Resilience at Fartaritx

For about four thousand years, Fartaritx has been a place where communities have been able to sustain their livelihoods and survive in subsistence.

The first settlers who arrived in this enchanting valley around 1500BC chose this particular location wisely. They had been looking for a place where they could settle and depend on the yield of natural resources for a long time. And they surely found what they had been looking for: the small valley bottoms in Fartaritx, rich of land and water that would keep nurturing their  descendants and sustain their  future generations. Here, within the surroundings of Fartáritx des Racó and Can Vila they could build their structures and perfectly control the fields located under the upwelling of water from the can Vila spring, which would flood a wide area, providing water and fertile land.  

These structures, the so-called “naviforme”, made up the basic housing units for these early settlers. They were cyclopian  boat shaped stone structures covered with waterproofing clay and plant material as well as perimeter walls that delimited spaces in front of the buildings – potentially related to some kind of livestock stabling. Evidence suggests that the “naviforme” was an architecture that clearly goes beyond the simple concept of residence. It was used as a symbolic language of occupation of a territory by the community that built and resided in these structures. It allowed the ancient inhabitants to make a claim, a claim for the land of legitimate property for their family or lineage which made the structures last in space and time, and with them their symbolic, political and social meaning.

The arrival of iron paved the way for new cultures entering the island and able to continue to live autonomously in the fertile valley of Fartaritx. An increasing  contact with the commercial networks of the Mediterranean also brought great social, economic and ritual transformations. But protection from surrounding mountains, biodiversity, abundance of water and a bio-cultural heritage provided conditions to develop resilience at Fartaritx and allowed communities throughout centuries to adapt to a successive series of changes experienced from prehistoric times, Roman, Vandal and Byzantine dominations to the Medieval period. The talayot communities were able to endure and evolve in Fartaritx with their sanctuaries and watchtowers, Arab settlers arrived to encounter precious water sources, Muslims found refuge during the conquest in the 13th century; and rich soils and natural springs allowed for agriculture, cultivation of cereals, fruits and olives and led to the construction of farmhouses in the Middle Ages, built on existing ancient structures.  
Due to its inherent rich biodiversity, economically important resources and traditional wisdom on which to draw, inhabitants of Fartaritx were able to survive times of stress and change until the early 20th century.

Our vision is to maintain this ecological habitat and keep producing a richness of knowledge and practices that enhances the resilience of our day-to-day life.