Expropriation in Son Servera to further research on Roman baths

The Council of Majorca is particularly interested in further excavating the site and conserving what has been brought to light. The island authority therefore wants to expropriate certain tracts of land adjacent to the original find.

The Council's intentions were explained yesterday by Miquel Barceló, the General Secretary of the Culture and Heritage department. He said that the money for further investigation and conservation could be taken from the Council of Majorca's road building budget.

Barceló said that were the expropriation not possible at this moment in time, the archaeological remains of the baths which have already been exposed would be covered up to protect them from further deterioration whilst the expropriation process continued.

The Council is not just interested in the site purely for its archaeological value, explained Barceló but also for its potential as a future cultural tourism attraction.

Archaeologist Beatriz Palomar who has been collaborating with Son Servera town council over the find said: “It had already been known that there was a site of some considerable size at Camí de Son Sard because of the extent of remnants of Roman ceramics found on the surface.” She said that the find was of particular significance because the period from which the villa and its baths date belong to what is referred to as “the Dark Ages of Majorca,” so called due to the lack of archaeological evidence to explain the history and culture of the time. “The more we know about the villa, which was part of an agricultural holding, the more we will be able to find out about life in this late Roman period,” she said. “We can't yet date the baths exactly but as the centuries progressed, it is possible they may have been cleaned out and used for other purposes.”