Cala Mesquida

Cala Mesquida is the beach of wind and sand. At the far north-east of the island, wide open to the Menorca channel and with no headland to shelter it, it is the beach where the waves break when the sea is flat everywhere else in Mallorca — and where the largest dune system on the island rises, and one of the best preserved.

Three hundred metres of fine white sand, some hundred and thirty metres wide, in a cove open to the north. But what makes it unique is not the sand: it is what lies behind. A dune system covered in pine and mastic, crowned by Es Munt Gros, which looks like nothing else in Mallorca. And since no high ground protects it, the wind blows here almost always and there are almost always waves — something very rare in the Balearic Mediterranean, where the sea only has to come from the north for Mesquida to break. That is why it is the reference beach for the island's surfers and windsurfers. And for that same reason, back when there were only sails, this stretch of coast claimed more than one shipwreck.

Straightforward. From Capdepera you get there by car along well signposted local roads, and in summer bus line 422 runs from May to September, with a stop less than two hundred metres from the sand. The car park next to the beach is free, but it is small and fills up early; there is another, also free, two hundred metres away, a five-minute walk. No charge, no access restrictions, no shuttle. In that respect Cala Mesquida is one of the easy ones.

It has facilities, but it does not feel built up: behind it there is a small settlement, not a wall of hotels. The atmosphere is set by the wind and by the people the surf brings, which gives it a younger, less parasol-bound feel than other beaches in the north-east. These dunes have been declared an Area of Special Natural Interest since 1991 —together with Cala Agulla and Cala Moltó— and are protected as a priority European habitat. They are among the best preserved on the island, but also among the most fragile: the pressure of people walking over the dune is a real problem, and their care depends on a boardwalk and some sand traps that have gone years without the maintenance they need. When that infrastructure works, the dune recovers: the 2009 restoration reversed the erosion in less than ten years.

Cala Mesquida is the lung of the north-east. Capdepera and Cala Rajada are a step away, in a district that escaped the scale of the bay of Palma and that keeps a real village —with its castle, its street and its winter life— as well as a coastline. And the argument for a buyer is the same as at Formentor, and rests on the same law: the 1991 declaration shields Cala Mesquida, Cala Agulla and Cala Moltó, and no new housing goes up in an Area of Special Natural Interest. Three coves in a row that cannot be built on is a belt hard to find on this island. The drawback has to be said too: the wind here is character, not anecdote, and there are days when a parasol will not hold. In exchange, you have one of the finest dunes in the Mediterranean as a neighbour, and a stretch of coast that by law will look the same in thirty years.