Fjord fiesta - Scanorama

SUITE LIFE
made roads and turned this place into the world’s
prettiest tourist spot?” he ventured.
It wasn’t a question as such. The blueprints
for a grand house, big enough for all their friends,
were already complete.
EVEN THOUGH the hotel occupies a beautiful
stretch of beach, the two swimming pools in the
garden are just as popular with guests when the
sun is shining (which it does more than 300 days
a year). An attendant clad completely in white –
tennis shoes, shorts, polo shirt and cap – is handing
out towels and putting up parasols for men in
swimming trunks, Rolexes and Gucci sunglasses,
their wives sashaying up in the hotel’s bathrobes.
Most of the guests, like an elderly Scottish
couple strolling out to the lighthouse, never stray
from the peninsula during their vacations here.
“We’re here for two weeks of relaxation. I
like the convenience of going to Majorca with
all those millions of flights but at the same time
you’re not part of the mass tourism in many of
the villages along the coast. I could stay here
forever,” the husband says, politely tipping his
hat in farewell.
If you overlook the swimming pools – added
much later – both the hotel and the cape (nowadays
owned by Marjorca’s Barceló Group) are
exactly as Diehl imagined them. And that’s despite
him running the place for a mere five years,
from 1929 to 1934. By then, the Wall Street Crash
had taken its toll on Argentina and Spain, and the
banks that had lent him money for the transformation
of Cap de Formentor were calling in their
loans. Diehl had also underestimated the cost of
running a hotel, and putting on lavish public soirées
and sailing regattas. There was nothing left.
In a final, desperate bid, he installed a roulette
table to try and make some quick cash. But it was
too late, and the banks seized the property.
As Palau points out, however, his spirit lives
on. Diehl got the land surrounding the hotel
declared a nature reserve. And although the
rooms have been updated with flat-panel TVs and
Wi-Fi, they are just as Majorcan as they were 80
years ago, with pink wallpaper, rustic furniture
Different strokes for different folks:
If tennis or mini-golf doesn’t float
your boat there’s always the beach
38 FEBRUARY 2013 SCANORAMA