Mallorca says goodbye to Jackie Waldren

She was a deep connoisseur of the island, probably wrote that best book about coexistence between foreigners and locals in Mallorca, ran a tiny archaeological museum in “her” Deià and was involved in many cultural initiatives with her lively, very US-American nature: Now Jacqueline “Jackie” Waldren, the widow of the US archaeologist William “Bill, who died in 2003, is now “Waldren died on Monday (May 24th) in Palma.

Waldren (Los Angeles, 1937) came to the idyllic village on the Tramuntana coast in 1959 as a 21-year-old student. There she met the American artist and archaeologist Bill Waldren – and stayed forever. Waldren was Part of that legendary artist colony around the writer Robert Gravesthat founded the myth of Deià. A bunch of Britons, Germans or Americans experienced great freedom thanks to the dirt cheap cost of living. Impressed by the landscape and architecture, they perceived Deià as a paradise – an idea that had little to do with the reality of the locals, which was shaped by hard agricultural work, traditional family structures and hierarchical relationships between farmers and landlords.

About this time and the changes that followed, Waldren wrote what is probably the most readable book on the relationship between the natives and foreigners on the island. In the only available antiquarian „Insiders and Outsiders. Paradise and Reality in Mallorca”, her doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford, the ethnologist analyzed how coexistence and coexistence with foreigners changed the place and how the locals – the insiders – positioned themselves compared to the newcomers – the outsiders. The book was published in 1996, and developments up to the end of the 1980s were incorporated into it.

After the death of her husband, Jackie Waldren guarded his legacy in one to one Mini-Museum remodeled former flour mill. The exhibits included the bones and skulls of those that died out about 5,000 years ago Cave goat “Myotragus balearicus”. In the Cova de Muleta between Deià and Sóller, which he researched, Bill Waldren also had one on display in the museum human skeleton found. It is dated to 3984 BC – the oldest such find on Mallorca.

In 2014 Jackie Waldren was allowed the speech at the so-called standard festival in Palma hold – an extraordinary honor for a foreigner. Jackie and Bill Waldren leave behind four grown daughters. Jackie Waldren is buried in the picturesque cemetery of Deià, next to her husband’s grave.

“Paradise has become a reality” – Read a long MZ interview with Jackie Waldren here

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