Olive terraces
and liquid gold.

The terraces you see on every hillside are called marjades: steps of land held up by dry-stone walls, built by hand to stop the soil washing away and to let olive trees grow on slopes far too steep to farm. In Puigpunyent the terraces of Son Forteza, Son Net and Sa Coma are singled out by the town hall as some of the finest.

Mallorca was exporting olive oil as early as the 13th century, and in the 16th century olive groves spread right across the Serra de Tramuntana. For almost three hundred years, oil was even used on the island as a means of payment.

Each great estate, or possessió, pressed its own olives in its own tafona, and many of those presses still stand inside the old houses of the valley.

Conques was one of the valley's fortified estates, and its big house kept a tafona where oil was made until the last century. In the 1970s the house was divided into apartments and sold off piece by piece, and the press hall was later offered for sale for conversion into a flat. Its protected status stopped that, and it sat empty for years.

In 2011 a Puigpunyent resident, Teresa Nieto, set out to save it as an interpretation centre for the valley, for residents, visitors and schools. With EU Leader funding of €77,581 and the Consell de Mallorca's heritage service, restoration of the building and its machinery began, and the work was presented at the International Molinology Congress held in Mallorca in 2018.