Centuries of wisdom dwell in our farmhouses. Open the door…
Simple but functional. Elegant but solemn. Cubic lines that mark out and delimit broad expanses of white, sometimes set off by the earthy tones of drystone. Modules that grow with the history of each house, rendering each one unique. Popular wisdom accrued over the centuries, peeking out from every deep-cut window, lurking behind every beam of Phoenician juniper, so painstakingly selected, and hovering behind every stout wooden door. Don’t just take a selfie and move on. Let your eye rest on their beauty. Observe them. Enter in.
Admired by Le Corbusier, Sert, Rodríguez Arias and other master architects of the 20th century, the traditional Ibicenco farmhouse is one of the island’s great treasures. Their simple yet functional lines speak to what rural life was like in Ibiza until roughly the last third of the past century. When you visit Santa Eulària, let your gaze linger on these architectural gems. Exploring them is easy in our municipality given that there are two excellent examples of rural farmhouses open to the public: Can Ros, today the Ethnographic Museum of Ibiza, located on Puig de Missa in Santa Eulària des Riu ; and Ca n’Andreu de Es Trull, located in the village of Sant Carles de Peralta. But these are not the only examples. Any quiet tour of the municipality, whether you’re walking, cycling, or driving, allows you to discover our traditional farmhouses, both those standing close to the road and those set higher up in the hills. Don’t look without seeing. Slow down and take them in. They are the pure essence of the island.
What are Ibiza’s farmhouses like?
Formed by cubic modules which were added on according to the needs and possibilities of each family, island farmhouses stood scattered across the countryside, and required their occupants to be as self-sufficient as possible. For this reason, important features such as a well, a bread oven, and a cistern for collecting the rainwater channelled off flat rooftops were essentials on each farm. Their flat, untiled roofs were built over beams of Phoenician juniper, which were in turn covered by layers of dried seagrass (Posidonia oceanica), coal ash and clay.
The Ibicenco farmhouse was built around the porxo, or main room, which could function as a vestibule, a work space, or a gathering place. Generally oriented toward the south, this room gave access to the kitchen and the cases de jeure, that is, the bedrooms. If the owners of the house were prosperous, they would eventually build an upstairs floor containing a porxet de dalt, that is, a gallery usually adorned by three arches and used to dry fruits and vegetables. The animal pens, the cart shed, the trull (oil press) and the casa de vi (wine cellar) were other spaces that were added to the premises according to the possibilities of each family and the type of land they farmed. In some cases, a farmstead could even have its own defence tower to protect it from attack by Turkish or Barbary pirates, a common occurrence until the 18th century.
The Ibicenco farmhouse in contemporary architecture
Avant-garde architects who discovered Ibiza in the 1930s became fascinated by the cubic simplicity and archaic beauty of the island’s traditional farmhouses, admiring their harmonious relationship to the surrounding landscape. Josep Lluis Sert, Erwin Broner and Rolph Blackstad are some of the figures from the world of architecture who found inspiration in these structures and whose work exhibits their ties to Ibiza. In Santa Eulària, you can see two examples of their reinterpretations of the traditional island dwelling: the Can Pep Simó housing development, in Cap Martinet, designed and promoted by Josep Lluis Sert in 1964 and declared a Cultural Interest Asset; and the headquarters of the Blakstad Design Consultancy, located on the Atzaró Road and designed by Rolph Blakstad.
