Menorcan Gates: A Disappearing Craft
No image defines Menorca as much as the rustic wooden gates, made by hand from the wood of wild olive trees. But for how much longer? Today we bring you an interview with Ovidi Pons, one of the few who preserve, defend, and promote this profession so characteristic of Menorcan culture and tradition.
Back when Menorca was a predominantly agricultural society, the trade of the arader was a common one. They were the artisans who handcrafted wooden farm equipment of all kinds: ploughs, carts, handles for tools, and of course, the gates that provided access for livestock between fields divided by dry stone walls.
As a trade, it’s unique to Menorca, but today, only five araders remain. And with mass-produced tools and farm machinery having replaced much of their work, the bulk of their orders these days are gates.
Ovidi Pons, an arader based in Sant Climent, spent the first six months of his apprenticeship scouring the countryside for suitable trees. “The trees are cut after the full moon in January and August because that produces the best wood,” he says. “When you cut down a wild olive you don’t kill it. It sprouts again within months, and in 10 to 15 years it can be cut again.”
A hardwood, wild olive is very durable, he adds. Gates that are left untreated will last to 20 to 30 years outdoors, and longer if oiled or kept indoors.
These days Ovidi buys the wood already cut, but he must still leave it to dry for at least a year and a half before he can select the pieces to work with: trunks for the posts, branches for the bars, the straighter ones at the bottom and curved ones at the top.
The original farm gates were purely functional. They had no aesthetic value and were not made with great precision. But with the arrival of tourism came a new type of customer: villa owners who wanted gates for their homes. Thus the design was refined, and more attention was paid to the curves and proportions.
Demand for the gates has boomed in recent years, with orders coming from the mainland, overseas, and as far away as the USA, and for all manner of gates: miniature decorative ones, extra-large ones, gate-shaped headboards, and more. Interest is such that Ovidi even gives gate-making demonstrations organized by the Centre Artesanal de Menorca several times yearly.
Tourism may have spelled the end for many traditional occupations in Menorca, but it ensured the trade of the arader endured. But of the five araders still working, two will soon retire, and only Ovidi is passing his knowledge on to an apprentice. So while there is no shortage of demand for their craft, it is the lack of skilled artisans that threatens the survival of the iconic wooden gates.
