Hotels in Caimari

Caimari

Caimari is a village of some seven hundred people in the municipality of Selva, strung along the foot of the Serra de Tramuntana between Mancor de la Vall, three and a half kilometres away, and the hamlet of Binibona, two and a half kilometres in the other direction. It stands at the mouth of the old mountain pass, and the historic pilgrims' route to the monastery of Lluc, the Cami Vell de Lluc, climbs directly out of the village on cobbled switchbacks. That footpath is now the main reason walkers come: it gains height fast through terraced olive groves and reaches the sanctuary in roughly three hours. The name has become opaque over the centuries, recorded in the Middle Ages as Caymarix, Caymaritx and Queymaritx; the reading most scholars prefer derives it from a word meaning "a cluster of caves". The village lives off the olive, and the terraces that step up the mountainside behind it have been worked for oil since before the Christian conquest. On the third Sunday of November Caimari holds the Fira de s'Oliva, an olive fair that draws visitors from across Mallorca to buy oil, table olives and local craftwork. In the same weeks the village hosts an international early-music festival that has brought performers of the rank of Gustav Leonhardt to a church in a village of seven hundred. The patronal festival falls on 15 August, the Mare de Deu d'Agost, when the oldest residents are honoured and the whole village eats together in the Placa Major. At Easter the Davallament de la Creu is staged at Es Fornassos, the highest point of the village, and on Easter Monday the Pancaritat pilgrimage sets out. What Caimari offers is a village that still works for a living, with the mountains beginning at the last house.