The art of making stone walls

[TamaraEnLaPlaya]

The art of making stone walls in Fuerteventura.

The landscape of Fuerteventura is characterized in addition to its aridity and austerity, by elements such as the dry stone walls, the gavias and the nateros . All this from an agricultural and livestock past that supported the local economy of the island.
The art of building dry stone walls was inscribed in Unesco in November 2018 on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as historian Carmelo Torres recalled on the radio. The realization of dry  stone walls is specifically recognized  in several European countries, in rural areas of Spain, France and Italy, among others.
For the historian, the construction of dry stone walls in Fuerteventura "have a transcendental importance based on those first references to the division of the island by a wall into two kingdoms, that of Guize and that of Ayose".
Traditionally the stone walls were used by the majoreros to divide the tillage areas from the livestock areas and to delimit the neighboring plots .
On the other hand, Torres refers to what he considers to be the greatest intervention on the island's landscape and which is known as «the roses«. It is about getting arable land where there were none. The land was brought by donkeys from different points and after being deposited on the ground, it was surrounded by dry stone walls, thus building a gull.
Dry stone walls were also used on the slopes of the mountains to support the soil and to provide soil for planting. This intervention is known as nateros.

Courtesy of RadioSintonia.

[windermeregolfer]

The art of good dry stone walling takes ages to learn and is often handed down from father to son as we know living in the Lake District where there are mile after mile of it up and down the fell sides.

In the Lakes there are a couple of good reasons for dry stone walling one to form the boundary's of the farmers land and keep his or her stock on their own land, the other reason was to clear areas of the stones that had found their way to the surface so giving greater area for live stock to graze or to create fields for arable farming.