But two naïve seekers only found bones and the fervour and zeal of the Holy Inquisition.

Last week we talked about the lack of archaeological remains in the ‘Torres d’en Lluc’, which hasn’t revealed the causes nor the date of their construction. 

This leads to the most fantastic speculation.  One of the popular legends about the origin of these fortifications in ‘Mola d’Albarca’ explains how they were occupied as a refuge by a group of Moors after the Catalan conquest.

Negotiation methods of the day led to these irreducible people being thrown off the cliffs of the place, as indeed happened to many of the last followers of the Al-Ándalus culture. 

The screams of lament and horror of these people before they died can explain the locals name for the place: Ais.  More prosaic and believable is the version offered by the local topographist, Enric Ribes: the cliffs of the zone are home to crops of wild marine onions, from where the name Alls (garlic in Catalan).

At the other end of the ‘Mola’, on the cap d’Albarca or des Mossons, is another focal point of legend.  There you’ll find four caves, the ‘cova des pi’, ‘cova d’en Joan Orat’, ‘cova de ses Estelles’ and ‘cova des Llibrell’. 

In them, treasures had been buried and there haven’t been few fruitless expeditions in search of hidden riches. 

The now departed Joan Marí Cardona recompiled all the information of a picturesque Sicilian named Sebastián Bellotto, who arrived on the island in 1660 and who gained botoriety for his skills at finding water underground.  He was given the S’aiguader by his friend Antoni Gibert, from Can Talec. 

Two skulls found on this smallholding, and that Bellotto attributed to Samson and his wife Persia, we’re used in the spells the Sicilian used to supposedly find the hidden treasures.  But four years later, the esoteric seeker came up across the Inquisition, and was placed under arrest in Majorca. 

Gibert continued the work of his associate, and together with a bunch of easily fooled locals,  he found the ‘cova d’en Joan Orat and knocked down the stone wall that sealed it. 

They only found snails and some birds’ remains.  Gibert wouldn’t give up: the bones, according to him, proved that 200 people had taken refuge and hidden their treasures there, just as the Sicilian had told him. 

But the zeal of the Holy Purge put a full stop to the investigations of this unquiet Ibizan.