The Office of Culture and Festivities announce the celebration this Sunday, February 11 in Sant Francesc, of Carnaval. After a 11.00am roundup where participants can sign up to take part in the day's fancy-dress contest, parade walkers will set out from the sa Senieta car park and tour the town's main roads. Musical duties at this year's event will be handled by the group Aiye Batucada.

The parade route begins on avinguda del Pla del Rei, occupying the bus lane to avoid the roundabout and continuing down carrer d'Eivissa until plaça de la Constitució. From there, revellers along carrers Santa Maria and Marc Ferrer will cheer the parade as participants make their way up carrer Jaume I and return to the city square.

Prizes
Winners of the fancy-dress contest will be eligible for these cash prizes:

Adult individual
First place €200
Second place €150

Kids' individual
First place €100
Second place €60

Pairs
First place €300
Second place €200

Families
First place €300
Second place €200

Large groups [over 10]
First place €500
Second place €350

Floats [with vehicle]
First place €950
Second place €650

As the parade comes to an end, DJ Blue and DJ Javi Box will usher Carnaval-goers through a dance party that will go till 2.00pm, when Mestre Lluís Andreu primary school's parents' and teachers' association has planned a lunch to raise money for year-end trips. Food for all those in fancy dress is free.

The Formentera Council's Offices of Patrimony and Rural Affairs wish to announce the forthcoming publications of a call for applications for funding to repair drystone walls, bury power or telephone cables and restore, conserve, consolidate or rehabilitate cultural heritage sites on the island. Adopted during a March 9, 2017 meeting of a committee of the Formentera Council, the conditions were published in the Balearic Islands' official gazette, el BOIB, on March 21, 2017.

Requirements to request assistance
Applications for help undertaking drystone wall and heritage site projects will be accepted from individuals who own, rent or otherwise use the site in question.

Cash for projects to underground existing power and telephone cables can be requested by parties who are directly affected by or simply interested in a project's realisation. If multiple parties are involved, a representative should be named who will facilitate contact with the administration.

Conditions and funding limits
For rebuilds or replacement of materials in walls, the administration will cover up to 60% of the project cost. Likewise, it will offer €40/m2, up to €15,000, if the landowner carries out the work directly.

In addition to subsidising the cost of executing work, the Council will also consider requests to subsidise project engineering costs and costs of conducting studies of historic buildings.

Deadline and place of submission
Applications must be submitted to the Citizen's Information Office, located at carrer Ramon Llull, 6, within 30 days of the date of publication of the call for applications on the BOIB website. Late applications, though kept on file, will not be reviewed.

Beneficiaries
Aid recipients must agree to post a plaque delivered by the Council in a visible space on the drystone wall. Cash awards may be revoked if this last condition is not met.

Randa, a magazine published by Abadia de Montserrat and supported by the Formentera Council, has dedicated its 79th issue to the island of Formentera.

The issue, for which the twice-yearly magazine dedicated its 200 pages of content to Formentera, includes articles by Artur Parron about the communist party's conference on Formentera in 1976 —the third of its kind in the islands— and Ángel Navarro's text about Formentera's hard-fought autonomy as both a geographical area and a public authority.

In the current issue there is also an article by Esperança Marí Mayans on recent arrivals to the island and what it means to incorporate in a new society. Isidor Torres Cardona writes about the gestation of “La COP de Formentera”; Jaume Escandell Guasch looks at the intangible heritage of the Formentera and Eivissa Christmas choirs known as caramelles; Maria del Mar Joan i Marí teams up with Bernat Joan i Marí for an essay on generational transmission and attitudes towards language among Formentera's young people; and Marina Mayans Marí contributes understanding about the medicinal uses of plants and the ethnobotany of Formentera.

Today at 1.15pm in the Formentera Council's Sala d'Actes, President Jaume Ferrer sat down with regional culture minister Fanny Tur and local culture and patrimony secretary Susana Labrador to answer questions from members of the press. The appearance followed a meeting of the board of Formentera's museum and cultural centre foundation.

The meeting resulted in an agreement to create a local network of museums composed of three discrete sites:

Sa Senieta: the Formentera museum's main exhibition space, to house the permanent collection and general services for the public.

Can Ramon: public space dedicated to exhibiting the Formentera museum's ethnographic collection.

Fossar Vell's adjacent lot: archive and specialised library, conference hall, exhibition space, materials drop-off and reservation desk and research lab.

The infrastructure is being imagined as a network of high-quality museums for islanders and tourists that will meet the requirements set out by the Balearic Islands' museums act.

Sa Senieta
On December 19 the Formentera Council's purchase of Sa Senieta for €2.5 million became official. Of the total cost, one million euros came from the so-called Sustainable Tourism Tax, another €0.5 million from the Balearic ministry of culture, and the remainder from the Formentera Council.

Secretary Tur, for her part, affirmed an additional €0.5 million would be set aside to adapt Sa Senieta for use as the future headquarters of the museum of Formentera.

It is significant that Sa Senieta is the only building on the island included in Formentera's catalogue of “historic heritage” interest sites as per a piece of regional legislation known as 12/1998, from December 21. Added to the catalogue in 2002, it possesses a AT-C-150 rating and “B-level” protection in Formentera's listing of cultural heritage sites.

Can Ramon
The Can Ramon property, which consists of a home and well, was purchased by the Formentera Council with the goal of restoring it and using it, in the words of Tur, “to house a variety of both publicly- and privately-held ethnographic museum collections”.

Can Ramon figures on the island's cultural heritage catalogue with “C-level” protection. Built according to traditional techniques, the house is particularly large and includes a dedicated area for agricultural and livestock farming reminiscent of an industrial-scale farm. The catalogue indicates additional uses like wine making. The home's adjacent well, or aljub, is another element of traditional architecture with A-level protection.

Pledging the Govern would “take responsibility for the Formentera museum project”, Tur said she hoped the advances made this legislative session would make any back-pedalling impossible. President Ferrer thanked Tur for her role in making the museum a reality, saying, “I'm thrilled to be able to provide details on the project today, and to be announcing our hope that that swift completion is on the horizon”.