This morning, Formentera Council president Jaume Ferrer and agriculture, livestock and fishing councillor Sant Juan received a visit from Jaume Escandell, president of the Formentera farmers' cooperative, and the group's recently-appointed director, Carles Marí.

The encounter served to acquaint the new chief of the cooperative with the Council heads and an array of issues on which the administration and the farmers' cooperative have worked in recent months. Of the two entities' jointly-run projects are the construction of an industrial space for the farmers' cooperative – whose completion is now a scant four months away – and the impending start of the untilled land use project known as fons de terres.

As the meeting drew to a close, President Ferrer declared: “We are 100% sure of this project and hope to serve an example for any landowners who have untilled terrain. This is the sort of land that the Cooperative is proposing to labour and put to use”. The FiC president indicated that the terrain being ceded is the farmable portion of Ca Ses Ferreres, a plot of land that until recently had been up for sale. The process ultimately fell through. The Ca Ses Ferreres lot measures 10,000 square metres.

Application for farmable portion of Can Marroig

Ferrer also announced that in the plenary session to be celebrated next Thursday, the administration would propose asking the Govern Balear to cede the farmable portion of the Can Marroig lot for use by the fons de terres project. “This is about augmenting quantity in order to simultaneously increase the productivity of the land and natural beauty”.

Santi Juan, councillor of agriculture, took the opportunity to highlight “the pivotal role of Carles Marí in the success of the cooperative and in the renewal of Formentera's countryside”. After the meeting, President Ferrer and Councillor Juan joined the heads of the farmers' cooperative in a visit to their recently-adapted space at the Centre Gabrielet in Sant Francesc Xavier.

Jaume Escandell proferred: “Members of the cooperative and anyone else interested in the fons de terres project can visit the Centre Gabrielet mornings from 2 March [until remodel work on the industrial space has been completed] where the Council has granted the group use of an office space for its administrative work”.

He also said that, for purposes of fons de terres, the cooperative "takes into consideration any plot with more than 5,000 square metres of non-irrigated and 1,000 square metres of irrigated terrain".

Newly-appointed director Carles Marí expressed gratitude “for the opportunity to participate in the cooperative's work. The group stands to give local agriculture a serious edge. Right now, the biggest mark on our radar screen is the untilled land use project. But the cooperative oversees a variety of other important work – including administering government assistance to its members – and the group is ready to go to bat on any of the other issues that its member base calls up”.

This 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.

Formentera Council president Jaume Ferrer summoned spokespeople of the political parties represented in the Formentera Council – Grup Independent de Formentera (GUIF), el Partido Socialista (PSOE), el Partido Popular (PP) and Gent per Formentera (GxF) – to come together next Monday morning, 23 February, at half past ten, for a meeting in the plenary hall of the council.

The encounter was convened with the goal of defining and outlining steps in the creation of a draft bill – to be brought before the Parlament Balear – concerning granting the Formentera Council with the legal rights to impose a tax on vehicle entry onto the island.

Let readers be reminded that such a tax was the solution chosen by the Consell d'Entitats ('council of entities') on 23 January in light of the fact that, oftentimes, the affluence of vehicles on Formentera results in residents and visitors alike feeling quite removed from the tranquil, ecological and family-friendly atmosphere that normally defines the island. Such an ambience, present throughout the rest of the year, constitutes not only Formentera's main attractive quality but also our primary source of economic wealth.

This morning, Formentera Council President Jaume Ferrer, councillor of town planning and territory Bartomeu Escandell, and Gavi Technology employees Xavier Vila and Xavier Torres met before an audience to announce completion of the project to assign numbers and record the location of 3,600 homes and 1,000 points of interest on the island of Formentera.

Aimed essentially at “improving safety”, Ferrer explained to the crowd at the Council hall that the project “attributes all dwellings located outside of urban areas with a number that also doubles as an emergency code”. Using the numeric code, 112 emergency services will be able to immediately communicate details of urgent situations to ambulance services, local police, civil protection forces or firefighters. The same response service will also receive information about the ideal route to take to arrive on location.

Councillor Escandell explained: “This project is the culmination of serious work carried out throughout Formentera's rural areas. The Council has been behind this project since 2008 and we're proud to announce that the first half of the month we'll be getting plaques up on house walls”.

Xavier Vila, employee of the company that was awarded the geolocalisation contract, affirmed: “A project like this is really without precedent; it holds untold possibilities. Whether it's putting out a call to dispatch an ambulance or evacuate a part of the island effected by wildfire, the geolocalisation service will permit that this be done in a matter of seconds”. Vila also indicated an array of possible applications in tourism.

Council president Ferrer reminded those in attendance that installation of the plaques was free and requested the collaboration of the local population - “information requests by technicians could involve fast access routes or mobile phone numbers that can be used in case of emergency. The greater our collaboration in this endeavour, the more reliable and effective the database will become”.

The project to implement the geolocalisation system and create the corresponding database carried a total cost of €183,000.