Josep Pla found that the Paseo del Born was a good place to be.
Palma looks like a clean and very pleasant city. The Born is an urban delight, a lounge lacking in nothing. It is a street for being. Most streets are for going. The Born is a street for being. I imagine that somebody who likes other people's affairs could ask for nothing more. The city's layout is easy to get around and has some very amenable rises and falls. The narrow streets are amiable, offering no drama. Strolling around the Born I find a few great residences; their image is impressive solid, rural, dignified. The courtyards are memorable. The houses are dignified because the signs of wealth are discreet, hidden from view, lacking pretension. People walk slowly, without pushing, they come and go about their business peacefully...
Les Illes, (The Islands), 1970
Translated by Richard Mansell.
(1897 - 1981). The Catalan writer Josep Pla dedicated his life to literature and journalism. Even as a boy he displayed a great passion for reading and for landscapes, and that, later on in his books, meant that he could convey a passionate description of the reality closest to him and to all. Pla is the first modern author of travelogues in Catalan. His work as a journalist allowed him to combine his love and his work. As a journalist, he was a correspondent in France, Italy, England, Germany and Russia, commenting on politics and culture. Coses vistes (Things seen, 1925) was the debut of this great writer and the beginnings of a new type of writer who gave priority to the observation of reality, with a carefully worked but perfectly intelligible style, something that allowed him to bring literature to a wider public. His work has become a valuable memory, part real and part recreated, of half a century of Catalan society, the Catalan landscape, and the life of the Catalans. His complete work comprises more than 45 volumes: roughly 20,000 pages of prose. He has received many prizes for works such as El carrer estret (The narrow street, 1951) and El quadern gris (The grey notebook, 1967). In 1970 he published Les illes (The islands), a collection of texts of various origins about the islands of the Mediterranean, which were the result of many the journeys he made throughout his life.
One of the most journeyed parts of the city is the Born. In 1833, as part of one of the many alterations it has undergone, the Font de la Princesa (Princess Fountain, also known as the Tortoise Fountain) was opened and lions and sphinxes were added. The current aspect is the result of the changes that came from the Alomar plan in 1943, which significantly altered carrer de Jaume III. This created a wide street that linked the area of Santa Catalina with the centre of the city. Over the past few decades houses have been renovated, the usual cafés hosting discussions have been replaced by shops and today the Born is one of the luxury shopping areas of the city. Luckily the far north of the street retains, although they have been renovated, the features that make the Born a place for “being”.
