The houses of Formentera, a refuge on the plains

Housing is not only a real state asset, it is also a form of spiritual consolidation (Mario Benedetti)

When strolling through the Barbaria dry land and wandering aimlessly through the foothills of Migjorn, the eye inevitably stops at the little white houses of Formentera, the essence of the practicality of the locals and the ingenuity required to make up for the scarcity of materials. Splendid constructions despite their simplicity, in the middle of a sea of stone and curly junipers, which make up another example of the perfect symbiosis between the Pitiusans of yesteryear and the environment they inhabited. They exhibit an architecture of tradition without a handbook, where some common and essential features converge, that sometimes bring it closer and sometimes move it away from the rural dwellings of neighbouring Ibiza. As on Ibiza and Formentera, the main façade is usually whitewashed, but not the side walls, which are made of exposed stone. In front of the main door, there is a low wall like a fence, on which there are one or two pairs of columns, depending on the size of the house, with twin bases and capitals and polygonal shafts. They hold the crossbeam that supports a sloping tiled porch, which is the same material that covers the roofs, always gabled, in the style of the simplest Catalan farmhouses. At the top, a gutter collects rainwater and carries it to the cistern, taking advantage of one of Formentera’s scarcest assets. Unlike the rural Ibizan house, which is terraced to adapt to the slope of the land and grows in modules according to the needs of the family and food storage, the Formentera house is purely horizontal. There are no upper floors or stairs to connect them; even the slightest step is an exception. They evolve, therefore, in width, without elements arranged perpendicular to the main structure, as sometimes happens in Ibiza, with corrals, oil mills or warehouses where carts and farm implements are kept.