Product Description
Often and unfairly maligned as an overdeveloped, package-tourist nightmare, boomerang-shaped Menorca is, in fact, the least developed – and second largest member of – the Balearic Islands, an archipelago to the east of the Spanish mainland which also comprises Mallorca, Ibiza and Formentera. Unlike its neighbours, Menorca remains essentially rural, its rolling fields, wooded ravines and humpy hills filling out the interior in between its two main – but still small – towns of Maó and Ciutadella. Much of this landscape looks pretty much as it did at the turn of the twentieth century – though many of the fields are no longer cultivated – and only on the edge of the island, and then only in parts, have its rocky coves been colonized by sprawling villa complexes. Nor is the development likely to spread: the resorts have been kept at a discreet distance from the two main towns, and this is how the Menorcans like it. Furthermore, determined to protect their island from the worst excesses of the tourist industry, the Menorcans have clearly demarcated development areas and are meanwhile pushing ahead with a variety of environmental schemes. The most prominent is the creation of a chain of conservation areas that will eventually protect much of the island, including the pristine coves that are one of its real delights. There are also plans to revamp the old mule track that once circled the entire island and turn it into a footpath.
Menorca stretches from the enormous natural harbour and island capital of Maó in the east to the smaller port of Ciutadella in the west, a distance of just 45km. These two towns, boasting over sixty percent of the population, have preserved much of their eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century appearance, though Ciutadella’s labyrinthine centre, with its grandee mansions and Gothic cathedral, has the aesthetic edge over Maó’s plainer, more mercantile architecture. Running through the interior between the two, the main C721 highway forms the island’s backbone, linking a trio of pocket-sized market towns – Alaior, Es Mercadal and Ferreries – and succouring what little industry Menorca enjoys, a few shoe factories and cheese-making plants. Branching off the highway, a sequence of asphalted side roads lead to the resorts that notch the north and south coasts. Mercifully, these tourist developments are largely confined to individual coves and bays, and only amongst the sprawling! villa-villages of the southeast and on the west coast have they become overpowering.
The main highway also acts as a rough dividing line between Menorca’s two distinct geological areas. In the north, sandstone predominates, giving a red tint to the low hills which roll out towards the bare, surf-battered coastline. One of the many coves and inlets along this stretch shelters the lovely fishing village and mini-resort of Fornells. To the south, all is limestone, with low-lying flatlands punctuated by bulging hills and fringed by a cove-studded coastline. Straddling the two zones, Monte Toro, Menorca’s highest peak and the site of a quaint little convent, offers panoramic views which reveal the topography of the whole island. Clearly visible from here are the wooded ravines that gash the southern zone, becoming deeper and more dramatic as you travel west – especially around Cala Santa Galdana, a popular resort set beneath severe, pine-clad seacliffs.
This varied terrain supports a smattering of minuscule villages and solitary farmsteads, present witnesses to an agriculture that had become, before much of it was killed off by tourism, highly advanced. Every field was protected by a dry-stone wall (tanca) to prevent the Tramuntana, the vicious north wind, from tearing away the topsoil. Even olive trees had their roots individually protected in little stone wells, while compact stone ziggurats sheltered cattle from both the wind and the blazing sun. Nowadays, apart from a few acres of rape and corn, many of the fields are barren, but the walls and ziggurats survive, as do many of the old twisted gates made from olive branches.
The landscape is further cluttered by hundreds of crude stone memorials, mostly dating from the second millennium BC. Yet, despite this widespread physical evidence, little is known of the island’s prehistory. The most common monuments are thought to be linked to those of Sardinia and are attributed to the so-called Talayotic culture, which reached a peak of activity here in Menorca in around 1000 BC. Talayots are the rock mounds found all over the island. Popular belief has it that they functioned as watchtowers, but it’s a theory few experts accept: they have no interior stairway, and only a few are found on the coast. Even so, no one has come up with a more convincing explanation. Taulas – huge stones topped with another to form a "T", around four metres high – are unique to Menorca and even more puzzling. They have no obvious function, and they are almost always found alongside a talayot. Some of the best-preserved talayot and taula remains are on the edge of Maó at Talatí de Dalt; another site, Torrellafuda, is near Ciutadella. The third kind of prehistoric monument found on Menorca is the naveta, a stone-slab construction shaped like an inverted loaf tin, dating from between 1400 and 800 BC. Many have false ceilings, and although you can stand up inside, they were clearly not living spaces, but rather communal tombs, or ossuaries. The prime example is the Naveta d’es Tudons, outside Ciutadella.
In more recent times, the deep-water channel of the port of Maó promoted Menorca to an important position in European affairs. The British saw its potential as a naval base and captured the island in 1708 during the War of the Spanish Succession – five years later it was ceded to them under the Treaty of Utrecht. Spain regained possession in 1783, but with the threat of Napoleon in the Mediterranean, a new British base was temporarily established under admirals Nelson and Collingwood until Britain finally relinquished all claims to the island in 1802. The British influence on Menorca, especially its architecture, is still manifest: the sash windows so popular in Georgian design are even now sometimes referred to as winderes, locals often part with a fond bye-bye, and there’s a substantial expat community. The British also introduced the art of distilling juniper berries, and Menorcan gin (Xoriguer in particular) is now world-renowned.
