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Formentera Council rejects proposed Port Authority project to construct café at Es Cap lighthouse

Faro-de-Cap-de-BarbariaThis morning, president of the Formentera Council Jaume Ferrer responded to a letter he had recently received from Alberto Pons in which the Port Authority president requested the collaboration of the local administration in a project at the Es Cap lighthouse. The project, which proposed opening a bar-café in the famous local monument, was conceived as an extension of the Faros de España ('Lighthouses of Spain') programme of the Ministry of Development.

Ferrer rejected the Port Authority-proposed collaboration on the grounds that the lighthouse held enormous strategic importance on Formentera: “This is a place that offers a purity and silence that are hard to match. It is a monument that has countless benefits”. The Council president cited the lighthouse's capacity to attract visitors, among which had been director Julio Medem. “Medem used an image of the lighthouse in the poster for his film Lucía y el sexo,” explained Ferrer. “For many Spanish travellers this is what put Formentera on the map”.

Asked the Council president: “What would visitors to our island think if they found out Formentera and the rest of the Balearic Islands wanted to transform this cultural landmark into a café?”

Ferrer called to mind the fact that at the presidential conference held last year on 23 November, the president of the Govern Balear and all the other presidents of the Balearic councils agreed to fight for the rights of the local councils in decision making affecting the regional landscape.

Speaking on how the Council would proceed in the event that Port Authority persisted in its push, Ferrer wrote: “We hope that the Bauzà administration would keep its word and help the Formentera Council put a stop to the project”.

In the president's letter to the Port Authority chief, Ferrer said that stopping the Es Cap bar-café project was so important to the Formentera Council that the institution wished to offer up its own suggestion: combining the bar-café project with current Council plans for a cultural space at the lighthouse in La Mola. The one condition: respect for the lighthouse and its surroundings. As Ferrer explained, “the lighthouse in La Mola is closer to an urban setting than the lighthouse in Es Cap, its associated access road is two-way and nearby there are already other businesses – a shop and a café”, all of which are characteristics that, according to Ferrer, make the lighthouse in La Mola the more adequate choice for the current proposal.