LITMIR.BIZ

      Looking from Puig de Maria, across Pollença, back to Calvari (Stage 10 extension)

Brief history of Mallorca

      Mallorca has been inhabited for more than 6000 years, when the earliest settlers lived in caves, hunted and kept animals, made stone tools and employed certain rituals when burying their dead. Around 4000 years ago, stone buildings and large towers, or talaiots, were constructed, suggesting highly organised societies working together for the common good, while clearly engaging in serious disputes with their neighbours.

      The Carthaginians established trading posts and often recruited local people to defend them. Most of the ports on the island had their origins around this time. The Romans invaded Mallorca in 123BC, but much of their work was later destroyed by Vandals from North Africa. After the breakup of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine general Belisarius dealt with the Vandals, and the Balearic islands were linked with what is now Tunisia. As part of the Byzantine Empire, Mallorca again became a trading post protected by military might.

      Arab raids commenced in AD707. Arab settlers profoundly influenced the development of agriculture. The legacy of these times is recalled in placenames – Bini means ‘house of’, as in Binibassi and Biniaraix. In the city of Palma the Moorish arches of the Almudaina palace and the Arab baths can still be seen.

      In 1229 Jaume I of Aragon, ‘The Conqueror’, led a fleet of 150 ships and an army of 16,000 men to Mallorca. Their intention was to land at Port de Pollença, but they were prevented from doing so by storms so they sheltered in the lee of Sa Dragonera and later landed at Santa Ponça. The re-conquest was completed in 1230, but this didn’t lead to peaceful times. Disputes between Jaume’s sons, passed on to their sons and heirs, led to successive invasions, but the royal line continued through Jaume II and Jaume III, the latter being killed in battle in 1349. The reign of independent kings ended, and Aragon took direct control of the island.

      Mallorca’s chequered history continued with invasions, rebellions and natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and outbreaks of cholera and bubonic plague. Watchtowers, or talaies, were built between 1550 and 1650 on high vantage points, so that invaders and pirates could be spotted in good time. In 1716 Mallorca finally lost the title of kingdom and became a province of Spain. Neighbouring islands had similarly convoluted histories, with Menorca spending the best part of the 18th century as a British possession. In the 20th century, the Catalan language was suppressed under Franco’s dictatorship, but has since flourished and is now very evident throughout Mallorca.

      Mountain heritage

      The GR221 highlights the heritage of the mountains, and especially the built heritage, which often uses nothing more basic than roughly hewn lumps of limestone. On the lower cultivated slopes, the terraces are held in place by huge drystone buttresses and watered by stone-lined channels. Water may be stored in tanks (cisternas), or small underground reservoirs (aljubs), all built of stone.

      Look out for large stone-lined pits, which are limekilns (forns de calç), on the lower wooded slopes, where fuel was readily available. On the highest mountainsides, larger and deeper stone-lined snow-pits (cases de sa neu) were used for storing snow and ice. In dense holm oak woodland look out for the dark, flat, circular, moss-grown remains of the charcoal burning platforms – trekkers sometimes use these as wild-camp sites, but it is very difficult to get pegs into the hard-baked ground. Somewhere nearby will be the low remains of the circular huts of the charcoal burner. Stone-built outdoor bread ovens are also likely to be spotted nearby, while drystone walls and cairns abound almost everywhere.

      Snow collecting

      Snow-pits are found on many of Mallorca’s highest mountains

      The highest paths on Mallorca were built by snow collectors (nevaters). Snow was collected to make ice for use in the summer and conserved in snow-pits (cases de sa neu). These are found scattered around Puig Major, Puig de Massanella, Puig Tomir, Es Teix and Serra d’Alfàbia, mostly above 900m (2950ft). The pits were usually circular, oval, or occasionally rectangular, partly or wholly below ground level. When the mountains were covered with snow, groups of men went up to gather it into baskets. Flat platforms were made and cleared of vegetation, where the snow was arranged in layers and trampled down hard to pack it into ice, in time to the following rhyme:

      Pitgen sa neu, pitgen sa neu,

      i tots estan dins ses cases!

      Peguen potades, peguen potades,

      en Toni, en Xisco, en Juan i n’Andreu.

      Tramp the snow, tramp the snow,

      and throw it in the pit!

      Beat it down, beat it down,

      on Tony, Harry, John and Andrew.

      The packed snow was put into the pit and each layer was covered with càrritx, a tall pampas-like grass, to make it easier to split the blocks later. When the pit was full it was covered with ashes, branches and more càrritx, then carefully guarded. On summer nights blocks of ice were taken down on mules to the villages and towns. It was not only used for ice creams and cooling drinks, but also for medicinal preparations. The local authority controlled the price and a tax was fixed on it. Sometimes ice had to be imported from the mainland, but in glut years it was exported to neighbouring Menorca. The last time a snow-pit was used was in 1925 on Puig de Massanella. The industry was killed stone-dead by the advent of modern refrigeration techniques.

      Charcoal burning

      Complex networks of paths were made by charcoal burners. Almost every evergreen oakwood was once used for the production of charcoal. Charcoal burning hearths are flat circular areas, often ringed by stones and now covered with bright green moss. They often serve as landmarks in the route descriptions in this guidebook. They are referred to as ‘sitges’ (singular sitja). Charcoal burning lasted until butane gas became popular in the 1920s, although in some areas production lasted a while longer. Charcoal was used specifically for cooking, being preferred over wood because it was cleaner and gave a steadier heat.

      A sitja is a circular area where charcoal was produced

      Carboners started work in April, living and working all summer in the woods with their families. They had to watch their hearths carefully, as charcoal burning was a delicate operation and everything could be ruined in a moment of neglect. The idea was to carbonise the wood, not burn it to ash. Carboners lived in simple, circular stone huts, roofed with branches and grass. The remains of huts, as well as modern reconstructions, are often seen in the woods, along with igloo-like stone bread ovens nearby.

      A restored carboner’s hut, where a charcoal burner would have lived

      Axes and enormous two-handed saws were used to fell large oaks, of a diameter stipulated by the landowner. Each carboner had his own area, or ranxo. A circular site was prepared, with stones carefully arranged so that the air intake was limited, causing the wood to carbonise without igniting it. Logs and branches were arranged in a dome, leaving a narrow central chimney. Gravel and clay were heaped over it, and a ladder was used to reach the chimney, so that the carboner could start the firing process.

      The weight of the wood was reduced by 75–80 per cent and each firing lasted up to 12 days. Sieved

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