La Serra De Tramuntana

World Heritage Day is celebrated on November 16th, a day when back in 1972 the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage was signed in Paris.

In June 2011, la Serra de Tramuntana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Cultural Landscaped category. This mountain covers the island of Mallorca from northeast to southwest.

In la Serra de Tramuntana, you can find beautiful municipalities such as Andratx, Banyalbufar, Campanet, Escorça, Esporles, Fornalutx, Pollença, Valldemossa, and many more. These municipalities possess a wide variety of festive heritage, including religious, pagan, and commemorative celebrations; Tramuntana is filled with culture! Music, food, crafts, archaeology, paintings, museums, sculptures…. Its cultural inheritance is also made up of people like King Jaume I, Ramon Llull, Archduke Ludwig Salvador of Austria, Chopin or George Sand.

But, if what you really enjoy is nature (just like us), don’t worry, there’s plenty for you to admire. The cultural landscape of Tramuntana is made up of paths, terraces, walls, and traditional constructions in dry stone. It also contains exceptional hydraulic heritage and possessions (former units of production). Also, the Arab threat depopulated the coast for centuries, so a coastal watchtower network was necessary; it’s formed by towers, lookout posts and two rocky castles. We also find religious heritage, like the Lluc Sanctuary (a place of pilgrimage and a cultural symbol of Mallorca).The Serra de Tramuntana mountain range is rich in fauna and flora: the ferreret (Mallorquin midwife toad), the cinereous vulture, Sa Dragonera (now a Natural Park), Torrent de Pareis and Ses Fonts Ufanes (declared natural mo numents). If you wish to discover the Serra de Tramuntana, there are three routes you can take: the Sóller train route, the Dry-stone route, and the Literary route from Valldemossa to Pollença.

The Serra de Tramuntana preserves 65 of the 97 endemisms described in the Balearic Islands, and 65 of 68 plants endemic to Mallorca. So, as you can see, its biodiversity has a great importance. Broadly speaking, the flora of the Tramuntana can be organized into four plant communities: the Balearic holm oak, the wild olive garrigue, the limestone scrub and the Balearic culminal pine forests. You can also find citrus fruit trees, almond trees, yew, rosemary, lavender, rockrose, penyal violet, boxwood, and immortelle, among others.

If you want to know its peculiarities and characteristics, we recommend visiting the Sóller Botanical Garden, which reproduces the typical flora of the mountainous areas.

Speaking of Tramuntana, our perfumer Caroline Leclerc created a formula with that same name, part of a set of three fragrances created for Nit de l’Art (celebrated the third week of September). These were inspired by the Mallorquin landscape: Costa, Pla, and Tramuntana. When you smell them, their special, unique, and beautiful aroma immediately transports you to those places. Specifically, the fragrance
“Tramuntana” attends to pay a tribute to the richness of the nature forming the Tramuntana Mountain Chain. Its protagonists are laurel, mastic, and myrtle, therefore combining green, conifers and aromatics facets. Along side, the brightness of the citruses dance with the darker and humid notes of the oak moss and the woods. If you wish to get your hands on them, you can contact us at info@vitivinci.com or click here.

Lastly, I would like to mention a couple of organizations that support its conservation and are focused on sustainability and regeneration: Tramuntana XXI and Mallorca Preservation Foundation.

Tramuntana XXI is a non-profit association that works for the conservation of the natural, social, and cultural values and heritage of the Serra de Tramuntana advising, proposing, and implementing initiatives to respond to the challenges that Tramuntana faces. For example, they generate spaces for participation and debate to identify the challenges in the Serra de Tramuntana and promote, with the agents involved in the territory, initiatives to improve the environment; they support the different territorial management bodies and carry out political advocacy actions; they analyse current regulations and advocate for an efficient and effective model of governance; they support public and private management of this rural space, based on the principles of environmental, social and economic sustainability, through the most efficient and profitable practices and they carry out divulgative and awareness actions, to share our vision of a living and resilient Sierra, generating feelings of esteem and commitment to protection. And, good news, you can become a member!

On the other hand, Mallorca Preservation Foundation (MAPF) was created in 2017 and seeks to support local environmental and conservation initiatives to preserve the exceptional beauty of Mallorca (such as regenerative agriculture, marine fauna recovery, restorations, etc.). To achieve this goal, MAPF raises funds from people and companies passionate about the conservation of Mallorca, with which to support local initiatives and projects whose objective is the conservation of the Island. The Foundation promotes the creation of maritime protection areas, a sea free of plastics, sustainable agriculture and local products, the protection of our endangered species and their habitats as well as the search for solutions to implement renewable energies and optimal waste management. Some of their projects include the restoration of wetlands in the bay of Alcúdia, a bee saving project, a regenerative agriculture project, carob trees recovery project, and Plastic Kilometers for Iris, which aims to promote conscious walks among young people, with the mission of educating people around us about the problems that single-use plastics are generating.