’n record (Anagrama), a book of “isolated, seemingly disconnected memories.” These are the memories “of an ordinary person who doesn’t intend to represent anyone,” because the writer’s challenge “is basically to entertain the reader by telling stories,” he explains from Mallorca, the island he returned to four years ago after spending 35 in the Catalan capital.
His memories still vividly hold the sounds, smells, and places of his childhood. “Fortunately, the things I enjoyed to the point of shaping my sensitivity still retain their brightness and freshness despite the passing of years — especially the flavors, the smells, the physical sensations, the sounds, even the feeling of the June sun on my skin or the sea water, the rocking of a llaüt during fishing hours, summer nights under a grapevine, the ritual gestures of pig slaughtering… And the people, especially those I loved — they never want to leave me, and I’m so thankful for that. They still talk to me and keep me company. The same thing happens with the places: I clearly remember how they were, and I can recognize them beneath the thick layers of asphalt and concrete now covering many of them.”
A BIBLICAL CURSE
Indeed, today’s Mallorca is far removed from the one evoked in his new book. Today’s Mallorca feels “uncomfortable” to Manzano. He is irritated by things like “the declining quality of life for most of us — and I’m not just talking about the difficulty of finding parking, the crowds in central Palma, or the overcrowded beaches; I mean the challenges that everyday Mallorcans face in accessing housing, even just rental, and land ownership.” As he criticizes, “we can’t compete with wealthy outsiders who arrive and legally acquire a house, a small estate, a piece of land we’ve dreamed of — and that’s now forever out of our reach. It’s not an easy situation to deal with. Psychologically, it’s terrible: it makes us feel like we’re worth less, like we’re second or third class citizens. The feeling of dispossession, of exclusion, has already become a kind of social psychological illness, a syndrome waiting for a name. It’s what I call the ‘Mallorcan paradox’ (or more accurately, a ‘parajoda’): we are natives of a paradise we can increasingly barely enjoy, a paradise that expels us. It has something of a biblical curse, doesn’t it?”
Manzano is already working on his next book, which will focus on curious words and expressions from the Mallorcan popular dialect, “along with others that exist only in my family or are personally meaningful to me.” As he notes, he still uses terms like “tèntol,” “jutipiri,” or “bàmbol.” Until this new book is published, readers can travel through his memories in the pages of Me’n record. Because, if there is something that has shaped his view of the world, “it’s reading — the habit of reading, which essentially means taking an interest in others, listening patiently to what they have to say, even if we disagree,” he concludes.
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