Island in front of the Island

Our native soil draws all of us, by I know not
what sweetness, and never allows us to forget
(Ovid, Epist. ex Pont., I, 3, 34)


— Click on the photos to enlarge the panorama —

It is exactly a year today that Wang Wei was in Cabrera, in a rather grey day. Yesterday, as he went back again, the day was more than grey, looking like wanting to give a good shower. Then the sky cleared up, and in the evening, on the way back to the port of Sa Ràpita, we were already sailing with good wind at a speed of five knots. Even the sea provided us with a small gift. Shortly before reaching the port, the hook (in Catalan «la fluixa») we had launched just for a try, caught a llampuga which without delay ended in the pan, in the happy company of some red peppers. Wang Wei missed very much Pei Di, the great fan of the fishes of the archipelago.


Arriving to Cabrera, the entrance of the port was occupied by a race of ancient ships just sailing out for a trip around the island.




If in last August we went to see the cellar built by the Feliu family who attempted in vain to introduce the art of viticulture in the island of Cabrera, and the recently excavated remains of the Byzantine monastery, yesterday we decided to climb up to the late fourteenth century castle dominating the harbor entrance.


The castle has succesfully protected the island from the sporadic occupations of pirates who used it as a platform to their raids along the coasts of Mallorca.

Pliny (Nat. Hist., III, 11): “At a distance of twelve thousand steps from the main island
towards the interior part of the sea, there is Cabrera, threatening
with naufrage [insidiosa naufragiis]”

The French captives deported here from 1809 on, during the Spanish War Independence, established a small open air theatre between these rocks. Of the 13500 persons brought here only 3500 managed to survive with heroic efforts.