History

Before the Arab conquest of Mallorca (902 CE), the Serra de Tramuntana was sparsely settled scrubland. It was the Moorish farmers and hydraulic engineers who, between the 10th and 13th centuries CE, fundamentally transformed the landscape. They designed and built a sophisticated network of dry-stone terraces (marjades) to create flat agricultural surfaces on near-vertical slopes, and an equally sophisticated irrigation system: stone channels (siquies) captured rainfall and spring water, distributing it through the terraces to fields growing olives, almonds, citrus, and vegetables. The hydraulic knowledge required was extraordinary — rivalling the qanat systems of the Middle East and North Africa from which it descended.

After the Christian Reconquest of Mallorca by King Jaume I of Aragon in 1229 CE, the landscape underwent a social transformation. Moorish farmers were expelled or converted, and the land was distributed among the Catalan and Aragonese nobility. The new lords built large manor estates (possessions) throughout the Serra — fortified complexes with defensive towers, formal gardens, olive presses, and extensive enclosed agricultural lands. Many of these possessions survive as working farms or converted hotels. The Moorish hydraulic and terrace infrastructure, however, was preserved and continued in use — its practical value transcended the political change.

From the 19th century, the Serra attracted artists and writers. The composer Frédéric Chopin and the writer George Sand famously wintered in the Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa in 1838–39 (an experience Sand described in Un hiver à Majorque). The poet and novelist Robert Graves settled in Deià in 1929 and lived there for most of the rest of his life, drawing an artistic and literary circle that made the village internationally known.