Unknown to most historians beyond the immediacy of the Hispanic World has been the renacimiento pequeño of Mallorcan historical studies. Antoni Pons, Alvaro Santamaría, Rossello Bordoy, Francisco Sevillano Colom, Font Obrador, and Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq are among the leading writers of this new wave. Based on extensive primary materials found in the Archivo Histórico de Mallorca (under the direction of Francisco Sevillano Colom) and the Archivo Municipal de Sóller (zealously maintained by Francisco Pérez), Santamaria’s book describes the attacks of the Barbary Pirate-Turkish alliance in the middle-to-late sixteenth century in the western Mediterranean and the Island of Mallorca and the town of Sóller’s response to this threat.
Mallorca had substantially aided Ferdinand’s “abortive” crusade, which led in 1515 to the capture of the mercantile center of Bujía. Ferdinand’s subsequent failure to consolidate and expand his North African holdings led to a counteroffensive against the Hispanic Mediterranean island possessions by the Barbary Pirates in league with the Ottoman Turks. Santamaría notes that Christian renegades, numbering in the thousands (including nobles), living in Argel, contributed with men, ships, and money to the Barbary-Ottoman offensive. The Moslem fleets threatened Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, and Corsica, as well as the Balearic Islands. By the 1530s Ibiza had become a pirate stronghold and the Islet of Dragonera a pirate base of operations in the Balearic Sea. Menorca was sacked a number of times with impunity. Although the attacks were numerous and continuous throughout the mid-sixteenth century, and communications were often cut with Peninsular Spain, the Barbary fleet, captained by Barbarroja, was mainly out for booty and prisoners for ransom, rather than invasion and conquest.
El valle de Sóller y Mallorca en el siglo XVI, a municipal history, describes Sóller’s continuous battle against the pirates and the great victory of May 11, 1561. Santamaría stresses the point that throughout the many years of the pirate incursions against Mallorca, the invaders rarely, if ever, sought a decisive land battle with the Christian Mallorcans, and they fled when confronted by equal or superior forces. These defenders were mostly villagers led by a handful of veterans from the Peninsula and African wars. The sixteenth-century defense of Mallorca was therefore a provincial and municipal defense with little help from Ferdinand, Charles I, or Philip II.
