Many thanks to Vicent Palermet who has provided the entire body of knowledge used in this article.

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Having discussed the criteria by which suitable plots of land were chosen, as well as the preliminary steps taken to prepare these sites for building, we will now turn our attention to the interesting techniques of masonry and woodwork used in the actual construction. Beyond the aesthetic appeal they confer, these time-honoured techniques guaranteed a structural durability which in many ways surpass modern methods, notably in the areas of thermal resistance and impermeability. 

The Ibicenco finca was an opus of design and structure: a carefully conceived and methodically executed rural habitat whose clean functionality created a unique architectural style. Having withstood the passage of time, the finca, with its massive harmonious forms, remains one of the most emblematic expressions of Ibicenco culture. Let us now take an insider’s look at how such noble architecture was wrought from the rich store of materials naturally occurring on the island.  

 

Walls

To refresh readers’ memories, so far in our narrative we have marked off two garden patches and cleared the surface rock on which our farmhouse will stand. The time has finally come to raise the four walls of the casa de jeure. Ibicencos firmly believed in the maxim that a man’s home is his castle. Their walls were designed to last centuries and, once raised, required only minimum maintenance. Measuring 70 cm in width, these impregnable enclosures were crafted from hewn stone and mortar, both of which could be obtained cost-free from the land by digging down deep enough. Given the laboriousness of this task, not to mention the subsequent transport of the excavated materials, the job was undertaken as close to the building site as possible, rather than at a quarry. A minimum of two men would work together to hack the stone from its natural bedrock and then carry it back to site, batch by batch, on a wooden stretcher. 

 

Mortars

In regard to mortar, the clayey mineral earth used for this purpose lay under the ground at depths of 40 cm and below. The peasants were scrupulous that that no organic matter should get mixed in with the clay, for over time this would weaken its binding strength. The Ibicenco subsoil contained two types of clay which lent themselves particularly well to this purpose: white earth (‘terra blanca’) and the rarer but superior red earth, called ‘tap’. This latter type, being somewhat sandy in its composition, was fire-resistant and thus obligatory in the construction of the bread oven and the hearth, regardless of which type of mortar was used in other parts of the house. Lime, which conferred greater impermeability, was sometimes mixed into the mortar, although this extra ingredient raised costs considerably and, as it was not absolutely necessary, many families made do without it. Either way, the clay was mixed up with water and straightaway the first course of masonry was laid out along the designated perimeter. 

 

Slowly but Surely

Only a single course was laid at a time, the reason being that all structural walls were, in fact, double walls with a rubble-filled cavity in between. The rubble, we should note, was not tossed in higgledy-piggledy. Each interior stone (roughly the size of a fist) was hand-placed as meticulously as a jigsaw piece and the interstitial spaces then sealed with mortar – hence the extraordinary width of the walls. When a succession of these stalwart courses had been raised to a goodly height, anywhere between two and a half to four metres, the ceiling joists would be laid in preparation for the next phase of roof construction.

 

To Every Thing There Is a Season

At this juncture, depending on the time of year, it was feasible to take a break from building in order to tend to other farming tasks. The walls, needless to say, were solid enough to withstand any type of inclemency with no ill-effect whatsoever. The roof, on the other hand, once started could not be interrupted. For this reason, all of the required materials had to be gathered together at the building site and the participation of many helping hands enlisted before this time-sensitive operation could begin.

 

Roof Beams

Except for the kitchen (to be treated next), roof beams in the Ibicenco finca were fashioned from sabina wood, otherwise known as Phoenician juniper. The species grows abundantly in Ibiza and provides excellent hard wood, made all the harder thanks to Ibiza’s scant rainfall and the tree’s resulting slow growth. Its prevalence notwithstanding, procuring sabina trunks entailed years of care and attention, for the sabina, as it occurs in Ibiza, is not a true tree but rather a bush. Left to its own devices it will grow tall and spindly. In order to produce a circumference of xylem thick enough to be used as a roof beam, the sabina bush must be pruned back annually over a period of 25 to 30 years. 

This task was carried out by family elders in provision for future generations, the elders themselves having built their own houses on the backs of their forebears’ groundwork. ‘A seed planted today tomorrow becomes a tree’ is universal wisdom, with the Ibicenco variation being ‘a sabina pruned today tomorrow becomes a roof beam’. The circle of island life, though harsh and lean, turned on an axis of ecologically sustainability and deep-rooted cooperation with nature. For farmers, it was a labour of love. The saplings used for this purpose sprang up naturally in the margins between field and field where they did not interfere with ploughing and were conveniently close to hand. In winter, when farming tasks were at an ebb, the men folk would always take a few days to prune their rows of sabinas so that, decades later, they could proudly offer their offspring magnificent hardwood beams to last a lifetime and beyond. These were harvested in spring or summer and always with the waxing moon when the sap was at its fullest, an astrological influence which also rendered the bark easier to strip. The trunks would then be hauled to site and left to season in expectation of the next stage of the operation.      

       

For the time being, we shall leave our project at this intermediate stage: four raised walls awaiting their dressed sabina joists and the remainder of the ceiling – of which there were no less than five different types. Ceilings, incidentally, formed an integral part of the entire roof construction and constitute perhaps the most ingenious part of the house. As we shall see, the fragility of the materials used to complete the roof seemed to blatantly contradict the soundness of the shelter they provided. But, Ibicenco farmers were masters at combining the most unlikely resources to get exactly what they needed from Mother Nature.