Over the course of this series, we have mapped out the building of a prototypical farmhouse, which now consists of an exceptionally sturdy double-walled edifice, topped by a leak-proof roof, flanked by two gardens patches, and standing on a propitious plot of land. Not much is left to do. All of the labour-intensive tasks, such as the hauling and laying of stone as well as the excavation of clay and lime, have been completed. We need only to add a few finishing touches before our rural abode is ready to be inhabited. The walls, for example, must be rendered, the windows barred, and the dirt floor compressed. 

 

To aid us in these final details, we have at our disposal the ethnologist Vicent Palermet, a young farmer from Es Cubells, whose deep knowledge of Ibicenco culture is rooted in family tradition. As one of the few remaining islanders to hold practical skills in a wide range of fading customs, Palermet was commissioned several years ago by Santa Eulària’s ethnology museum to direct a building project whose purpose was to create a life-size model exhibiting traditional Ibicenco masonry. The resulting construction has since become part of the museum’s permanent display and is well worth a visit inasmuch as the techniques we have explained in this series can be seen and touched firsthand. Let us welcome our guest and glean his final words of wisdom on Ibicenco house-raising. 

 

Emily Kaufman: Hello, Vicent. Thank you for coming.

Vicent Palermet: Not at all. What’s the order of the day?

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EK: We’d like to put the final touches on the farmhouse you’ve been helping us to build. What else needs to be done?

VP: Well, now that we have our basic structure in place, our next step is to smooth over the rough edges by rendering the walls. In traditional practice, this could be done to different degrees of thoroughness, depending on the economical wherewithal of the household. In the best-case scenario, both the inside and the outside of the walls would be twice-rendered and then whitewashed. This was the “full-works treatment”, if you like, but it was not absolutely necessary.  In many cases, the outside stonework would be left exposed and only the topmost perimeter of the wall rendered and whitewashed. Or, farmers might apply a rough finish, and leave it at that, with no whitewash at all.  

 

EK: I had assumed that, given how thick and carefully constructed the walls were, no further rendering would be necessary.

VP: Technically it wasn’t. But there are many factors we must take into account. Let’s start with the basics. The stones used in rural masonry were large and coarsely hewn. This created a rough, uneven surface on either side of the wall. The inside surface would have to be rendered because, if not, you could actually hurt yourself on the jagged edges that stuck out. So, in the name of safety, we always find a smooth finish on the interior wall face. Sometimes, if a family was very poor, this rendering was done with nothing more than mud, but it was done. 

Now, on the outside, the craggy surface didn’t matter so much, and, as you say, the walls were sturdy enough to hold their own in any type of weather with no further coats of mortar. Animal pens, for example, were always left unfinished and many disused ones are still standing today – living proof that plain stonework can withstand the elements for many decades. Other secondary structures such as storerooms, or the shed where the ‘trull’ [oil press] was housed, were also left either unrendered or with a very rough rendering called an ‘arrebossat a plà’, which I’ll explain in more detail later. The parts of the house which were considered more important, – the front façade, above all, and the bedrooms – were given top priority, both for show and for comfort. On the one hand, it was considered aesthetically more appealing to render a house with two coats of mortar – a rough coat and a smooth coat –, and then finish off with a white lime wash. On the other hand, these final layers did much towards keeping out the damp and providing greater insulation against heat and cold. So, greater effort was expended on the areas of the house that sheltered the family.   

     

EK: How was this finishing done?

VP: Well, as you might expect, all the materials came from the land. Some were easier and cheaper to obtain, others more difficult and costly. Without going into too much detail I’ll give you a quick rundown. The standard version of the rough coat was made of mud and lime – a perfectly functional mixture –, while the superior version was made of slaked lime with gravel, a much more resistant mortar. In either case, the main idea of the rough coat – which as I mentioned is called ‘arrebossat a plà’ (literally ‘flat coat’) was to fill in the nooks and crannies in the stonework so as to get an even surface, which could then either stand on its own, or else serve as the key for the next coat.     

 

EK: Which was?

VP: The smooth coat, of course! In Ibicenco we call it ‘referit’, which translates roughly as “redone” or ‘refinished’. This coat consisted of a small-grain mortar whose base was also slaked lime, but this time mixed with sand for a finer finish.  

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EK: Was this normal sand you could get from the beach?

VP: It could be, in which case the sand had to be washed to remove the salt from it as salt would corrode the mortar over time. A more up-scale option was to use stone dust from the quarries. In either case, this second coat was smooth, but, despite the lime, not white. In Ibiza, you see, we had two types of lime. “Dead stone” gave us ‘cal fluixa’ a low-quality lime that could be used for building but not for whitening. The more common variety of “hard stone” (‘pedra dura’) gave us both white lime for whitewashing and the so-called ‘black lime’ – which was really ochre or greenish in colour and excellent for construction. When it came to making mortar, farmers usually chose black lime and saved the white lime for the final coat of whitewash. 

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EK: So, from what I understand, any degree of finishing was viable, but if a house had all three coats, it entered the realm of ‘the peasant palace’, as Philippe Rottier termed it.  

VP: Indeed it did. Although, I should mention that before whitewashing became customary – prior to the mid-19th century – interior walls were a sandy colour, with a few added details of red ochre, a pigment technically known as ferric oxide. Simple geometric decorations were customarily painted on a trim of smooth rendering around doorways and windows. You find these markings in very old ‘fincas’ after peeling away many layers of whitewash. 

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EK: Now that you mentioned windows, how were they done?

VP: They were a pre-planned part of the building process and an opening was left for them, usually quite high up in the wall, as the courses of stone were being laid. After the general rendering was done, the windows were secured with crossbars, known in Ibicenco as ‘creuer’. In the old days these bars were made of wood, usually pine branches, and later with metal as it became more available. Glass was also a modern addition. Quite often crosses were painted near the windows on the exterior wall. This was to keep out witches and evil spirits.  

 

EK: I’ve seen those crossed many times and never knew what they were for.

VP: The Ibicenco people were devout in their religious practices, but also deeply superstitious. In every village, certain women were whispered to be witches. In hushed tones and behind closed doors they were accused of casting spells and causing unnatural things to happen. Islanders had an inordinate fear of them and did all sorts of things to protect themselves. For example, on laundry day, if clothes had been hung out to dry, but the women of the house had forgotten to bring them in before nightfall, all of the children’s clothing would be washed again. I suppose the thinking was that children were more vulnerable to this kind of influence.   

 

EK: Did the community shun these witches and exclude them from normal life? 

VP: Yes and no. On the one hand they were despised and feared, but on the other hand they were needed and even sought out.

 

EK: How so?

VP: Love potions, for example. In matters of the heart, people of either sex would secretly ask the witch to make the object of their affection fall in love with them, or fall out of love with their current sweetheart. On a darker note, witches were often commissioned to cast the “evil eye” on an enemy, or conversely, to remove some such spell from the supplicant. I remember my grandfather telling me about an old spinster in Sant Josep who would terrify anybody who came near her house by making all sorts of strange things happen. Dogs would jump out of nowhere, stones would fly through the air, huge branches of prickly pear would crash to the ground and wheelbarrows would whiz across the yard. It seems that all of these weird occurrences were hallucinations rather than actual events, but the people were terrified of that woman and stayed well away. 

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EK: Being so devout, didn’t they call on the priest for spiritual protection?

VP: Yes, but the priests didn’t want to know about it. They were as afraid as the next man. Sometimes, if a situation got really bad, the villagers would resort to another witch for assistance against the first one – or to a wizard, for that matter.

 

EK: There were wizards, too?

VP: Oh yes, they were regarded as having healing powers. They kept two-tailed lizards as pets. This phenomenon was a rare but natural occurrence caused by a lizard almost losing its tail – and hence growing a new one – while the original tail knitted itself back on. Island lore says that if you found one of these lizards and followed a certain ritual, the reptile would become a talisman and confer magical powers.  

 

EK: What, pray tell, was the ritual?

VP: It was quite bizarre. You had to feed the lizard on nothing but your saliva during nine days, during which time you also had to maintain a strict fast. When I was a child I was told that there was a fellow who had gone through this whole abracadabra with one of these double-tailed creatures. One day, as the story goes, he was walking along the road when he ran into the village priest. As they were exchanging pleasantries, the lizard jumped out of the man’s pocket. In a flash, the priest stomped on it and killed it. The wizard cried out, “You’ve destroyed me!” Apparently, after that, his powers diminished substantially.    

 

EK: I never realized what a strong undercurrent of superstition ran through traditional Ibicenco society. 

VP: Well, precisely, because it was an undercurrent, something not openly discussed. But, I can tell you, until recently, everybody believed in supernatural forces and performed all sorts of little acts so as not to trespass these unwritten laws. The crosses they painted on towers and near windows show how deeply ingrained these beliefs were. 

 

EK: Thank you for your time and expertise. It’s been fascinating to learn about Ibicenco farmhouses in such depth.   

VP: The pleasure’s been mine.