On the 31st of
December 1229, Palma was conquered by King Jaime I of Aragon, who granted it a
municipality covering the entire island (therefore it was called the Ciutat de
Mallorca). The special geography of the city, bisected by a river, gave rise to
the de Vila de Dalt and the Vila d'Avall , population groups who resided on
each of the river banks.
Its privileged geographical situation allowed it to develop an intense
commercial relationship with the villages of the Maghreb, the Italian lordships
and the lordships of the Gran Turco, which made the city prospere into a golden
age. In la Lonja existed an active recruitment and business exchange
,supervised by the Consolat de mar, which ensured the respect of the law in
vigor in all commercial transactions.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the
plague, uprisings (of the peasants of the island) and the frequent attacks by
the Turkish and Berber pirates, led to reduced commercial activities and the
city entered an era of decadence, that stretched to the late seventeenth
century.
In the eighteenth century, the Decreto de Nueva Planta of Felipe V imposed on
the losers of the Spanish Succession War the name Palma de Mallorca to the
hitherto known Ciutat de Mallorca. The Decreto also modified the governmental
system of the whole island, transforming Palma into the capital of the new
province of the Balearic Islands and it is in this century when Charles III,
with the liberalization of trade with India, led Mallorca into an economical
growth,due to increased commercial and port activity.
The French occupation of Algeria in the nineteenth
century ended with the threat of Maghreb attacks in Mallorca, which favored the
expansion of maritime lines and shipping companies, and therefore also economic
growth in the city, which expanded demographically, due to the arising of new
population groups.
In the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century the emergence of
the phenomenon of tourism changed the physiognomy of the city and of the whole
island and transformed it into a centre of attraction for visitors and of
sociological exchange of cultures.
It is believed that the current settlement of the
city of Palma
was first occupied by a Talayotic population group with strong ties to the sea.
Later in 123 AD, it was invaded by the Romans in a military expedition led by
the Roman consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus who lined ships with animal skin to
avoid the sinking of its fleet for a second time by the slingers, who would
later be claimed by the whole of Rome to strengthen their armies . Later, in
903, the Arab general Isam al-Jawlani would conquer the island, with the
approval of the Emir of Cordoba ,Abd Allah. They named the city Medina Mayurqa.
There are monumental sites preserved from the Arabs, such as the Palacio Real
de La Almudaina, the Arab baths and the Arab city buried under the actual city.
The
population growth in Palma has been spectacular in recent years: while from
1981 to 1996 it only increased by 15,000, going from 290,372 to 304,250; over
the past five years it has grown by about 30,000, now counting more than
396,570 inhabitants, being the eighth largest city in Spain. It exceeded the
population of Bilbao in 2002 and the population of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
in 2007.
On the 26th of September 1997 , King Juan Carlos
granted his daughter the Infanta Cristina the title of Duquesa de Palma de
Mallorca, at the occasion of her wedding with Don Iñaki Urdangarín.
From this moment on, the growth of tourism in the
Balears has been absolutely spectacular: the number of 500,000 visitors in1960,
has increased to more than 6,739,700 visitors in 1997, with a number of
19,207,045 passengers at the airport in Palma in 2001 and a number of 1,410,709
passengers by sea . This makes that the Balearic Islands came to occupy the
leading position throughout the State in terms of gross domestic product per
head, and in 1996, it was the only community in Spain that exceeded the average
of the European Union.
