A time warp back to the fifties, that’s Binissalem. There are still people here who don’t lock their doors at night. In a walk around the town you also may see a half dozen cars parked with their lock buttons up, so trusting are the local inhabitants. Small children are to be seen late at night in the church square unaccompanied, as their parents know that any adult in the vicinity will function "in loco parentis" should the occasion require, be it with a helping hand or a disciplinary admonition. Binissalem is to a surprising degree untouched, unspoiled, innocent and unexploited, and long may things stay this way. We are trying to import some sophistication (and some money) into the town, but hope it won’t be overtaken by all the elements that can so often conspire to spoil delightful small places when they become discovered by tourists. But as we are the only hotel within ten miles, and as we have room for only 32 people at a time, we hope we’ll not contribute to any potential despoliation of the town.

Besides, we tend to attract the kind of people who want to see places like Binissalem preserved as intact as possible.

There is a gentle domestic history to the town, with some literary connections, thousand year old Moorish influences, and fame, since the 18th century, for its stonework, its carpentry, its architecture (Binissalem has more small palaces than any other town here save Palma) and most of all its wine, which is the only "denominación" wine made on Mallorca.

We hope you’ll visit our little jewel of a town, just 20 minutes from Palma, ten from the mountains, and a half hour from good beaches on either side of the island. And we’d welcome the chance to make your stay a special one.

The statistics tell the story -- almost sixteen million visitors every year, Europe’s No. 1 holiday destination. Mallorca offers sand and sun and sea, package holidays, endless tourist activities, discos and busy resorts, and all the other distractions that are to be found in the tourist capitals of the world.

And there’s money on Mallorca. At any given moment there are several billion’s worth of yachts in Mallorca’s marinas, whether you count in Dollars, Pounds, Deutschmarks, or any other currency. Property, too, is expensive, and getting more expensive all the time. As one house agent remarked, ingenuously, "A million Pounds doesn’t buy much of a house here anymore."

But there’s another Mallorca, not far in distance but far in style from the crowded resorts along the coast. It’s the Mallorca where one can still see farmers tilling their fields with a mule and a wooden handled plough. It’s self-contained microcosm of greater Spain, with mountains, coves, pine forests, caves, sandy beaches and dusty plains -- samples of a dozen landscapes all contained on an island of 40 miles by 65 miles. It’s the unsullied interior, with wild walkways through the mountains, where, as they say, the hand of man has barely set foot. It’s the broad expanse of the empty quarter, where ancient windmills built by the Moors in the 10th century still creak in the wind to raise water for the crops. It’s the parts of the island that refresh the parts of you that other holiday destinations hardly reach.

So we salute the millions of package holidaymakers who swarm here every season on the 800 flights a day from Northern Europe (Palma airport becomes Europe’s fourth busiest airport during the months of July and August) They are the people who make the cheap flights available and who support the infrastructure of the island.

And we salute the millionaires, who leave trails of money dripping in their wake, for they support and make viable the multitude of fine restaurants, as well as a host of art galleries, markets, quality shops and speciality services.

And we salute the sophisticated Mallorquins and the educated international community of permanent residents, for they sustain the cultural life of the island -- the excellent local symphony orchestra, the ballet and opera seasons, the films with original soundtracks, the array of theatrical productions, the seminars and presentations at the university and cultural foundations, and the dozen or more music festivals that light up the island every year.

And finally we salute the common sense of the people of Mallorca, who have managed to preserve their culture intact in the face of a thirty year onslaught of tourists, who intelligently concentrated the vast bulk of the tourist activities into a few relatively small portions of the island, and who seem capable of treating us all with respect, but without an excess of diffidence, and who offer to tourists and discerning travellers the opportunity to delight in their little paradise island.