Miquel Estarelles does all kinds of building work with stone as his chief material. He builds the traditional marges (dry-stone terrace-walls) of Mallorca, free-standing stone walls, slab, crazy or pebble paving and features such as stairways or benches.

He uses the dry-stone technique, involving no binding… material. The building of a dry-stone wall starts with the selection of suitable stones, which for the bottom will be blocks of 60 to 300kg. The stone must be sound, i.e. not liable to split as it is worked, with the finest possible colour and texture. Once selected, a stone must be dressed or prepared, with a smooth face and a tail, which is what really gives strength. Miquel reckons that good progress is an average of 4 or 5m2 of wall built daily.

Along the path of the wall he lays hardcore to make a firm footing. The hardcore layer will be 40cm deep and 90-100cm wide. Once this is ready, he beds down the bulkier stones and progressively fills and bonds the large blocks with crushed stone and gravel, graded from larger to smaller. This is repeated course after course up to the filada d’alt capping layer of square level stones, giving the wall a handsome solid finish.

Dry stone is an age-old technique that has been refined on Mallorca over centuries and had its heyday in the early 20th century. With industrialisation and the advent of tourism, the master wallers gradually disappeared. In the 1990s there was a renaissance in stonemasonry, though today the trade is seriously threatened by unqualified builders, undermining the quality of both public works and private building.

The tools used are mostly hammers, weighing from 1 to 8kg, picazas (a tool used only on Mallorca, serving to fill baskets with earth and gravel), a pick, a pry bar, planks for catwalks and a line reel. Some machines have also now slightly eased the stonemason’s work, especially for breaking stones.