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This January marked fifteen years since the shipping company Baleària began operating a daily service between the ports of Barcelona and Palma, helping to improve maritime connections and make the different destinations more accessible to passengers. Over the years, the route has seen increases in both passenger numbers and freight traffic, carrying more than 1,255,000 passengers and nearly 12,949,000 lane metres of cargo—the equivalent of around 800,000 trailers.
Plans for this route began to take shape three years before its launch. In June 2003, the shipping company began operating from Barcelona. The Ramon Llull fast ferry connected the Catalan port with Alcúdia and Ciutadella, while the Bahía de Málaga ferry served Maó. “This was a very important milestone, as we began operating in a major hub such as Barcelona, a key logistics centre for freight and passenger traffic to the Balearic Islands,” says Manuel Pérez, the regional manager at the time.
In 2003, the ‘Bahía de Málaga’ ferry connected the Catalan capital with Maó.
In October of the same year, a further step was taken when Baleària began linking the Catalan capital with Ibiza using the Isla de Botafoc ferry. However, this development did not fully meet the needs of freight customers, who required a comprehensive service that would allow them to operate effectively throughout the Balearic archipelago. Committed to its customers and the regions it serves, the shipping company began developing a high-capacity cargo vessel to meet this demand.
Bruno Ceped, who has been responsible for port operations in Mallorca since then, clearly remembers the day the eagerly awaited ferry Pau Casals arrived in Palma. On 11 January, it berthed at the West Breakwater, and every vessel arriving from Barcelona has continued to call at the same location ever since. For Bruno, launching the connection between Barcelona and Palma meant “taking the leap and thinking big”.
The ‘Pau Casals’ ferry reached 24 knots and completed the crossing in 6 hours.
As well as inaugurating this route, the Pau Casals ferry marked a milestone for freight transport. At the time, its capacity made it the company’s largest vessel serving this sector, with room for up to 2,000 lane metres of wheeled cargo and vehicles and nearly 400 passengers. Reaching 24 knots and completing the route in just over 6 hours, the ferry enabled hauliers to disembark in Palma before six in the morning and optimise their vehicle rotations.
In this way, the shipping company boosted freight transport between mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands, introducing the just in time concept through reliable, daily and highly punctual services that have improved supply operations and optimised the logistics chains of distribution companies.
Today, vessels such as the ‘Rosalind Franklin’ operate the service.
Manuel Pérez says it was “a tremendously exciting undertaking for a company that was making the leap to become what we are today: an industry leader and a benchmark in the Balearic Islands”. Today, the same passengers who arrived in Palma excited about the new service continue to sail on ferries such as the Abel Matutes, Rosalind Franklin or Nápoles. This very positive outcome, as Bruno Ceped explains, gave Baleària “the opportunity to grow, expand its routes and create new ones”.
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