Yesterday morning Bartomeu Escandell, secretary of the president's office of the Formentera Council, and local police chief Joan Yern attended a farewell gathering for two agents of the Italian armed forces who had concluded two months of duty in support of Formentera's Guardia Civil.

2016 marks the second consecutive year carabinieri have provided assistance on the island, something local law enforcement say can be traced to the considerable presence of Italians on Formentera in summer. Also in attendance at the ceremony were representatives of the Eivissa-Formentera federation of hotels and the local small and medium-sized business association, both of which are collaborators in the initiative of the Spanish Ministry of Industry and the Guardia Civil. 

Jaume Ferrer, president of the Formentera Council, having today reached an agreement in Palma, on the island of Mallorca, concerning the site of the Formentera boat landing within the port of Eivissa, hereby declares that:

The new proposal fulfills the principal requests made by Formentera, specifically regarding the landing's proximity to the city and to services available therein, and regarding the existence of one single boat landing.

The Formentera Council will, upon signing the agreement that includes the adopted conditions, suspend the contentious litigation heretofore pursued for this cause.

Thanks are due to three parties: Govern de les Illes Balears, Autoritat Portuària and Ajuntament d'Eivissa, for their ability to engage in dialogue, which was essential to reaching a satisfactory solution.

Thanks are due to the people of Formentera for defending their interests in an organised, united, peaceful and well-structured way and must also be given to the “On sempre” community movement as well as all the political groups with representation in the Formentera Council plenary.

A meeting of the Consell d'Entitats shall be convened in the near future to report on the nature of the adopted agreements.

According to the Formentera Council's Office of Local Heritage, a team of architects specialised in restoring cultural heritage sites has since June been teeing up a study on traditional architecture on Formentera. The study follows the 2014 adoption by the Consell del Patrimoni Històric (Council on Historical Patrimony) of a national plan for traditional architecture. In the words of CiF heritage councillor Susana Labrador, the study is intended to promote “criteria, methods and efforts to document, investigate, protect, restore, disseminate and frame traditional architecture as a fundamental part of the cultural heritage of each of Spain's regions.”

The study's authors set out first to analyse and explain the influence of a shifting economic model in the 1960s and 1970s on Formentera's traditional architecture. Second, they aimed to establish the criteria and protocol to guide projects that effect traditional architecture. The goal of the study is to conserve and maintain aspects of cultural value (buildings, materials and construction techniques) without losing sight of the need to uphold current standards of comfort and well-being. The authors of the study had one year to complete their work. Councillor Labrador envisions the completed study will serve as a sort of “best practises manual, which should be a benchmark for future projects on buildings that represent Formentera's traditional architectural heritage”.

Research team
At the helm of the team are Dr Fernando Vegas and Dr Camila Mileto, lecturers at Universitat Politècnica de València. Both have strong backgrounds in historical heritage site restoration, namely in the region of Valencia, and are joined in their work by Aina Serrano Espases, who is a historical heritage specialist on the Mallorca Council and a representative of the technical committee for the national plan on traditional architecture. The team also enjoys the help of Jaume Escandell Guasch, cultural heritage specialist of the Formentera Council.

The project, which receives the whole of its €16,500 in funding from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, was adopted by the traditional architecture plan's technical committee after initially being proposed by the region of the Balearic Islands. As Councillor Labrador pointed out, four programmes and courses of action are laid out in the plan. Of those, the fourth deals with “dissemination, transmission and co-operation”.

At noon today the Formentera Council held a minute of silence on the front steps of the Casa Consistorial as a show of solidarity with the Italian people in the wake of Wednesday's earthquake, a catastrophe that has so far claimed more than 260 lives and left numerous missing and injured. CiF president Jaume Ferrer lamented the tragedy and extended his condolences to the entire community of Italians on Formentera, formed both by residents and visitors.