What are the most worthwhile things to do in Mallorca on a first visit?

What is protected in the Tramuntana is not a view but a system. UNESCO's description of the property is of a terraced agricultural landscape on a steep range parallel to the northwest coast, with interconnected water systems — water mills, qanats, canals and storage basins — organized around farming units of feudal origin, held together by dry-stone walls and structures, and punctuated by villages, churches, towers and lighthouses. Criterion (v) is the key: this is an outstanding example of a traditional land use that has shaped a place over centuries, and understanding that turns a scenic drive into something legible.

The second thing worth building a first trip around is offshore and almost nobody plans for it. The Parque Nacional Marítimo-Terrestre del Archipiélago de Cabrera, declared in 1991 at 10,021 hectares, was expanded by the Council of Ministers on 1 February 2019 with the addition of 80,779 hectares of marine waters, taking it to roughly 90,800 hectares — nine times its former size. That made it the largest national park in Spain, including the terrestrial ones, and the largest marine park in the western Mediterranean. The expansion lifted the marine share of Spain's whole national park network from 4 per cent to 23 per cent in a single decision.

Between those two, Palma anchors the trip. The practical point about a first visit is to choose a base on the side of the island you actually want: the Tramuntana villages for the mountains, the southern and eastern coast for swimming, and Palma if you want both within reach at the cost of driving to each.

Palma, Puerto records 71.6 clear days a year and 2,779 hours of sunshine, and 16.2 of those clear days fall in July alone. That concentration is why the Tramuntana looks the way it does in high summer — stonework and bare rock under a sky with almost nothing in it — and why the same slopes in a cloudier spring month read as a far greener, softer landscape.

Cabrera is a national park, not a beach day. Access to the archipelago is managed, and the whole of the 80,779 hectares added in 2019 was marine water rather than land, so most of what the park protects sits below the surface. Anyone picturing a trip there as an extension of a resort holiday has the wrong model; it is a protected-area visit, with the access controls that implies.

• Northwest — The inscribed landscape: terraces, dry-stone walls, water mills and the villages built into the range.
• Offshore south — Cabrera, Spain's largest national park at around 90,800 hectares, reached by boat from the southern coast.
• Palma — The island's only base from which both the mountains and the southern coast are day trips rather than relocations.

The Tramuntana's roads are narrow, steep and heavily used in season, and the terraced paths were built for agriculture rather than recreation. Cabrera's access is regulated as a national park, which means capacity and permitting rather than turning up. And because the property is a living agricultural landscape — farms, irrigation, working stone — large parts of it are private land inside the World Heritage boundary, so the designation does not translate into open access.

The Mallorca when-to-visit question in this group explains why the mountains and the beaches have different best months, which decides which of these two you build the trip around.