In Una bella història, winner of the Salvat-Papasseit Prize for poetry in 1961, Miquel Bauçà evokes the sea in "El vell mariner".
The old sailor who I met
On the island of Gànguil cured his wounds
By putting his feet in the water. The jubilant sea
Tickled his legs. The old sailor
Smoked, and in the smoke adventures drowned,
Alongside dangers, women, games and moonshine,
enormous octopuses,
Rays... One day he was taken from work and Death,
Like a hundred-legged crab grabbed hold of his chest.
He was slowly destroyed in a white shirt
In the port-side tavern, recalling tender dreams
With rum and moonshine.
Una bella història, 1982
Translated by Richard Mansell. Performed by Glòria Julià.
(Felanitx, 1940 – Barcelona, 2005). "I was born 7th February 1940, and on the fourteenth day of the same month, twelve years later, my mother decided to make me an orphan. I don’t know if it was revenge or whether she was moved by an instinct to imitate. Indeed, four months earlier I had run away from home, taking advantage of the fact that my father, a God-fearing man, had agreed to hand me over to a sect of rural and pious barons, still full of joy at having won the war." This is how the poet Miquel Bauçà i Rosselló introduces himself and it is difficult to add anything else, since he himself wrote in 1987 that from his eighteenth birthday onwards “I don’t think there is any need to mention anything of note”. In 1961 he won the Salvat-Papasseit prize with Poemes d’un fugitiu (Poems by a fugitive) which was published in 1962 as Una bella història (A beautiful story). In 1985, with Carrer Marsala (Marsala street), he began a period of prose writing that is difficult to categorise, with a blend of diary entries, aphorisms, and detailed and also magical observations of reality. He returned to poetry in 1992 with El crepuscle encén estels (Dusk lights stars). In 1998 his last book appeared, El canvi (The change), structured as a type of encyclopedia where he expresses his own personal and peculiar views on life. He died alone in a Barcelona flat where he was a virtual hermit, and this only served to feed the legend surrounding his figure and interest in his work.
For those who love the sea in small doses, this coast is ideal, explained Josep Pla. Portocolom, whose name is recorded in the 13th century, is simply called the Port by people from Felanitx. It is still a place where locals spend the summer, although the year-round population has grown, attracted by the weather, the leisure activities linked to the sea and the landscape. It may have been the same characteristics that attracted prehistoric settlers in the 2nd century BC to Closos de can Gaià, situated strategically to guard the entrance to the port and currently being excavated.
