The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands.
The Balearic Islands have been an autonomous region of Spain since 1983.
There are two small islands off the coast of Mallorca: Cabrera and Dragonera.
The national anthem of Mallorca is “La Balangera”.
Like the other Balearic islands of Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera, the island is an extremely popular holiday destination, especially for tourists from the Netherlands, Germany and the UK.
Palma de Mallorca International Airport is one of the busiest in Spain;
It was used by 28 million passengers in 2017, and its use increased every year between 2012 and 2017.
The name comes from the classical Latin insula maior, meaning "large island".
Later, in medieval Latin, it became Majorca, "greater", compared to Menorca, "lesser".
Central Catalan scribes then hyper-corrected the word into Mallorca, and this later became accepted as the standard spelling.
The Balearic Islands were first colonized by people in the 3rd millennium BC, around 2500–2300 BC, from the Iberian Peninsula or southern France, by people associated with the Bell Beaker culture.
The arrival of humans led to the rapid extinction of three species of land mammals native to Mallorca: the pygmy goat antelope Myotragus balearicus, the giant dormouse Hypnomys morpheus and the shrew Nesiotites hidalgo, all three of which were resident on Mallorca.
The prehistoric settlements of the island are called taliots or talaiots.
The islanders erected Bronze Age megaliths as part of their Talayot ​​culture.
A partial list of settlements is as follows: