Most people drive past Bendinat without knowing it. The motorway from Palma to the southwest runs along its foot, and from the road you see little more than pine trees and the odd white wall. That is rather the point. Bendinat is a residential slope between Palma and Portals Nous where the houses face the sea, the streets are quiet, and nothing much happens apart from life.
A name from a meal
The local story goes back to 1229. After King Jaume I landed on the island to take it from the Moors, he is said to have stopped here and eaten well — bé hem dinat in Catalan. Whether or not it happened that way, the name stuck. So did the castle: the Castell de Bendinat, a private residence rebuilt in the 19th century, still stands among the trees and gives the area its landmark.
Golf among the olive trees
Below the castle lies the Real Golf de Bendinat, laid out over the hillside with old olive trees and pines between the fairways. It is not a resort course in the sense of hotels and crowds. It is the kind of club where people who live nearby play nine holes before lunch.
Why people live here all year
Bendinat works because everything is close and nothing is in the way. Palma’s old town is about fifteen minutes by car, the airport about twenty-five. The marina at Puerto Portals is five minutes down the hill, and the coves of Illetas are just as near. Behind it all rises the Serra de Na Burguesa, so the slope gets the morning sun and a view across the bay. Families stay because the international schools are within reach; second-home owners come because the house works in February as well as in August.
Living here
This is the setting for Villa Bendinat, a contemporary villa on the slope with the bay in front of it: five bedrooms, a pool terrace the width of the house and a sauna below. It is offered whole, or in shares from four weeks a year. See the whole house · See it as co-own
