La historia de Es Fangar — nueve siglos en mil hectáreas

A nine-century chronicle of one of the largest privately held estates in the Mediterranean — from a Roman vineyard to a Mallorcan marquesate, and from a family seat in decline to a thousand-hectare organic estate at the centre of one of the island's most public ownership stories.<h2>I. A landscape older than its name</h2>Es Fangar sits in the southern interior of Mallorca, where the municipalities of Manacor and Felanitx meet the village of Son Macià. It rolls across roughly one thousand hectares — the largest single estate in Manacor and one of the largest on Mallorca — between gently terraced vineyards, almost six hundred hectares of pine, olive and carob forest, and a high plateau ringed by limestone outcrops. About four hundred hectares are catalogued by the Govern de les Illes Balears as ANEI (Àrea Natural d'Especial Interès), the planning category that protects rural land of exceptional ecological value.¹The Romans were the first known winegrowers here. They cultivated vines and olives across south-east Mallorca more than two thousand years ago, and the gravel-and-chalk soils of Es Fangar — well drained, low in humidity for a Mediterranean island — still bear the imprint of that civilisation. The first written reference to the estate as a coherent rural property dates to the fourteenth century, when cereals and wine cultivated on its lands fed the surrounding villages of the Llevant.⁸<h2>II. The Marquesate of the Torre del Fangar</h2>From the fifteenth century onwards, Es Fangar belonged to the Truyols family, a Mallorcan noble house whose landholdings were among the most extensive on the island. The lineage held the title of Marquesos de la Torre del Fangar, created for Nicolau Truyols i Dameto and later borne by Fernando Truyols i Villalonga, IV Marquès (1784–1857), and Ferran Truyols i Despuig, VI Marquès (1850–1923). The marquesate gives the estate its enduring name: Fangar, in Mallorcan Catalan, denotes a clay or muddy land — a memory of the seasonal pools that once stood around the manor house.The eighteenth century left the most legible architectural marks. The manor house and adjoining chapel were extended and renovated between 1794 and 1804, while the working estate around them — the threshing floor, the tafona (oil press), the stables and the accommodation for the amos — formed a self-sufficient settlement that produced grain, oil, almonds, carob and wine. The phylloxera plague of the late nineteenth century wiped out the ancient vines of the Llevant and effectively ended viticulture on the estate for almost a hundred years.⁸<h2>III. The Bonnín-Armstrong years</h2>At the beginning of the twentieth century, Es Fangar passed from the Truyols to the Bonnín-Armstrong family, a Mallorcan family whose patriarch, Pedro Juan Bonnín Armstrong (1900–1990), consolidated Es Fangar as part of a wider portfolio of as many as sixteen fincas between Manacor and Felanitx.⁵ Through the twentieth century the property continued to function as a traditional Mallorcan agricultural estate — cereals, sheep, almonds, carob trees, and the slow rhythm of subsistence farming — surviving intact when most of Mallorca's great possessions were already being broken up. By the late twentieth century, however, large parts of Es Fangar had reverted to scrub and low forest, and the estate was, in agronomic terms, sleeping.<h2>IV. A Swiss-German vision: the Eisenmann era (2001–present)</h2>In 2001, the German-Swiss industrialist Peter Eisenmann — founder family of Eisenmann SE, the Solingen-based manufacturer of paint-shop systems for the global automotive industry, with around three thousand employees and twenty-seven branches in fifteen countries — bought Es Fangar from the Bonnín-Armstrong family for approximately €13.8 million.²⁵ With his wife Sabine Eisenmann, he set out to do something Mallorca had not seen at this scale: convert one of its largest historical estates into a fully organic ecological project, anchored on three pillars — viticulture, equestrian breeding, and biodiversity conservation.The next two decades saw Es Fangar transformed. The Eisenmanns ringed almost six hundred hectares of pine, olive and carob forest as a private nature reserve and built (or restored) more than thirty buildings — the manor house, the chapel, the spa, the cinema and gallery, the Arabic House with its Moorish cloister, the Mallorcan House, Villa Porto Colom, and Villa Son Primavera, the largest of the rentable houses, sleeping up to fourteen guests.⁶ They installed thirty hand-managed wildlife watering stations, twenty-two colonies of honey bees (six placed beside the vines to deter mould by draining bird-pierced grapes), and a closed-loop fertiliser composted on-site from winery pomace, straw and horse manure. Vineyard staff move along the rows on bicycles to avoid compacting the soil. The estate became, in the assessment of the Govern de les Illes Balears, a 'model organic finca'.¹<h2>V. The vineyards and the bodega</h2>Replanting began in 2004 under the direction of winemaker Daniel Morales Rodríguez, a Priorat-born oenologist trained at Mas Martinet, with experience in Montsant and a vintage in South Africa. Eisenmann's instruction to him, on hiring, was characteristically patient: give the vines the years they need. By 2015, when the wine writer Sue Ray visited the estate, fifty-four hectares had been planted with predominantly indigenous varieties — Manto Negro, Callet, Premsal Blanc, Giró Blanc — alongside Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Viognier and Muscat, all certified organic and vegan.⁷The first commercial vintages were produced offsite in 2010. By 2018 the original facility had reached its capacity of around 70,000 bottles a year and the Eisenmanns invested €8 million in a new bodega in Felanitx — a project that was initially proposed for the Manacor industrial park but was rejected on planning grounds. The new winery, inaugurated in 2019, occupies 7,500 square metres with forty-eight stainless-steel tanks of 12,000 litres each, a 20,000-litre blending tank, and an oak cellar dominated by French barrels. Maximum capacity: 300,000 bottles a year.⁵ The estate's wines — Sa Fita Blanc, Lo Cortinel·lo Blanc, Fangar Elements, the premium N'Amarat, the white TwentyTwelve — are sold under DO Pla i Llevant and exported to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Spanish mainland.<h2>VI. The stud and the only CDI 5* in Spain</h2>In parallel, Eisenmann built one of the largest private equestrian centres in Europe. The stud occupies roughly 480 hectares of the estate, operates under the rules of the German Hannoveraner Verband, and includes custom stables with individual paddocks, an on-site veterinary clinic and pharmacy, an indoor riding hall, three outdoor arenas, a lunging ring, an 800-metre race track, Damman ebb-and-flow footing, and around six kilometres of riding trails.² By 2017 the estate employed approximately ninety-five people, including a multinational equestrian team and the seasonal staff for harvest and tournament weeks.In 2014, Es Fangar inaugurated the Balearen Tour, a CDI 4* dressage competition that drew riders from seventeen nations.² The 2015 edition was covered by Eurodressage as the announcement of 'the new paradise' of dressage, and the 2016 edition became the only CDI 5* ever held in Spain — one of just twelve CDI 5* events worldwide that year. Riders included Isabell Werth and Beatriz Ferrer-Salat; the head of the ground jury was Maribel Alonso, who would officiate at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. More than ten thousand spectators attended in person; over one hundred thousand watched the live stream.² A horse born at Es Fangar, Dark Rose de Fangar, was joint winner of the Bundeschampionate qualification classes at the 2015 Westfalian Regional Championships in Germany, marking the stud's first major international podium.⁷<h2>VII. The dispute over the public paths</h2>Es Fangar's modernisation was not without controversy. Between 2005 and 2008, perimeter fencing closed several historical camíns públics — public paths used for centuries by neighbours and walkers — that crossed the estate. The closures were challenged in court and on the streets by the citizen platform Pro Camins Públics i Oberts, which organised an annual march on the property and was widely covered by Última Hora and Diario de Mallorca.³⁴ The dispute reached its resolution on 16 May 2009, when Es Fangar and the platform signed a free-passage agreement opening defined corridors of the estate and offering both land and operational assistance to neighbouring farmers.³⁴ The episode became a reference point in Mallorca's wider campaign against the private enclosure of more than two hundred historical paths across the island, a fight revisited by Diario de Mallorca as recently as February 2026.⁴<h2>VIII. S/Y Reesle: the estate at sea</h2>The estate's relationship with the Mediterranean is embodied in S/Y Reesle, a 30.4-metre / 100-foot schooner designed by the Dutch naval architects Hoek Design and built in 1995 by Engelaer Scheepsbouw — at the time, the largest yacht the yard ever produced. Reesle arrived at Claasen Shipyards at the end of 2017 for a complete refit (new main engines, new bow thruster, full repaint, refreshed interiors) and was relaunched on 3 April 2019.⁹ She accommodates eight guests in four suites, with a permanent crew of four; her top speed is twelve knots and her cruising speed ten. Reesle is the seagoing extension of Es Fangar — the estate's vineyard, equestrian centre and yacht together forming an experience that few Mediterranean properties can match.<h2>IX. Insolvency, listing, and the estate today</h2>In July 2019, Eisenmann SE filed for insolvency for 'strategic restructuring', after the bankruptcy of a major US client in 2016 and the failure of a Chinese takeover in 2017. By that point Peter Eisenmann had already withdrawn from active management.² In March 2020, Es Fangar was placed on the market for the first time at €100 million — about €100,000 a hectare — a listing covered by Eurodressage and the Mallorcan press as the most expensive private property listing on the island.²In November–December 2025, the estate was re-listed by the international agency John Taylor at €87 million (approximately US$100 million). The listing was covered by Le Figaro, Architectural Digest, Mansion Global and the multilingual Ara Balears, which described Es Fangar as 'the most expensive mansion in Mallorca' — a price that exceeds Villa Solitaire in Son Vida (€39 million) and Sa Fortaleza in Pollença (€63 million, sold to the Norwegian magnate Ivar Tollefsen).⁵ As of 2026, Finca Es Fangar S.A.U., the company that operates the estate, continues to run the winery, the stud, the olive groves, the spa and the rental villas, while the sale process remains active.<h2>X. A legacy still being written</h2>Es Fangar is, by any measure, a one-of-a-kind property. It is one of the largest single estates in the Mediterranean. It produces certified-organic, vegan wines under the DO Pla i Llevant. It breeds Hanoverian dressage horses to international standard. It hosts an Arabic House, a Mallorcan House, a Lodge, a chapel, a spa with a hammam and a wave bath, a private cinema and gallery, a fully equipped bodega, six kilometres of equestrian trails, and a 30-metre Hoek-designed schooner. It is also a piece of public history — the seat of a Mallorcan marquesate, the subject of a court battle that reshaped the island's relationship with its rural paths, and the site of the only CDI 5* dressage competition Spain has ever held.Whether Es Fangar's next chapter is written by the Eisenmann family, by a new owner via John Taylor, or by a future custodian who will continue the organic vision, the story so far suggests one thing: this is not merely a property, but a layered Mallorcan place that has survived nine centuries of changing hands precisely because each generation has felt obliged to add to it rather than diminish it.<h3>Sources</h3><ol><li>Wikipedia (Spanish edition), Es Fangar; Govern de les Illes Balears, Winery Finca Es Fangar.</li><li>Eurodressage — 21 Apr 2015, 17 Jun 2015, 4 Jun 2016, 19 Jan 2018, 7 Mar 2020.</li><li>Última Hora — 13 Nov 2005, 16 May 2009.</li><li>Diario de Mallorca — 16 May 2009, 8 Feb 2026.</li><li>Ara Balears — 3 December 2025 (Catalan, Spanish, English and German editions).</li><li>abc-mallorca — Es Fangar Wine Cellar; Es Fangar, a finca fit for the future.</li><li>Sue Ray Uncorked — September 2015 (visit and tasting with Daniel Morales).</li><li>Grokipedia — Es Fangar (Roman antiquity, 14th-century documentation, phylloxera, Bonnín-Armstrong consolidation).</li><li>Hoek Design, Claasen Shipyards, Boat International, Charterworld — 12–15 April 2019.</li></ol>

— Es Fangar Collection Editorial