Michelle Obama remains in love with the Balearic Islands, where she travels every year in style. Her love affair leads her to enjoy the emerald waters, the interior corners, and the sophisticated (and expensive) Mediterranean lifestyle she discovered in the gardens of Marivent, when in a distant August of 2010 she had lunch at the Mallorcan palace with the (then) princess Letizia and they hit it off.
The chemistry of high politics and the globalist slogan progressivism has been gradually replaced over the years by leisure and royal-like disconnection, which Obama practices in the archipelago surrounded by all comforts, relying on her friendships and influences.
The wife of the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, usually travels without her husband. Her usual destination is usually Mallorca, where she has a host who knows the island perfectly: the former US ambassador to Spain, James Costos.
The former diplomat and his husband, the interior designer Michael Smith, have a magnificent villa in the Mallorcan countryside, an estate - not a traditional Mallorcan possession, as they say to give it more grandeur - called X'arbet, which the couple has turned into a paradise.
Decorated with refined Italian aroma, gatopadersco, the house was rented for more than 7,000 euros per night. It has seven bedrooms, pergola fountains, and a Versailles-style maze. Now the Costos enjoy it with their friends, like Michelle Obama, and showcase it to top magazines.
But this time Michelle has not chosen the largest and most crowded of the islands in the archipelago. This time she has traveled to Menorca, the island of the wind, less known but turned into a trendy destination, colonized by silent great fortunes, triumphant among the French jet set and a historic summer destination for the Catalan bourgeoisie.
Obama arrived last Friday night on a private jet - a Gulfstream G650ER with a capacity for 15 passengers - after ten o'clock at night at the small airport of Mahón.
From there, as sources consulted by LOC explain amid strong security measures that piqued the curiosity of the locals, with whom she did not mingle, she headed to Isla del Rey. It is an islet in the splendid bay of the port of Mahón, a place with a long and rich history.
Named in honor of the landing and conquest of King Alfonso III of Aragon in the 13th century, the island historically played a strategic role, hosting a military hospital for years.
Today, however, it hosts a very different activity: the renowned Swiss contemporary art gallery Hauser & Wirtz disembarked there. In its renovated facilities, works by artists from around the world are exhibited in an idyllic setting, with a restaurant and boat ride to the charming docks of the islet.
Michelle Obama went to see the exhibition of her friend Rashid Johnson, a well-known Chicago artist framed in the post-black art movement, contemporary African-American art. In Mahón, he participates in an exhibition titled Directionless.
After the visit, the wife of the first African-American president in US history (who governed the nation between 2009 and 2017) dined at the island's canteen. She tasted brioche bread with anchovies, cold fennel and leek soup, and ham croquettes, as revealed by the newspaper 'Menorca'.
After the visit, which also takes place while Mahón celebrates its popular patron saint festivities, the former first lady planned to embark on a yacht to round off her vacation, her annual disconnection in the Balearic Islands alongside her friend Costos.