Menorca is one of the main islands of the Balearic Islands (Spain).

In Menorca, as in the rest of the Balearic Islands, the official languages are Catalan and Castilian. On the islands speak a dialect of Catalan that they call Menorca Menorca. It's like Majorca and more like "Ibiza", highlights how differences in the same way in Catalonia neutralize or unstressed in u, or not make use of the articles "salted" so and sos, and another in exchange for "sa" and "is" (item level and.) Since the British conquest retained a large number of Anglicisms such as "xoc" (chalk, in English "chalk" in Catalan "Guix"). Not so "bòtil" (in Catalan "blister"), although commonly because many people, including our own Menorcans believe that comes from English "bottle" (bottle), actually comes from Latin.

From the earliest civilizations present in the island, many peoples have been take turns in occupying their territory.

In a first stage of primitive civilization, which is supposed coming of the peninsula, followed by a very bright during the Bronze Age, known as talayótica characterized by megalithic constructions similar to those of Mallorca, Sardinia and Malta, although with some elements such as taulas original.

A Phoenician visits they called Nura (Land of Fire) and Greek in a peaceful way to establish commercial ties followed the Carthaginians with a different attitude. They landed under the command of Mago, Hannibal's brother and forcibly recruited to the slingers mythical (Foners), throwing stones mercenaries whose skill with the use of the sling, made them important players in the Punic Wars. The Carthaginians founded in the seventh century C. Jamma enclaves, current Ciutadella and Mahon Magon = Magonis = (name Catalanised now Mahon). Culture in Minorca talayótica endure beyond that Quintus Caecilius Metellus (later he would receive the nickname Balearicus), conquered the island to the Roman Republic in 123 a. C. (Along with the rest of the Balearic Islands).

In 427 the island lived through the conquest of the Vandals. Presumably Menorca became Byzantine territory in the fall of the Vandal kingdom, conquered by Belisarius. In all cases are centuries of darkness and isolation, where the island was attacked by Normans and Arabs.

The Arabs did not settle permanently in Menorca until 903, when it was conquered and united the Caliphate of Cordoba. Despite the late conquest, Islamization of the island was intense. In 1232, three years after the conquest of Mallorca by Jaime I the Conqueror, the Muslim Menorca became a tributary of the Crown of Aragon, with significant autonomy remaining half century.

The island was conquered by Alfonso III of Aragon on January 17, 1287 (this is the reason that January 17 is the day of Menorca), which ordered the removal and sale into slavery of the Muslim population residing in repopulate the island with colonists Catalans. [1] His successor James II the Just gave it to James II of Mallorca after the Treaty of Anagni (1295), becoming part of the Kingdom of Mallorca. In 1343, Peter the Ceremonious robs the king of Majorca Menorca, Jaime III (a precursor to the very disappearance of the kingdom, annexed to the Crown of Aragon).

The Menorca in the crown of Aragon benefited from the commercial and maritime splendor of the crown, but from the late fourteenth century, the island experienced a dramatic process of depopulation and economic decline. This process reached alarming levels in the XV and XVI centuries, due to a number of reasons. Basically social struggles between the peasantry and the aristocracy, similar to contemporary Germanías the kingdom of Valencia and Mallorca or the Catalan revolt against John II. Attacks also influenced the Ottomans, who looted and destroyed Mahon (1535, by the Ottoman corsair Aruch, governor of Algiers to the Sublime Porte and was the brother of Hayreddin Pasha Barbarossa Ottoman admiral) and the then capital Citadel (1558, by the pirate Piali Ottoman), which threatened almost complete depopulation of the island.

Captured by the British in 1708 during the War of Spanish Succession and formally ceded by the Treaty of Utrecht, became seventy years a British dependency (and the port of Mahon a British naval base in the Mediterranean) in the eighteenth century. The British presence boosted the economy of the island and the city of Mahon became a commercial center and the smuggling of first order in the Mediterranean. The British influence can be seen in local architecture. By contrast, Citadel, episcopal see and where he lived most of the landowners and local gentry, languished. Is held each year on the Canary island of Tenerife the feast of the Passover Military, which was instituted in 1782 under the reign of Charles III, as an expression of joy over the recovery of the island of Menorca, then in British hands. The monarch said provided, in this way, the army canary a sample of your appreciation.