Son Oms, the paradigm of the blunder in the name of progress
Son Oms was not a site formed by a single monument, but a large prehistoric complex, occupied and reused for centuries
PalmaIn one of the flowerbeds of one of the accesses to one of the busiest motorways in Mallorca, the one to Palma airport, 55 years ago an entire post-Talayotic sanctuary was moved there. Buried forever under the second runway of Son Sant Joan airport, Son Oms was not a site formed by a single monument, but a large prehistoric complex, occupied and reused for centuries.
Its exact extent is difficult to reconstruct because, before being razed, only a quarter of it had been excavated. Although at the beginning of the 20th century a hundred constructions were preserved there, in the 1960s only a dozen remained. The spoliation for construction purposes preceded the final annihilation that the expansion of the airport in 1971 entailed. The destruction not only eliminated monuments known thanks to the excavations of Guillem Rosselló Bordoy, but also a large archaeological area that had not been studied.
“They tried to move the talayots, but the stones disintegrated,” explains archaeologist Magdalena Riera, who for decades worked at the Palma City Council. The only thing that withstood the move was the sanctuary.
Before its destruction, it was a “unique site where the most singular architectural manifestations of island prehistory were concentrated, from the Bronze Age to the Roman period: navetas, artificial caves, three talayots, a stepped mound, a sanctuary, a necropolis,” explains Beatriz Palomar.
“Son Oms is a clear example of institutional neglect, or the destruction of heritage with legal protection for other interests,” pointed out Domingo C. Hernández Jiménez in issue 57 of the magazine Arte y Humanidades. Son Oms is paradigmatic for the contrast it represents between access through public infrastructure to supposed progress and modernity, and the destruction of heritage. The entrance to the future that annihilates the past, history, the roots.
“Today this would not be possible,” remarks Magdalena Riera, although she denounces that the remains of the sanctuary “are treated like any roundabout”. And not only that, but whoever wants to visit it risks being run over. Palomar laments: “It’s like a bad joke”.