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Aug 19, 2023

Tranquility Breeds Creativity on the Quaint Island of Menorca

By Stephanie Rafanelli I wake to Mahón's rooftops, crowned each morning by the

By Stephanie Rafanelli

I wake to Mahón's rooftops, crowned each morning by the first Spanish light. Dawn in this island village is a dissipating memory—a Rorschach test of clouds, backlit by the fiery rising sun that pours through the Moorish windows of my bedroom. I am only 43 nautical miles east of Mallorca, yet on this flat raft of land I feel entirely adrift from the world.

Cova d’en Xoroi, one of the many chic cliffside restaurants here

Typical Menorcan lobster stew at Sa Llagosta

It's easy to be deceived by Menorca, a quaint pastoral island of rinsed blues and Celtic greens that was declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1993. Its pastures are filled with cattle and wheat and punctuated with whitewashed windmills. The Romans christened it Insula Minor, Lesser Island, as if forever bequeathing it plain-Jane status next to Ibiza and Mallorca, its alluring Balearic sisters. And yet the world has always landed on its shores. Over the course of a millennium, it passed from the Arabs to the Aragonese to the Brits, who left behind their gin habit and contributed a smattering of words to Menorquí, the Catalan dialect of sa's and es's spoken, in whistling gusts, only on this island. For years it has attracted primarily British holiday-goers seeking its sharp and reliable sun, shallow blue waters, and earlier nights.

But elemental forces lurk here too. Last night, a storm unleashed its raw power on the tiny, tranquil island. Storms here are wild shows of energy, fueled by the infamous and annihilating north wind that can bring with it fleets of cumulus clouds that race like schooners across a purple-streaked sky. Its name—tramuntana—is also applied to unhinged artistic genius (though he never worked on Menorca, the Catalan surrealist Salvador Dalí was said to have been afflicted by it). The German artist Hans Hartung came here in 1932 to flee the Cubist-vilifying Nazis. He hid out among the booted eagles and red kites on the northeast coast near the tramuntana-teased marshes of S'Albufera des Grau until, accused by locals of being a spy, he fled. Ninety years later, Menorca's mystique and intrigue still call artists from near and far, who disappear into its rural fincas. In their indeliberate way, they are helping this sleepy isle attract a new set of wanderers.

Admiring a Rashid Johnson painting at Menorca's Hauser & Wirth gallery

Early evening in Ciutadella's Plaça D’Alfons III

"Waking up, communing with the earth, the sea, stone, and sky is still a wild revelation," says Nuria Roman, a Madrileña artist who moved to Es Castell, a town just east of Mahón, in 1997. "Everyone and everything is at the mercy of the power of the island." Roman helped transform the old Lithica marés—Menorcan limestone—quarry near Ciutadella, the island's largest town, into a public space that hosts the art festival Pedra Viva ("Living Stone"). "My gallery in Madrid told me I had to return to the ‘art world,’" she says, shrugging. "But I just stay here like a stone and people come to me." The island's tranquility helped Chicago-born Rashid Johnson complete Anxious Men, his painting series on the crushing pressures of modern life. The angry blood-and-black faces of his canvases finally gave way to a serene white. Johnson showed last year at Hauser & Wirth's new location on Illa del Rei, a tiny island in the Mahón harbor, whose 2021 opening prompted a wider set of travelers and creatives to begin paying attention to Menorca. Swiss-born mega-gallerists Manuela and Iwan Wirth, whose empire spans from New York to Hong Kong, opened the spot after falling in love with the island on a day trip from Mallorca. "They discovered our cultural history, which is really unknown but rich for such a small island," says Mar Rescalvo, the gallery's Menorcan director, as we walk beneath a Louise Bourgeois spider and past a bulbous bronze object by Joan Miró through a perennial garden designed by the landscape architect Piet Oudolf, where Cleopatra butterflies land gracefully on the lavender.

Not long after Hauser & Wirth, the contemporary-art center LôAC opened in the interior city of Alaior with a wing devoted to the conceptual artist Marina Abramović, further cementing Menorca's new status as a global art destination. In recent years, others have followed the Wirths' lead in migrating eastward from the saturated scenes of Ibiza and Mallorca to find that the more languid pace of the most reclusive Balearic island now coincides with their idea of paradise. "The French love it here for the nature, slow living, and opportunity," says Emmanuel de Sola, a Parisian music executive turned artisanal baker, outside Pigalle, his eatery in the town of Maó, beneath a sky of faded denim. Last year, De Sola, his wife, Stephanie (formerly of Celine and Isabel Marant), and their two children moved from the 19th arrondissement to the French-founded municipality Sant Lluís in the sandy south. "We thought Menorca was boring at first," he says. "Disturbingly quiet. Then we relaxed. It wasn't sexy, but the landscape itself was like Ibiza mixed with Brittany. Everything was so close—nature, wild beaches."

The rustic but modern living room at new hotel Son Blanc Farmhouse

Cala Mitjana, on Menorca's southern coast, fills up fast early in the day

At Cala Alcaufar, a beach on Menorca's southern tip, hushed sunbathers knit and read, their hair tousled by the breeze. Farther west is Es Caló Blanc, a Hockney-blue natural swimming pool, where sun-kissed bodies lie splayed across the limestone platforms. Circumnavigating the entire island is the Camí de Cavalls, a 115-mile coastal path from which trekkers can access 70 other coves. Once patrolled by mounted soldiers, it is now partly camouflaged by wild ullastre olive trees. "When I first came here, I couldn't believe a place like this existed," says Pierre-Charles Cros, cofounder of the Paris-based Experimental Group. "It had disappeared off the map. It was so green I felt like I was in Ireland, and yet you had these Caribbean coves." In 2019, the youthful profferer of creative cocktails shook up the island's erstwhile image as a haunt of British pensioners with the opening of Menorca Experimental in an old military base near Cala Llucalari, a pristine beach on the southern coast, which the group reimagined as Pablo Picasso's Menorcan home. "Here, you feel like an explorer. Everything is hidden. It feels like a secret world."

Nearby, down a dusty red-earth road where birds chant as rhythmically as cicadas, are the finca retreats of various notable figures. They include Jean-François Moueix, scion of Bordeaux's Château Petrus, who was drawn to the Menorca's regenerated vineyards; the intrepid French hotelier Arnaud Zannier; and Frédéric Biousse, the former CEO of Sandro and Maje, who cofounded Les Domaines de Fontenille, a group of hotels and restaurants. Yet from the main road, the landscape before me, clumped with cumulus-like bushes, appears as empty as the sky.

Chef David Coca with trusted companion Mero

Outside the trendy Menorca Experimental bar

"Menorcan luxury is not about being seen—it's about hiding out," says British Menorcan Benedicta Linares-Pearce, who owns Es Bec d'Aguila, an 11-bedroom hilltop retreat in an 1890s mansion that she enlisted Parisian decorator Anne-Cécile Comar to reimagine in a palette of storm blues and dawn pinks. After a career in textiles, Linares-Pearce and her French husband, Benoit Pellegrini, bought two abandoned estates in 2018 and worked with the Patrimonio Nacional, the Menorcan heritage body, through renovations. "It took so many tries to get a shade of green they would approve for the shutters," she says, laughing. "But the rules protect the island from the wrong people. Preservationism attracts the green-minded." Their second estate, Son Blanc, is now a self-sufficient hotel that generates its own power, with 296 acres of permaculture. "Benoit is very passionate about it," she says as we wade down to the fields where quail scuttle out of the hare's-tail grass. "He has a little club. They get together and talk tomatoes."

By the dock in Fornells, a quiet village on the island's northern coast, a French bulldog named Mero is sitting on his favorite lap. It belongs to Menorquí David Coca, who, with his beard and chef's whites, resembles a Victorian-era barber-cum-pirate. "You've heard of hunting dogs? Well, Mero is a fishing dog. He stands on the front of his owner's boat and barks when he sees fish." He chuckles to the clink of rigging and cutlery outside his restaurant Sa Llagosta. "Most Menorquís have a boat. We live by the seasons. In winter we hunt thrushes and woodcock." Coca took the helm of the restaurant 24 years ago, reviving traditional Menorcan recipes such as fisherman's caldereta de langosta, a tomatoey lobster stew. "No one came here at first. But the world's changed. Now the most cultivated people are most in love with this simple life."

A pomegranate tree at Es Bec D’Aguila, where much of the food is grown on-site

Taking a break on Plaça de la Catedral in Ciutadella

Southwest is Ciutadella, the old seat of Arabic Manûrqa, where the cathedral, built atop a mosque, rises like a palm-cooled sandstone throne. It is home to Es Tast De Na Silvia, a pioneering Slow Food restaurant from local chef Silvia Anglada. "Menorcan food should be slow and humble," she says as she adorns plates of arroz de la tierra (a Menorcan farmer's grain dish in a broth of boiled shrimp) with wildflowers, beneath the vaulted ceilings of a former 16th-century chapel. Her recipes, influenced by a local 18th-century Franciscan cookbook by Fra Friar, use antique xeixa wheat, an unrefined variety dating back to the Bronze Age, which she sources from family-run farm La Marcona. Farther north, Son Felip is a model bioregenerative farm with stables of Cavall Menorquí, Menorca's black horses. The air is sweet with the honey-tinged manure. A huddle of Menorcan red cows rises like sudden sand dunes in the fields. The antique breed cleans the woodlands in an ancient version of agroforestry. "It's not the cow, it's the how," explains agricultural director Francesc Font, who over the last eight years has converted local farmers to permaculture using super-plants like red clover. "We now have the most regenerative farms per square meter in Europe. There's something magical happening here." Olive cultivation, which has historically been deterred by that north wind, has also risen on the island, yielding award-winning organic olive oils.

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Near the stables, I mount one of the sturdy mares, demure but proud with her dark, shiny coat. Riding along the wild north coast, past pines passionately entwined like tango dancers, I feel closer to this island. In the sepia-toned summer, it is easy to forget the force of this mighty little land. We reach the coast and race along the crashing waves. I feel as if nothing but the wind can stop me.

The pool scene at the chic villa Es Bec D’Aguila

Local ceramicist Blanca Madruga

A trio of Balearic hoteliers brings the sophisticated but minimal aesthetic of their Can Domo in Ibiza to Menorca with this new agriturismo, Amagatay Menorca. The property has stone walls, wooden rafters, and is soon to be followed with a second property, Hotel Morvedra Nou. Madrileña Cristina Lozano opened 21-room boutique hotel Cristine Bedfor, which occupies three 18th-century Mahón cottages, with her friend Daniel Entrecanales in 2021. Magpie interior designer Lorenzo Castillo is behind the menagerie of antique toby jugs, propeller fans, tapestries, and Turkish silk divans in shades of red and blue.

Paris architects Atelier du Pont contemporized historic estate Es Bec d'Aguila with a sleek green onyx bar, earth-toned ceramics, and well-sourced modern art. Many of the 11 bright and breezy bedrooms open onto the villa's 148 acres. Conceived by Parisian designer Dorothée Meilichzon as the imagined island bolt-hole of Pablo Picasso, Menorca Experimental's 43 rooms and villas, spa, and cocktail bar (which serves a eucalyptus Negroni with homemade infused Xoriguer gin) are done up in oxbloods and clay pinks, with wavelike modernist murals.

Son Blanc Farmhouse, Es Bec d'Aguila's wilder sister property, is a self-sufficient, high-design agriturismo on a regenerative farm, where 14 rooms have reclaimed wood, with bespoke pieces from Catalan artisans using stone, wool, and clay. Les Domaines de Fontenille, a group of hotels and restaurants founded in Luberon, Provence, has debuted Torre Vella, a 17-room retreat in an Aragon watchtower with walls adorned with hanging prickly pears and art from cofounder Guillaume Foucher's collection.

A cozy island lounge at Es Bec D’Aguila

Coffee and dessert at Cantina, at the Hauser & Wirth gallery

When the late engineer Carlos Anglés bought his Binifadet estate in Sant Llíus in 2002, he resuscitated not only 38 tancas (dry-stone-walled plots of vines) but also the craft of Menorcan winemaking. Developed by the Romans and exploited by the British, the island's viticulture had nearly vanished by the mid-20th century. Today, in addition to running the winery, Anglés's son Luis has revived beloved Menorcan institutions, from Mahón's American Bar to Tamarindos, on the beach. He also opened Cantina, the restaurant at art gallery Hauser & Wirth, in the former kitchen of Mahón's 18th-century British naval hospital.

Moll de Sa Punta is a spry new tapas bar inside Club Náutico de Villacarlos, Es Castell's former sailing club, and has harbor views, rough walls, and photographs of Cales Fonts's salt-worn fishermen. Chase sardine rillettes and marinated rabbit with herbal liqueurs from distillery Biniarbolla, founded in 1930. A pioneer when it opened 17 years ago in Mahón, seasonally driven Ses Forquilles now has four siblings around the island under the stewardship of owners Oriol Castell and Marco Collado, all spreading the gospel of elevated seasonal cooking.

Laura Llompart and her Uruguayan husband, Alejo, opened neighborhood favorite Quitapenas in the southern village of Sant Lluís, serving hearty plates that trace the multicultural roots of the island's food, from hummus to falafel and chickpea croquettes. Smoix is a Ciutadella hot spot and they recently added five rooms with striking shutters in shades of midnight green and octopus ink. A reviving escabèche is a perfect way to end a day wandering around the old Arabic capital.

This article appeared in the May/June 2023 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.