Hotels in Binibona

Binibona

Binibona is a hamlet of no more than a few dozen houses in the municipality of Selva, set where the plain of Mallorca runs up against the southern flank of the Serra de Tramuntana. It lies two kilometres from Caimari along a single lane, and the road effectively ends there, which is the reason the place has stayed as quiet as it has. The name is Arabic in origin: the prefix Bini- means "son of", and the settlement appears in the thirteenth-century Llibre del Repartiment as the rahal of Benimala, awarded to Berenguer de Montcada after the conquest. Two of the old estate houses, Can Beneit and Can Furios, once held private chapels, and both names still attach to buildings in the hamlet. A talayotic burial mound known as the Claper de Binibona stands just west of the houses, evidence that people were living on this ground some three thousand years ago. Binibona is known across the island for the density of its agroturismos, converted farmhouses set among dense holm-oak woodland, and for the remains of a botanical garden laid out here in the nineteenth century. From here the lane carries on to the estates in the north-east of the municipality, la Coma, les Figueroles, Alcanella and Alcanelleta, and walkers use the hamlet as a starting point for the climb into the mountains. Eastwards stand the Castell Gran and the Castell Petit, old estates on the medieval public path that ran to Pollenca. Every Easter Monday the hamlet keeps the Pancaritat, a country pilgrimage that ends in a shared meal in the open air. For travellers it offers what the coast cannot: absolute silence, a sky without light pollution, and Palma still only forty minutes away.