The charm and character of this genuine working fishing port continues to surprise the first time visitor. Why? I quote the words of a recent visitor: "It's a visual experience and you can touch it, smell it and feel its energy.
Stroll past harbourside cafés where fishermen exchange stories, step over their nets and pause to view their time-worn boats, spartan decks and trawl blades which indiscriminately scour, rake and ransack the sea bottom.”
From Monday to Friday the majority of the Puerto Andratx trawlers depart the harbour just before dawn, at approximately 5 am turning either north-west and along the coast towards Sóller or south-east towards Palma. Generally no further than a 30 kilometre radius from their home port. At 5 pm, some 12 hours later, the boats return, often in line and with gulls in their wake.
The 15 trawlers, all privately owned, operate and sell through a co-operative known locally as the "Cofradía de los Pescadores" - their newly built offices occupy one of Puerto Andratx's most valuable real estate locations. The Cofradía de los Pescadores assist the trawler men, administer their affairs and protect their interests.
However, just a few metres from the moored trawlers and on the harbourside is the daily fish market: Monday to Friday during summer and on Tuesday and Friday in winter. From 5 pm until 7 pm fresh fish, prawns and various shellfish are purchased by the residents and the local restaurateurs.
One particularly ingenious method used by the fishermen of Andratx to lure their catch is to place floating platforms a few kilometres off-shore to provide shade on the surface to which the tasty Dorada fish congregate underneath.
To protect the coast from over-fishing the Government restricted the trawlers to fishing to a maximum of twelve hours a day. Eight years ago the fishing limit was sixteen hours.
Less than 100 years ago the fishermen of Andratx lived in Andratx village, approximately 4 kilometres in land, only their boats were moored in Puerto Andratx. In those days the fishermen were in fear of the pirates from North Africa who menaced the coast following the end of the Arab occupation of the island.
Each year during mid July the Festival 'La Virgin del Carmen' takes place and in the evening a flotilla of boats sail out of the harbour to a fanfare of hooting, trumpets and fog horns and are lead by the port's trawlers bedecked in flags with the statue of the Virgin Mary taking pride of place in the leading trawler. Closely following are multitudes of pleasure craft and fishing boats loaded to the gunnels with church dignitaries and as many local people as can squeeze on board. Soon after the boats return to the inner harbour to much cheering and general merry making.