News

Formentera firefighters train in simulated blaze in La Savina port

Tuesday, 13 November 2018 16:38

foto bombers simulacre 2018 3 The president's office of the Formentera Council reports that local firefighters were joined by members of the local police, harbour police and civil defence as they took part in an exercise involving a simulated fire affecting a fuel lorry near the petrol station in La Savina harbour.

Typically performed once yearly, simulations of this kind are part of the port's safety strategy and serve to measure the time emergency services take responding to fires and spills.

Today's simulated incident involved the unloading of a fuel lorry with a defective hose that caught fire after suffering an initial leak. The operation consisted in getting the leak under control and then extinguishing the fire all while maintaining safe conditions in the surrounding area and keeping flames from spreading.

Department head Bartomeu Escandell said the exercise was about “gauging collaboration between the port authority and the distinct security and prevention forces of the Formentera Council in emergency situations”. Escandell highlighted the island's recent deployment of a fire engine belonging to Balearic port authority, “it's an extremely useful tool that will help us improve how we prevent and put out fires, both in La Savina's harbour and across the island”.

Beginning at 10.00am and finished by roughly 10.45am, the simulation saw the participation of four firefighters with heavy goods vehicles, six civil protection volunteers with two vehicles, four officers on the local police force and another two from the harbour police.

Formentera joins Bilbao summit on innovative water-management solutions

Monday, 12 November 2018 17:52

foto bizkaia 1 Environment secretary Daisee Aguilera put in an appearance last week at an event showcasing cutting-edge strategies in water management, Encuentro para la Innovación en la Gestión de Agua (4.0), a series of day-long meditations organised by Spain's association of water supply and sanitation, AEAS, and the Bilbao Bizkaia water consortium.

The gathering served to shed light on the innovative aspects of the digitalisation currently afoot in urban water management, and provide a look at some of the challenges ahead—in general strategies, public contracts, integrated project management, and development of everything from sanitation and purification to distribution.

Formentera spotlighted the cutting-edge hallmarks of Smart Water Island, a system that lets local water supplier Aqualia automatically track water use from remote locations, boosting both the speed and efficiency of the local grid.

Pioneer system in the Balearics

The scheme's rollout, including installation of 2394 water metres, will be complete by year end. The system is the first of its kind in the Balearics and does not directly impact water rates.

Smart readings of metres give Aqualia the ability to track real-time consumption while eliminating the need for in-person visits to housing tracts and individual dwellings. The automatic remote-reading apparatus works by dispatching data feeds every eight seconds directly to the Sant Francesc-based command central where a software programme calculates billing information.

With the Smart Aqua app, ratepayers even have access to an hourly breakdown of their consumption. The app gives customers the possibility of tracking water use even when away from home. The system detects leaks localised in homes and even signals other potential irregularities, thus preventing sky-high bills due to associated water loss.

Secretary Aguilera called it “a leap forward in terms of the tools we have to monitor the grid, and how we measure efficiency, which stood at 89.57% in 2017. Taken together, she said, the system "makes our water use more sustainable and ensures a more sound distribution, both of which are crucial on an island like Formentera”.

Aguilera also took time in her presentation to discuss the management model used by Aliança per l'Aigua, an agency that works with the public and private sectors and civil society to promote sustainable water use in the Balearics and Formentera, where “every drop counts as we move closer to striking a balance between growth and responsible administration of our natural resources”.

Volunteers take aim at stacked stones of Es Trucadors

Thursday, 08 November 2018 13:32

foto ses salines pedres 1 The Formentera Council's environment office reports that the administration is partnering with GEN-GOB and the Balearic ministry of environment to stage a cleanup this Saturday in a bid to clear piles of small rocks near Es Trucadors.

CiF environment secretary Daisee Aguilera encouraged the whole island to come out for the event. The day will begin with a 10.30am briefing in the car park of Es Ministre, a restaurant in Illetes. From there volunteers will head to Es Trucadors and, said the secretary, “try to make a dent in the piles of stones littering the landscape”. Aguilera said crews are encouraged to scatter the stones carefully to minimise impact on the surrounding ecosystem.

Es Trucadors sits in the centre of Ses Salines nature reserve, which exposure to wind and waves makes particularly susceptible to erosion. Those very weather conditions are behind the strange and unique coastal features that are one of the reserve's defining characteristics—and the same reason it is vulnerable to even subtle changes.

Aguilera held the park's surging popularity in recent years and visitors' inclination to stack stones in sculpture-like creations to blame for “accelerating natural processes of erosion and, by correlation, this area's eventual disappearance from the map”. That, she said, is the idea behind educational outreach: explaining to islanders “why leaving this fragile ecosystem untouched, and if possible restoring it to how it was, is so crucial”.

Volunteers coming to participate from Eivissa should meet in the port at 8.30am. Round-trip travel between the islands will be covered by Baleària, and bus service to and from Illetes will also be free of charge. Snacks will be provided at the end of the day.

Collective Signatures returns to Formentera

Friday, 09 November 2018 15:04

foto collective signatures 3 The culture, education and patrimony department of the Formentera Council is lending its support the forthcoming second edition of Collective Signatures, a cultural initiative partnered with Venice International Performance Art Week, Studio Contemporaneo, ED 520 École Doctorale des Humanités (a division of the University of Strasbourg) and Formentera Film.

At the core of the Collective Signatures programme are gatherings organisers call "itinerant residencies", though they could just as easily be described as artists' retreats. The latest will take place on the island from November 12 to 22. In addition to fostering reflection and thoughtful critique around the cultural questions of our day by encouraging participants to write and create, organisers put special focus on the value of creative and experimental writing—whether performed individually or as part of group.

During the retreat, participants learn by doing as they complete a series of artistic challenges and hands-on exercises which incorporate a range of corporal, gestural, sensorial, verbal and intellectual elements. Just what inspires this edition's particular slant? Formentera itself and the island's surrounding natural beauty. Organisers hope experiences at the retreat will push artists to reflect, write, act, produce texts and explore new writing strategies tuned to the sights and shapes so unique to the island.

Sharing work with the community

Apart from the retreat, Collective Signatures will also stage two productions at the cinema (Sala de Cultura)—islanders' chance to sneak a peek at the project.

At 7.00pm on Saturday November 17, Marcel·lí Antúnez will present Systematurgy. Accions, Dispositius i Dibuixos. In what Antúnez describes as a "mechatronic conference", the artist traces his career from its start in the nineties to today. Next up audiences will see Signum, a short film shot on Formentera by VestAndPage that received the support of Francesca Carol Rolla and La Pocha Nostra.

For the retreat's final act, scheduled for Thursday November 22 at 8.00pm, participants will take the stage for a series of individual and group performances and assorted readings based on activities led by VestAndPage, Antúnez and Rolla. At once creative and collaborative, the closing performance will spotlight original work conceived and produced during Collective Signatures.

CROTCH, an experiment in erasing gender

Thursday, 08 November 2018 11:46

foto crotch 1 This Saturday, November 10, as part of a week-long activities programme to mark International Day of Action for Trans Depathologisation, the Majorcan performing-arts company Baal will be on the island to present CROTCH, a dance-heavy performance which explores gender identity, to local audiences.

The production's driving impulse is to forefront disobedient, dissident bodies and thoughts, to pave the way for sexual acceptance, to posit the unraveling of gender as a solution to gender inequality, and not only that, but to offer, too, the idea that all of us can be women, men and everything on the continuum between the two.

CROTCH offers a fresh and unusual look at dance, breaking with conventions to articulate a language of its own and find ways for new conversations, not only with audiences but with technology as well.

Islanders can catch the show, which is featured on the Institut d'Estudis Baleàrics' TalentIB circuit, at the cinema (Sala de Cultura) this Saturday at 8.30pm. It is recommended for viewers aged 18 and over.

In anticipation of the show on Saturday, students at the island's school of dance are invited along with performing-arts professionals to participate in a special master class this Friday.