Mallorca

Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest island of the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain, and the seventh largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Balearic Islands have been an autonomous region of Spain since 1983. There are two small islands off the coast of Mallorca: Cabrera (southeast of Palma) and Dragonera (west of Palma). The anthem of Mallorca is "La Balanguera". Like the other Balearic Islands of Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera, the island is an extremely popular holiday destination, particularly for tourists from the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The international airport, Palma de Mallorca Airport, is one of the busiest in Spain; it was used by 28 million passengers in 2017, with use increasing every year between 2012 and 2017. The name derives from Classical Latin insula maior, "larger island". Later, in Medieval Latin, this became Maiorca, "the larger one", in comparison to Menorca, "the smaller one". This was then hypercorrected to Mallorca by central Catalan scribes, which later came to be accepted as the standard spelling. The Balearic Islands were first colonised by humans during the 3rd millennium BC, around 2500–2300 BC from the Iberian Peninsula or southern France, by people associated with the Bell Beaker culture. The arrival of humans resulted in the rapid extinction of the three species of terrestrial mammals native to Mallorca, the dwarf goat-antelope Myotragus balearicus, the giant dormouse Hypnomys morpheus, and the shrew Nesiotites hidalgo, all three of which had been continuously present on Mallorca for over 5 million years. The island's prehistoric settlements are called talaiots or talayots. The people of the islands raised Bronze Age megaliths as part of their Talaiotic culture.