ES VEDRÀ AND THE FIG TREES
The magic of Ibiza and Formentera
After so many years between Ibiza and Formentera, there are many stories, anecdotes and characters that cross paths and, after a while, intersect with us again through what we usually call random and come together as one thing: the magic that these islands still hold.
Photography by @dosmares_ibiza
Text by Daniel Foraster
Many years before arriving to Formentera, it was an eccentric and unforgettable professor from the philosophy faculty who first told us about the island of Es Vedrà and the telluric forces that emanate from it. He also told us about Dali and the Hartmann lines, a magnetic net that covers our planet and that on this island south of Ibiza has a strength comparable to very few places in the world.
Without a doubt, the island of Es Vedrà is a special place. An island with two faces, the one that looks impressive from Ibiza, a few hundred meters from the coast; and the other that from Formentera draws its silhouette on the horizon after Ibiza. It is a source of inspiration for artists, home of hermits, an enclave claimed by ufologists and lovers of mystery…
And it was in Es Cap de Barbària, in Formentera, where many years ago we met Hans, a German former owner of a garden center in the area, who spoke to us again about the magnetic forces of the earth. He told us that a farmer had explained to him that fig trees are sensitive to the forces of the earth, that they grow best over water crossings, in areas of special magnetism, and that it is for this reason that they bear such sweet fruits.
Hans also told us that that old farmer had told him that Formentera is an island whose land lacks iron and that to plant them it is better to follow a ritual: you have to wait for a full moon night and in the place where we have dug, before sowing the seed, a bonfire must be made in which to deposit all the metal things that we find, cans, nails, screws… I don’t know if it is true, but it is always very nice for us to remember this story.
Not far from Hans’s garden center, there is an agglomeration of dilapidated houses that constitute the closest thing to an urbanization that an old peasant and some hippies can form. The Melrose place of Formentera, they called it. On the porch of the house that presides over the development, the owner always received us, lounging in an implausible way on a tiny stool, with a cigarette in his mouth and a grunt that could be interpreted as a hello. There the residents told us that on summer nights the ghost of an old woman, perhaps a witch, was often seen heading towards the writhing fig tree at the back of the property.
There are many fig trees that can be seen along the countless paths in Es Cap de Barbària, an area famous for its witches and, coincidentally, also for its underground waters.
And so, woven between experiences, anecdotes and characters, is how we arrive from today through time to that old wrinkled hand of the land of these islands, still stretched out beneath us, so that we can shake it and feel all the magic of it.
