Joanaina lives in heaven now, for sure.

Before moving there, she used her brush to sweep the stone floors and stairs of the small church of Biniagual in the middle of Mallorca for more than a decade every other day.

She loved to do it, even though there was much else to do.

It was important to her, even though the church had been abandoned for a long time and no priest came for years to celebrate masses, to marry couples or to bless those baptized.

Because everyone had moved away - and only Joanaina had stayed when Biniagual had long since died out and only a few Podencos from elsewhere went down the cobblestone village street and hunted rabbits.

Sometimes a black cat crouched on the wall surrounding the old mansion or did gymnastics over the centuries-old red-brown shingles on the roofs on the main street.

Every now and then you could hear the wobbly pans clacking back and forth, as if even a lightweight cat would conjure up sounds like an instrument.

It was the tune that Joanaina swept to.

The sun watched, the warm wind felt its way through overgrown gardens, whistled over unkempt abandoned fields with reddish earth.

Everything should be as it used to be

The picture has changed since then. Joanaina saw much of this change before she went to heaven. That the almonds are harvested again, cracked with the old machines in the barn behind the town exit and sold on the island's markets. That the olive trees are pruned again and give more fruit again. That the 170 hectares around the village are being cultivated again after years of fallow, despite all rural exodus, new orange and lemon trees are being planted and watered. The fact that vines of the local grape varieties Manto Negro and Prensal Blanc meanwhile bring such abundant harvests that there is again a bodega in town that fills thousands of bottles of the award-winning wine every year.

It was a long way.

It was visited by a German who never looked for the limelight, didn't want to earn a lot of money with it and always opposed the idea of ​​building a hotel here.

With success.

It wasn't about one day vacationers being able to see manicured lands with olive and cypress trees as if framed through the open window of their suite.

It was about this landscape itself. Everything should be as it once was, not lie fallow, not be primarily geared towards profit.

One looks in vain for signposts

The almonds should belong to the workers who harvest them so that they don't perish on the trees. Lemons are also of little economic use, but the splashes of color and their scented flowers are part of this landscape. The fact that the wine, which has been grown on 34 hectares since 1998, is in great demand and exported, is a nice side effect. The 148,000 vines are checked by hand seven times a year. The possible harvest weight of grapes is reduced by half by pruning, so that the remaining fruits thrive all the better - and taste the better. The labels of the bottles today carry the name of Biniagual across the island, abroad, in the wine cellars of top restaurants and in the glasses of wine connoisseurs. A circle closesbecause originally Biniagual was a wine-growing village of small winegrowers with their own parcels. Almost all the houses had old brick tanks for the wine on the outside.

You will look in vain for signs to Biniagual on Mallorca, only on the last few hundred meters so that you don't turn wrong if you really want to come.

All in all, it's only a handful.

And as quickly as you turn into the town on cobblestones, you can get to the fountain in the middle of the village square and past the small church again outside.

In its best times, Biniagual with its 14 houses had barely more than 50 inhabitants; today there are a good dozen.