Long before the tourist boom of the 1960’s, islanders regarded foreigners who came to Mallorca as quite exotic and even named local places and areas after them, according to Geographer and toponimiamallorca.net blogger, Miquel Àngel Escanelles.
The General Map of Mallorca, which was published in 1958 by cartographer Josep Mascaró Pasarius, includes around 14,000 documented toponyms.
"If they appear on this map, we can reference their antiquity," says Escanelles, who says that when Pasarius drew the map a lot of people were still learned the names of territory orally.
The caseta des Francès, or caseta de n’Aragó, is the oldest place name in Mallorca that refers specifically to a foreigner prior to mass tourism.
At the top of the Mola de s'Esclop, the walls of what was once the cabin of the French physicist and astronomer François Aragó, who in the spring of 1808 settled on the mountain to geodesically link Mallorca with Ibiza and Formentera, with the objective of obtaining the most precise measurement possible of the length of the meter.
In Alcúdia, the Pont dels Anglesos, by the New Majorca Land Company, the company that drained the lagoon in the second half of the 19th century.
In Lloret de Vistalegre, the place name Cas Alemanys refers to German refugees from the First World War and Escanelles says Andreu Ramis Puig-Gròs collected the notes of one of those Germans in Les llegendes del center del món (Edicions UIB, 2019).
On the Son Torrella estate in Santa Maria del Camí, there is also the toponym Ca s’Alemany and Coll de Son Fortuny, between the municipalities of Andratx and Calvià, is also known as Coll de s'Alemany. Both names appear on the General Map, but their historical origin is unknown.
The Saridakis case
Another name that’s linked to foreigners is Can Saridakis, the previous own of Marivent palace, painter Juan de Saridakis.
Near Palma airport, there is a Cas Frances and in Montuïri, Can Bernat Suís, which also appear on the map.
Ca na Tatxa in Cala Fornells in Calvia, refers to the chalet that was build by designer Natacha Rambova and retired soldier, Álvaro de Urzaiz, in front of the Illeta des Cocó, adjoining Punta de s'Estaca and Caló de ses Llises.
They lived in Mallorca between 1932 and 1936, long enough for the people of the area to rename that point in reference to the woman who created the myth of her former husband, the 1920’s actor and sex symbol, Rudolph Valentino, who died at the age of 31.
Punta de na Dina is a toponym is named after the American, Dina Moore, who helped many people flee the Nazis and find refuge in the US and she also has a street named after her in Cala Major.
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