Palmanova’s tourism history - UTOPIA AND HILDA OGDEN’S KNICKERS
Palmanova or Palma Nova? The spelling is a source of argument. Some people can even get quite heated about this. They insist that Palmanova is not one word but two, but historically there is no real support for it ever having been two words - in an official sense, that is. The name was an invention from the 1930s, which was when the plan for an urban development project was approved. It’s clear where the name came from - Palma - as this was a development on the Bay of Palma. Or is it clear? New Palma, one might think, but what about Palmanova in Italy, a city built in the late sixteenth century following the ideals of a utopia?
The British urban planner Sir Ebenezer Howard is attributed with having founded the garden city movement. Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City were the fruits of his philosophy, one that had been influenced by a utopian novel. The garden city, therefore, was something of a utopian vision of urban planning, the concentric design principles bearing a distinct similarity to what was the star fort style used for Palmanova in Italy.
The two spellings have been used interchangeably. If one really needs a definitive source for the current spelling, this
“They insist that Palmanova is not one word but two, but historically there is no real support for it ever having been two words - in an official sense, that is...”
comes from the University of the Balearic Islands, which lists all place names - Palmanova it is.
And when one considers what was planned and ultimately approved by Calvia town hall on
October 3, 1935, the more one has a sense of the Italian city.
Mallorca’s tourism development from the start of the twentieth century was modest until the 1920s. By 1925, improvements to the port in Palma meant that there were more ships - passenger as well as cruise ships. The Fomento del Turismo, aka the Mallorca Tourist Board, had meanwhile in Calvia from the aristocratic Truyols Villalonga brothers in 1925. The land comprised the old ‘possessions’ of Ses Planes and Son Caliu. The family fortune had been made in Puerto Rico; from sugar cane and rum. The family left Puerto Rico because of the American Prohibition and father and son now set their sights on a new project - the creation of a tourist resort in Calvia.
The Roses weren’t themselves necessarily urban planning utopian visionaries, but they knew a man who was - a Catalan architect, Josep Goday i Casals. He already had experience of developments on the Costa Brava in Catalonia. And it was Goday i Casals who conceived the plan for what was to become Palmanova, a tourist and also residential development on land that was part of the Ses Planes possession (not Son Caliu, despite Son Caliu being right next door).
They looked for an alternative to Son Caliu, the literal meaning of which might be taken to be ‘its warmth’, but the story goes that it was known as Son Caliu because visitors to Calvia would stop there to smoke cigarettes. Perhaps that didn’t sound all that utopian.