It is noon on Monday 26 August and there is not a single cloud in the blue sky over Cala Sa Nau. At the end of a cliff of irregular stones, photographer Joan Lladó discreetly observes a group spread out on the other end of the rocks. They are wearing hats, carrying bottles of water and walkie-talkies. Some are hovering around a huge screen, sheltered by several black umbrellas that give them shade, others are concentrating on what is happening several metres below, on the vertical wall of the cliff, where a man is climbing from the water held in a harness, also under the watchful eye of several people watching from three boats. Along the way, some bathers are trying to follow the path to another nearby cove bordering the Mallorcan coast and take the opportunity to take a look at the scene. “I come here every day to do psychobloc [escalada en piedra desde el agua] “I came to this area and today they took my place. They are filming a documentary or something like that,” says a young man who arrives without a shirt and wearing a cycling helmet. After 20 minutes in the sun, without any shade to take shelter in, Lladó comes down from the edge of the cliff in silence. He gestures for me not to talk and we walk for several minutes until we reach the beach again. “It’s not here, it seems that they are testing everything before filming.”
Joan Lladó works as a paparazzi, although he avoids the term because of the negative connotations he believes the word has. He prefers to define himself as “a press photographer focused on photographing famous people.” He works with the agencies Gtres and Splash News, the first Spanish and the second international, which in turn provide photographs to dozens of newspapers, magazines and websites around the world that echo the snapshots of celebrities who land in Mallorca day in and day out to work, relax or take part in events of all kinds. Some arrive with a huge publicity machine behind them and others do so in a more discreet manner, as is the case of the star who is absent from Cala Sa Nau. Lladó received a tip-off about the presence of Australian actor Chris Hemsworth on the island to film an episode of the second season of the documentary series Unlimited about physical and mental challenges that he stars in on Disney+. However, for the moment there is no trace in the area of the protagonist of Thor either Extraction.
The morning looks bleak until a contact alerts the paparazzi that the artist Pharrell Williams is planning to disembark from the yacht on which he has spent the night in the port of Andratx and head to the airport. The singer and creative director of the Louis Vuitton men’s line landed on the Balearic island on Sunday 25 August to sleep aboard the boat owned by a gambling magnate. on-line, And in just 24 hours he leaves again jet private. The moment of getting off the boat could be a good opportunity for photography. There was no portrait of Hemsworth, but there could be a photo shoot of Williams.
However, Lladó has a bitter taste because he thought that the actor would already be filming in Mallorca, despite the fact that one of the technicians deployed in the filming area has commented to the curious that the Australian would not appear until the end of the week. On Saturday 24th, he went to the area, 60 kilometres from Palma, to observe the places where the filming could be organised and the location from which to take the photographs. “People think that this is just a matter of coming, taking a click and that’s it. Almost always the job requires a lot of prior preparation, looking at the places in advance, investigating without attracting attention and many hours of waiting to get the photo.”
In recent years, he has managed to capture Amazon owner Jeff Bezos launching his new yacht in Mallorca with his partner Lauren Sanchez; actor Tom Cruise bathing on the beach of Formentor after scouting locations for a film with director Alejandro González Iñárritu; and the richest man in China, the owner of the Alibaba business conglomerate, Jack Ma, after having been missing for months and without a single public image. Photographs that appeared in the press all over the world.
Over the past 24 hours, Lladó has followed through various aviation applications the private flights that have taken off from Bucharest, where Hemsworth played drums during the concert that Ed Sheeran offered on Saturday, as both posted on their Instagram profile. And an app gives the key to a private plane that has left the Romanian capital and is flying over Sardinia towards Palma. “It has to be that one, 95% of the time,” he says. We abort the Williams mission and head to the private terminal at the airport, another 60 kilometres by car, which we reach when the plane is heading north of the island.
Lladó has been doing the same thing several times a week for the past 15 years, the time he has been in the world of celebrity photography since he was sent one day by the local newspaper Breaking News to cover a wedding in which the tennis player Roger Federer was one of the guests. “A colleague from the newspaper told me that he had a friend who worked at the Teleobjetivo agency, owned by the journalist Antonio Montero, and that the photos might interest him. And they liked them and that’s how I started,” he says, while admitting that the panorama in the gossip press has changed a lot since then. The prices paid for this type of work have fallen a lot in recent years and with the emergence of social networks everything has changed, because now it is the person who decides when, how and to what extent they offer their information. On other occasions, it is precisely these publications that serve to put the photographers on the trail of a famous person.
The plane lands and we stand at one end of the airport fence. Using binoculars, we see that Hemsworth is getting off the plane with a small entourage of people heading to the terminal. We park opposite and minutes later the actor comes out through the door, taking photos with the security workers and the staff loading the suitcases into several high-end vehicles.
By then, Lladó has taken the photographs crouched between two vehicles without being seen and has set off again to follow the convoy. Another 60 kilometres again in an easterly direction, to check if his information about the hotel where he is staying is correct. Following this convoy is a piece of cake, he says, if you compare it with the security enjoyed by people like Michelle Obama, who has had the most difficulty photographing because she has American police and assistance from Spanish agents on her visits to the island. Another of the most complicated moments, he details, was discovering where Cristina de Borbón and Iñaki Urdangarin were staying during the months that the trial for the convoy lasted. Noos case and which he was unable to find out until the last day, when it was no longer relevant.
Other people, however, have never had any problems being photographed, like Ricky Martin, who in his last two visits to the island has been talkative and accessible, qualities that Lladó also highlights in the singer Chayanne. In his 15 years walking the streets he has had anecdotes of all kinds, like the day they tried to trick him by telling him that the singer Bono from U2 was on the island and then it turned out to be a double. He is also still surprised by the repercussions of certain issues, like the enormous echo that the filming of the Netflix series on the island had The Crown had in the UK media.
The group led by the actor arrives at a luxury hotel in Portopetro, with rooms that cost around 2,000 euros a night and located very close to the filming location of the series. At the back of the complex, the porters and bellhops wait. Lladó walks past and finds another place to work unseen, with a team of 500 and 900 mm lenses that allow him to take photos at a distance of up to 500 metres. “I always try to go unnoticed and ask as little as possible. Mallorca is a very small place and often, when you ask, you screw up,” he says.
There are not many people who work in this profession on the island, compared to Ibiza, where in summer the agencies deploy their full potential. It is already after five in the afternoon, the group is still inside the hotel and there is little hope that the filming will take place during the afternoon. An hour later it seems completely out of the question that anything will be started, so Lladó heads to Palma with the idea of returning to the cliffs first thing the next morning. And that is what he does. On Tuesday, Hemsworth appears in a tank top, black shorts and a cap to film the images with a large team of cameras and technicians. Lladó has the photos, which the next day are already front page of a local newspaper. Binoculars and flight tracking apps are already looking for their next job.
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