Ramon Llull was born in this place.

When I came of age and felt the world's vanity,

I began to do ill and entered into sin,

Forgetting glorious God, following carnal desire;

But Jesus Christ, in his great mercy,

showed himself to me, crucified five times over,

So I would remember him and love him

So strongly that I would ensure that he was worshipped

All over the world and that the truth was known

of his Trinity and how he became flesh;

That is why I was filled with such will,

That I loved nothing else in the world but Him,

And then I began to serve Him happily.

Desconhort (Grief), 1295

Translated by Richard Mansell.

(1232 - 1316). Born in Majorca in the years immediately after the conquest of the island by Jaume I, Ramon Llull was linked to the royal household and acquired intellectual education in keeping with his position. He got married, had two children and led an extravagant and courtly life. According to his own account of his life, when he was thirty years of age Christ appeared to him five times, something that radically changed his life. He left his family, comforts and riches to dedicate himself fully to serving God. Ramon Llull demonstrated a great concern for converting people to Christianity and reforming the religion itself, and he decided to begin a period of self-taught study first at the Monastery of La Real and then withdrawn from the world at Randa, where he developed his method, or “Art”. Later he founded the Miramar School to instruct missionaries in his method of conversion. He had long journeys around Spain, France, Italy and North Africa to attract Christian powers to his initiative. He is the author of an immense body of work in Catalan, Latin and Arabic: it is estimated that there are 265 works on a range of subjects: philosophy, science, theology, poetry and literature. Llull was the first writer to use Catalan for literary purposes.

El Desconhort (Grief) is a work written in verse, since it was told orally by jesters and so its structures made it easier to remember. As the title implies, the work expresses his dejection and anguish because his project had not been as well received as he hoped and he began to doubt himself.

The Plaça Major in Palma is the result of the emergence of a new urban space following the demolition, between 1823 and 1854, of a collection of historical buildings: the Casa negra, home to the Inquisition, the convent of Sant Felip Neri and other neighbouring buildings. The first use of this new space was as a fruit, vegetable and fish market until 1951, which was one of the most important markets in the city. During Moorish times it was part of the walled section of the city. Tradition places Ramon Llull’s birthplace on the northern side of the square, where it is marked by a plaque erected in 1888 by the Societat Arqueològica Lul·liana. Nowadays the square is a place of business and leisure.