My encounter with Menorca

It certainly wasn't love at first sight.

I arrived in Menorca in the summer of 2018, in a hot month of August, to accompany my in-laws to friends who had made the decision before us to move permanently to the island and leave Italy. Skeptical and little interest in this stay, which didn't promise to be the most exciting.

I have traveled a lot around the world and have already been to the Balearic Islands, Ibiza and Formentera, I had heard of Palma, which had never attracted me due to its massive northern European tourism, and of Menorca... until then, neither interest nor Curiosity.

And to this day I don't understand why this island didn't arouse any particular interest in me, maybe because I don't like holidays in August, maybe because it wasn't my decision to go there.

Today, however, after years, I have built an intense bond of slow and respectful mutual understanding with places and people. Menorca has now become my happy place, the place of pause, of thoughts, of reflection; where time is marked by sunrises and sunsets, where nature surrounds and envelops you.

Many call it the island of peace, perhaps no more suitable adjective could be found. Menorca is the island where stress and haste play no role, it is the island of the piece.

Where, when you're standing in line at the supermarket checkout or at the hardware store counter and you're in a hurry to rush out and do something else quickly, you collide, as if you're crashing into a concrete wall, with an insular reality that is relaxed Times and sweet rhythms that we have now forgotten.

Be careful not to negatively highlight this relaxed pace, as it doesn't take much to elicit a classic and shocking reaction here on the island... "This is what we have.

In recent years, Menorca has become quite a popular destination, both for tourists and for those who see the island as a place to go for a change in life.

It is certainly a rapidly growing reality, but fortunately thanks to or due to the lessons learned from all the mistakes made in the past in the rest of the Balearic Islands, where development was excessive and sudden, for example in Ibiza and Mallorca the loss of the Balearic identity

collected by Formentera.

Menorca, on the other hand, is holding up well!! In fact, it is armed to the teeth to defend its culture, traditions, land and rural economy, where tourism plays an important but not unique role. Where the tourist offer is tied to the summer season, but at the same time the protection of nature, the Talayotic archeology and the cultural offer and finally the local traditions make it unique.

The island of Menorca was declared a Biosphere Reserve in 1993 and Menorca Talaiotica was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023.