Fonts Ufanes
Attraction · Mallorca
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After heavy rain over Puig Tomir, water bursts straight up out of the ground here, sometimes at up to 100 cubic metres a second, usually 24 to 48 hours after the storm. The springs feed the Sant Miquel stream and l'Albufera wetland, and became the Balearic Islands' first natural monument in 2001.
Underground this is a karst aquifer trapped beneath Puig Tomir: rain collects in the limestone until it has nowhere left to go, then forces its way to the surface along old fault lines rather than draining away quietly. The eruptions are rare: only about 76 were recorded in the two decades after 2001, well under four a year on average. The protected forest here is holm oak mixed with carob, mastic and strawberry trees, its floor holding the endemic Balearic cyclamen, a small pink flower found nowhere outside these islands and the south of France. Pine martens and genets move through the same slopes, and kestrels and sparrowhawks hunt over the treeline. Before any of it reaches l'Albufera, some of the outflow first recharges the aquifers under Sa Pobla, the farmland the water crosses on its way down from the mountain.
What you see
A holm oak wood cut by dry streambeds, marked by two named vents, Ufana Grossa and Ufana Petita, that carry the flow once the springs are running.
Practical
The reserve is free to enter, open every day from 10:00 to 17:00, reached via exit 37 off the Ma-13; the walk in from the car park near the Sant Miquel hermitage is a circular route of about an hour.
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