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Another aspect of the Ibicencan traditions that has been preserved are the folklore displays which are still performed and can be witnessed during the annual town fiestas or during the popular celebrations held in the churches around the island all year round. This gives the dance troupe a chance to exhibit their colorful typical costumes in all its splendor.
The culture and folklore is in turn an amalgam of the different cultures of the various people the colonized the island in the past. And then of course there is the dancing. Executed in a repetitive manner with its Moorish characteristics, in one of these, the leader is portrayed as beating a drum with one hand while playing a shepherd s flute on the other hand. In several of the dances, the dancers also substitute the drums with castanets as big as their hands called castañuelas . Other traditional dances, the Sa Llarga and the Sa Curta, portray flirtation between men and women. The women circle their suitors while the men showcase their masculine abilities by jumping and playing their castañuelas.
Aside from the dress, the traditional dances, songs, and celebrations, some of the ancient farming techniques are still used in the fields. For several of them, man and beast still remain the driving forces of their way of life. This being the case, the farmers are able to work even the smallest plots of land which would otherwise have been inaccessible with a modern tractor. Besides ploughing, rolling and harrowing, which is still being done to this day, in the bygone days, horses were also put to the task of pulling carts for use as personal transportation and for delivering farm products. While these horse-drawn carts are still abundant in certain parts of the island, their number is at present insufficient to supply the demands of the millions of tourists that visit Ibiza every year. Also still in existence are horse-driven water pumps which were replaced at some point by windmills and which in turn gave way to electric motors.
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An interesting sight is the threshing and winnowing of the farm-grown corn. Ibicencan farmers cut the corn by hand and lay them out on the threshing floor which comprises a wide round area of either ground or concrete (a number of these threshing floors can still be seen around the island. A man then stands in the center and has the horse plod slowly around in circles and trample the corn until all the grain has been expelled. The farmer then removes the straw with large forks and leaves the wind to blow the chaff away.
As a result of both tourism and modernization some traditions have died out and others are rapidly following. However it is hoped that this extraordinary way of life will continue well into the future.
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