Walls of “Paret Seca”

Última actualización: 20/08/2024

What is Paret Seca?

The Paret Seca can be seen in practically all the roads and houses in Menorca.
It is a type of wall made only with stones and rocks, without cement or other mortar to hold them together.
If you have ever been to Menorca you will surely have seen dozens of paths flanked by these peculiar stone walls, which can reach two meters high in some places.

What is Paret Seca used for?

The Paret Seca has
mainly 3 objectives in addition to its basic function of delimitation of land, roads and farms:

1. It serves to protect the crop fields from the strong winds of Menorca.
   Let’s not forget that Menorca is an area where the Tramuntana rages and the wind blows day in and day out.
   The stone walls prevent the wind from blowing the soil away from the fields.
2. Thanks to the dry paret, stones are removed from the fields to be used in the construction of the walls.
   This makes it easier for the farmers to plow the fields.
   The fewer stones there are in the field, the easier it is to plow it.
3. The delimitation of fields and grazing areas with dry grassland allows cattle to graze on a rotational basis.
   Rotational grazing is nothing more than using different fields alternately to allow the vegetation to recover between pastures.

Paret Seca today

Contrary to what one might think, Paret Seca constructions are still being built in Menorca.
In addition to the more than 10,000 kilometers of walls that are theoretically built in Menorca(a fact that I find hard to believe, considering that the Chinese wall is measured at about 9,000 kilometers long), stone walls are still being built and repaired on the island. In October 2009 the CIME announced in a communiqué that it was going to offer 10 scholarships to learn how to build Paret Seca, specifically with the aim of conditioning the Talayotic settlement of Montefí at Ciutadella.
Contrary to what it may seem, the construction of stone walls without cement is a complicated and tedious process.
To prevent the stones from falling down, some techniques must be used.
If you are interested in knowing more about the construction of Paret Seca, I recommend this article where the author gives some tips for the construction of stone walls.

There are more than 11,000 km of dry part in Menorca.

If we rely on the data of the mapping portal of the Consell Insular de Menorca, it turns out that by approximation it is deduced that there are about 11,119 km of dry stone walls on the island of Menorca.
This means that the cost of construction of the walls today is about 780 million euros, since building a dry stone wall currently costs about 70 euros per meter (11,000km x 70€/m = 778,300,000 Euros).

Map of Paret Seca in Menorca

IDE Menorca has a very interesting map about the distribution of dry grassland in Menorca.