Nuria Mondragón
Balanced island life
In a quiet valley of Sóller in Mallorca where you can hear the rain fall, the hens cackle in the nearby chicken yard and the birds singing from the trees, Nuria Mondragón lives together with her husband and their four-year old son Tristán.
If you go outside their beautiful stone house you will immediately find yourself surrounded by mountains covered in clouds and narrow streets with magic around each corner, like a fountain that you can drink directly from or exotic plantations with lemon and orange trees.
It is easy to understand why Nuria decided to settle here with her family.
“What I love the most about living here is that I can raise Tristán in the same way as I was raised myself, enjoying simple things and nature. I feel that he has the same life as I had when I was a child, and I feel so grateful for that,” says Nuria, referring to her own childhood in a small village in Galicia, in the North of Spain.
In fact, Nuria fell in love with the island life because of her husband, who is from the Canary Islands and wanted to move to Menorca to explore the island adventure.
“At that time, we lived in Barcelona which I really enjoyed so I decided to explore Menorca from its least flattering side to see if I could live there. We went there in February, for five days with rain. However, I immediately fell in love with nature and the Balearic Islands way of living,” she says.
After exploring Menorca for five years, the small family decided to make a change and move to Mallorca.
If you ask Nuria, her life is all about balance. In the morning she goes to the city Palma to work in an office position and in the afternoon, she goes home to do what she loves the most: Work within the visual field and create visual content for her friend ceramicist Blanca Madruga who also lives on the island.
“My life is all about balance. My job makes it possible for me to do what I love the most in the afternoon. At the same time, I have to go to the city every day, but I always return to my quiet place where I can relax and slow down, be together with my family, make my own ceramics – and play music,” says Nuria who is an educated music teacher.
“Libra is my sign of zodiac, and I am a Libra at heart,” she says smiling.
When you look around in their beautiful home, there are no electronic devices. No television, no iPads.
“We skipped the television many years ago. We don’t need it in our lives, and we don’t want it to take up our time. Well, we have phones and a computer and sometimes Tristán is allowed to watch a movie on the computer upstairs,” she says.
As the weather is almost good all year round, the little family spend most of their time outside. They often go for a walk, have a picnic by the sea, bike or go to the market to buy local fruit and vegetables. Also, Nuria loves to look for special objects and furniture in flea markets or small vintage stores on the island.
Well, we are curious. What is essential to Nuria in relation to having a good life?
“To me it is all about these little moments. Yesterday we went for a walk in the forest with some of our friends to pick up mushrooms. Tristán was looking for small magic human beings, collecting leaves and twigs and he was so happy. Afterwards we went home to have a dinner with our friends. These little moments in life are all I need.”
