Menorca

Menorca is the easternmost of Spain’s Balearic Islands, a quieter neighbour to Mallorca that UNESCO declared a Biosphere Reserve in 1993. Its two towns, Maó in the east and Ciutadella in the west, bracket an interior of farmland and a coastline that alternates between white limestone coves in the south and dark, wind-worn headlands in the north. The Camí de Cavalls, a historic trail, circles the entire island and links most of its beaches and lighthouses.

Cala Galdana

Cala Galdana is my base on Menorca. The PhotoPills photography camp keeps its hotel here, and I have returned four times as one of the instructors, using the bay as a starting point for a week of shooting all over the island. The best view of it took an unplanned hike to find: Daria and I followed a path up through the pines and came out at Mirador Sa Punta, the viewpoint above the curved bay with its moored sailboats and turquoise water.

The town itself is built for comfort: hotels, restaurants, kayaks, sunset boat trips, calm water for families. At times it feels closer to a Mallorcan resort like Port d’Alcúdia, which I photographed for the Mallorca travel guide, than to a wild Menorcan cove. The location is the argument: some of the island’s best beaches sit within walking distance.

Cala Mitjana

Twenty minutes on foot from Cala Galdana, Cala Mitjana shows what the same coast looks like undeveloped: a cove of turquoise water ringed by pine-topped limestone cliffs, with no facilities at all. The hike is short, but it filters the crowd and changes the atmosphere entirely. Swimmers cross to Cala Mitjaneta, a cove next door with room for a handful of people, and cliff jumpers queue on the ledges above.

The elevated viewpoints along the cliffs hand you the panorama without any searching. From here the Camí de Cavalls continues to Cala Trebalúger and Cala Escorxada for those who want their coves even emptier. For an empty-beach frame in high season, the only reliable answers are off-season travel or arriving at first light.

Favàritx Lighthouse

The Favàritx Lighthouse stands on the northeastern tip of the island, a white tower wrapped in a black spiral above dark slate that looks like a film set of the Moon. Built between 1917 and 1922 after a series of shipwrecks, it still guards a coast that earned its reputation the hard way. Every visit gives me a different composition: the rare plants, tidal puddles, and salt crystals around the tower keep changing the foreground.

The wider cape is part of the protected S’Albufera des Grau Natural Park, and its character shifts with the hour. At sunset I once shared the rocks with 39 other photographers as the limestone coast at Cap de Favàritx turned pink against the last light, the lighthouse small on the horizon with its 16-nautical-mile beam just waking up.

Cap de Cavalleria

The north coast concentrates at Cavalleria, where the lighthouse rises 94 metres above the sea on the island’s tallest cliffs and flashes twice every ten seconds through the night. Menorca is the easternmost point of the country, so a workshop morning here means the first sunrise in Spain: we drove out in darkness, climbed the cliff, and waited for the clouds to light up from below the horizon.

The headland rewards looking backward too. Searching for a sunset composition I stepped into a dark cave just as the low sun found its walls, and for a few seconds the lighthouse stood framed in glowing rock. It was my first lighthouse photograph, and it taught me how much of this work is being in position when the light decides.

Ciutadella and Pont d’en Gil

Ciutadella, the old capital, keeps its history in walking distance: the lanes around Es Born, a shoreline of traditional fishing boats, and the Castell de Sant Nicolau guarding the mouth of the bay. I led a group there at dusk alongside Albert Dros and Elia Locardi, and while my colleagues climbed down the rocks to shoot the coastline, I framed the fortress head-on in the golden light with my wife waiting at its gate. I do not turn landscape photographers into cityscape photographers.

A short drive up the coast, Pont d’en Gil arcs over the sea like the gate of an ancient harbour. I assumed human hands had shaped it; the arch is entirely natural, and locals swim boats through it on calm evenings.

Sanisera and the North Coast

The coast between Cavalleria and the bays further west carries the island’s oldest stories. On a morning shoot I had already packed up when the sun broke across the water, and I unpacked the tripod again for the limestone coves of the Cavalleria coastline, a shoreline that once drew Roman fleets and the pirates who followed them.

In the natural harbour next door, the Romans established the port of Sanisera in the 2nd century BC. I photographed it through the doorway of a ruined fisherman’s hut at sunset: one boat on still water, and the ruin of the British Tower holding the horizon. The site is an active archaeological dig now, its Roman city still only partly understood.

The Menorca Night Sky

Menorca became a Starlight Reserve and Starlight Destination in 2019, and the designations describe what the Mediterranean already enforces: an island isolated from continental light pollution. In summer, the Milky Way spans the sky over Favàritx clearly enough for the naked eye, and even village lights cannot drown it, as a May night over Son Bou proved. Cala Macarella and Monte Toro, the island’s highest point, serve the same sky.

My first star trails happened here the hard way. The intervalometer refused to fire, so I counted to 30 and pressed the shutter manually, over and over, for an hour, until the sky had drawn its circles over the cove. Daylight returns the favour at the same spot: the rocky beach with its scattered islets has become an icon of Menorca at sunset.

Photographing Menorca

Menorca is where I teach, and where I keep being taught. At one camp, Eric Paré and Kim Henry demonstrated tube light painting with a dancer on a cold, calm night, drawing shapes in the air behind her that look like they belong to another planet.

The island’s orientation does real work in planning. East-facing capes like Favàritx and La Mola take the sunrise; the south and west, like Atalis beach near Es Migjorn Gran, deliver the sunsets. Sunrise mornings demand more: remote cliffs reached in darkness, before local transport wakes up. The reward is cooler, quieter tones than the saturated evening sky, and beaches that photograph as empty as they do across the rest of Spain only in deep winter.

When to Visit Menorca

May is my month. The PhotoPills camp gathers photographers from around the world, the Milky Way season is starting, spring sunrises line up behind the Cavalleria cliffs, and the water is already swimmable while the beaches stay half empty. July and August bring the full crowds to the calas, though even then a twenty-minute hike thins them out.

Off-season has its own advantages: private cars can drive close to Favàritx, which is restricted during the tourist season, and the island returns to its residents. The prehistoric monuments of Talayotic Menorca, inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2023, have no season at all. For the night sky, aim for the new moon between May and September.

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