And the mountain of everyone who wants to love, to feel, to open themselves up to the wild, harsh, beautiful, and difficult to understand.

That great rock, drawn since the beginning of time, always present and vigilant, erect and serious like a guard of Her Majesty, affectionate and beguiling like the most beautiful of sirens. Refuge for painters in love and a killer of clueless ships.

El Cavall Bernat is always there, as it has always been, waiting for you, surprising you.

I will always remember the first time I saw it; I was a girl, a small and innocent girl who did not yet know how powerful beauty and its influence on my life would be. But here I arrived, on a standard middle-class European vacation on the dreamed-of and tranquil "island of calm"; and in Pollença—where on earth are we? I must have thought. Beach day. Towels. Inflatables. Umbrellas. Sunscreen. Sand. Water. Waves. Salt. Everything was a new sensation to me. Everything was a first time. But at 8 o'clock in the evening—yes, my parents were the kind who preferred a family sunset on the beach to the crowded hotel dinner buffet, something I have never thanked them enough for—at 8 o'clock, it appears. Present. Unique. Solitary. That red—was it red that day? Imposing. Disturbing. I use those words now, but I am sure that day I couldn't think of anything more than "red" or "pretty." 

Love at first sight. And, my friend, if you have ever fallen in love at first sight, which I hope you have, I think you will know what I mean. A shot straight to the center. Anguish. Obsession. Sadness. Longing. Love. So much love.

Since that day, I return to see my lover. Every day, at the exact same time. I look out from the balcony of my suite and observe it. It remains an unrequited love. Of course. A platonic love, naturally, unattainable. But love after all. Its colors, that daily and shifting palette, with shades that have taken me years to differentiate and name; that tranquility, that succession of magical moments already enchanted Chopin and his inseparable George Sand (ah, beauty), the Archduke Ludwig Salvator, the painter Anglada Camarasa, and many, many others. Get in line, darlings. The rock is mine, and I don't like to share the things that matter to me. I don't care what the books or other chronicles say. The mountain is mine, its colors and aromas too. What it inspires, it inspires in me. Period.

If one day I fail it and cannot witness the liturgy of the sunset, I ask a hotel guest to do me a favor, to look at it, and to tell me how it was the next day during breakfast. In doing so, I find out two things: first, if that guest is an emotional and sensitive person or just a frustrated geologist; and second, if my mountain knew I wasn't there, that I wasn't looking at it; if apathy appeared in it—the carelessness of not knowing itself watched by its secret lover. "Ah. Yes. That mountain. Well, I don't know. Gray or brown. Those were more or less the colors yesterday." 

My love.

Tarrassó. Cavall Bernat. Colección privada del hotel.