SA SITJA

SA SITJA DE SA ROTA D´EN COCA

A sitja (now totally obsolete) was made to obtain coal in the island. It´s a complicated process that just 70 years was a daily method for which the coal was obteined after a long process. Nowadays you can see some old sitjas spread in some forests of the island, completely abandoned. The wood is placed with pine blogs with the heaviest and largest below, and filled all the interior with the rest of the tree logs. After all trunks, it is covered with dry pine needles and it´s surrounded by stones, all in a kind of an oval form oven as we see in the pictures. A sitja like this on the images, burns for about three days non stop. Once the coal is made, the coal is used in the area and the rest was carried to "Vila" (the name that is used to Ibiza town by the locals) to sell it. Annually in Santa Agnès (where these photos were taken) there is an exhibition about the sitjas and one is made and burned within the program of the village fiestas. It is one of Ibiza's traditions that have been recovered.