The historical epic that marked the most important local culture and traditions regarding the rest of Mallorca is the landing in Santa Ponça on 10 September 1229 of King James I of Aragon, and the subsequent conquering of Muslims who had invaded in the year 903.

According to the philologist Antoni Maria Alcover, it comes from the word Caluus, meaning "burn" or "be hot", testament to the arid land that contains no vegetation.

Al timbre corona real, cerrada..[13] Calvià first appears in history as a village 2,000 years BCE, although the area was first populated in the Neolithic Era.

Among the few archaeological remnants of this era are the remains of a Roman villa in Santa Ponça known as Sa Mesquida, which has an oven that was used to make ceramics,[16] the horse-shoe shaped Naveta Alemany[17] and the Turó de Ses Abelles.

[18] In 903, the Almoravid general Isam al-Jawlani conquered the island on behalf of Abdullah ibn Muhammad al-Umawi, Emir of Córdoba.

In 1229, after the Conquest of Mallorca by King James I of Aragon, colonists brought the Catalan language and culture, which survive to the present time.

In 1230 a set of privileges called the Franquezas de Mallorca were granted in order to attract new settlers to cultivate the countryside.

Nonetheless, he did not have the power to administer the villa, which fell within the purview of the jurados de prohombre,[26] (a medieval office that was essentially a district overseer).

[27] To sustain the parish and its clerics, the king and the tenured landowners of the jurisdiction ceded one fourth of the diezmos paid to them by those who cultivated the land.

He undertook a broad policy of agrarian colonization, with the creation of rural nuclei; increased the royal revenue; favored the creation of consulates in North Africa and in the kingdom of Granada; created a new monetary system for the kingdom; promoted the creation of textile industries; increased royal power relative to that of the nobility and Church; and promoted the construction of palaces and castles such as the Royal Palace of La Almudaina, the La Seu Cathedral in Palma, and the Bellver Castle.

The health system consisted mainly of physicians of Jewish origins, so-called Xuetas, descendants of Mallorcan Jews who had converted to Christianity, but continued to form a largely endogamous community.

The Marquis of Bellpuig owned 4,376 hectares (10,810 acres) in Santa Ponça, the largest latifundium in Mallorca at the beginning of the 19th century.

In the 16th century, Calvià itself largely escaped the plague that decimated the population elsewhere, although other nearby municipalities such as Andratx suffered the scourge of the epidemic.

[30] Still, the population suffered other epidemics associated with the era and their way of life, particularly malaria which only a few escaped, such as the priest or the few artisans who did not work in Ses Rotes.

On 28 November 1715, Philip V of Spain abolished the fueros and privileges of the Balearics, as the Nueva Planta decrees extended the administrative organization of the Kingdom of Castile, prohibited the Catalan language, and required the use of Castilian Spanish in the islands.

[32] In 1748 the wretchedness of the municipality had become so severe that chronicler Pere Xamena Fiol described it as follows: Wheat became so expensive that one paid 25 Sous per barchilla (unit to measure cereals, approximately 13.75 litres or 14.53 US quarts), and fortunate was he who could find some.

At this time Mallorca drew visitors who were motivated by the desire for adventure, an interest in exploring a different world and society than the one they knew, but also those who came to the island for therapeutic reasons.

Its scant industry consisted of five master masons, various ventures in shipping and transport, two cement and plaster factories, a trader in nuts and dried fruit, a machine for shucking almonds, a flour mill, a carob crusher, a wood dealer, and an oil press.

Through their real estate affiliates, some of the last large landowners, such as Miguel Nigorra Oliver, president of the Banco de Crédito Balear, came to control nearly all of the development of Santa Ponsa.

The second is 926 metres above sea level, the Mola del Esclop, an area which consists of many valleys and ravines, between the hills of Puig Batiat and Penya Blanca.

[39] The peninsula on which the municipality is located is marked by the presence of wetlands to the east and west, at Magaluf, Palmanova and Santa Ponça, that lead to a narrowing similar to an isthmus to the north.

Palma Nova was one of the first tourist resorts to be built on the island within the grounds of an old farm called Ses Planes and began as a project intended to build a residential type Garden City, but due to the Spanish Civil War, this idea was discarded.

[42] It is bounded on the west by the busy town of Magaluf which contains the largest hotel and greatest infrastructural services of the municipality to accommodate the many tourists.

The town of Portals Nous is also a renowned meeting point for businessmen, celebrities, high society figures and members of the Spanish Royal Family during their summer stays in the Marivent Palace.

It is influenced by two types of atmospheric circulation manifested in two distinct seasons: a hot, dry summer with little pressure gradient and occasional rainfall, as opposed to a cool, wet winter.

[54] More than 49% of Calvià's 14,552 hectares (35,960 acres) consists of woods and garrigues (low, soft-leaved scrubland), with pines as the dominant trees, although there has been some deforestation in recent decades.

Cultivable land amounts to about 32% of the municipality; the main crops are almonds, carob (Ceratonia siliqua), olives and, to a lesser extent, figs.

There are over 1,000 animal species; notable among them are the seabirds Cory's shearwater (Calonectris diomedea), various cormorants (Phalacrocorax), the common swift (Apus apus), and the Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) as well as numerous reptiles, such as the endemic Lilford's wall lizard (Podarcis lilfordi) found on several of the islets of the archipelago.

[63] The forest plants of the region can be divided into four groups: Most of the people are either Spaniards from the mainland—mainly from Andalusia—or their descendants, who reached the island in the early 1960s, or they are foreign immigrants.

The area contains many of Majorca's major tourism hotspots, with the localities of Magaluf (3,865), Santa Ponsa (8,188), El Toro (2,002), Peguera (3,400), Illetes (3,286), Portals Nous (2,395) and Palmanova (5,975).