Playa de Muro

Playa de Muro is the longest beach in Mallorca: six kilometres of fine white sand in the bay of Alcúdia, with water so shallow that you can walk a fair way out to sea before it reaches your waist. It is the family beach of the island par excellence, and also the hardest to sum up: those six kilometres take in a hotel area with everything laid on, a protected dune system without a single building, and a settlement of a hundred and forty huts built on the sand. And behind it all, s'Albufera, the most important wetland in the Balearic Islands.

White, very fine sand, between twenty-five and forty metres wide, dunes along much of its length and a blue flag. But what really defines it is the way the water deepens: so slowly that it is, by some distance, the reference beach for anyone with children. It is divided into four sectors that hardly resemble one another. Sector 1 and Sector 2 are the built-up part, with hotels on the front line, beach bars, places to eat and water sports schools. Es Comú is exactly the opposite: eighty hectares of dunes and pine wood without a single building. And Ses Casetes des Capellans is a case of its own, which deserves its own paragraph.

There is no small print here, which is a relief: you drive there and you park free. From Palma it is about forty-five minutes on the Ma-13. In the built-up sectors and in Ses Casetes des Capellans there is free parking beside the hotels and restaurants, and there is usually space; the open ground at the Pont dels Anglesos is large, also free, and leaves you two minutes from one of the best stretches. The only exception is Es Comú: being the protected sector, parking is limited and in July and August it is best to arrive before ten. Compared with Es Trenc, where everything is paid for, or Formentor, where in summer you simply cannot drive in, Muro is the easy beach of the island.

Muro does not sell solitude and is right not to pretend otherwise: it is a tourist beach, with hotels in front and everything within reach. But it has two oddities that save it from being a brochure beach. The first is Es Comú: a belt of dunes of eighty hectares that forms part of the Parc Natural de s'Albufera and is declared an Área Natural de Especial Interés — it is the sand barrier separating the fresh water of the wetland from the salt water of the sea, and there is nothing there and there never will be. The second is Ses Casetes des Capellans: a hundred and forty huts built literally on the sand, with sand streets, which grew out of a hut belonging to the owners of Son Santmartí that the priests of Muro used for their summers. Hence the name. Today they are handed down from one generation to the next and are still the summer of local families, not a product for visitors.

Muro sustains an entire market. The area lives on holiday rentals and on central European visitors who come back every year, and the reason is precisely that water that does not go over your head: a family with small children chooses here and repeats. But the underlying argument for a buyer is what lies behind. Most tourist beaches in Mallorca have hotels in front and more hotels behind; here, past the front line, two thousand hectares of natural park open up. S'Albufera, declared in 1988, is the most important wetland in the Balearic Islands: three hundred and three bird species recorded, two thirds of all those found in the islands. And that is never built on. It means this area cannot grow inland: it is wedged between the sea and the wetland, and what is there is what there will be. A tourist beach with a natural park for a neighbour and a growth limit set by law is a rare combination — and it is what explains why the product holds its value here.