Public estate La Trapa

The estate, in the municipality of Andratx, consists of two west-facing valleys ending in some cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. It has some of the lowest rainfall on the island and the landscape is therefore arid, due also to various recent fires and to the presence of wild goats, which devour new shoots. 

The houses of La Trapa can be found here. These formed the old monastery inhabited by the Trappist monks who fled the French Revolution of 1789. The community that came to La Trapa was made up of 40 monks of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, vowed to poverty, chastity and silence, strict vegetarians who slept on a hard surface and devoted their lives to prayer and work. Perhaps the strictness of their rules enabled them to survive in this enclave which they transformed by constructing terraces in order to sow cereals, pulses, vegetables and fruit trees, thanks to a clever water collection system.