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RECORD ATTEMPT
29 June - 5 July 2023
Women power
Credit Llucmajor Council
FIVE towns in Mallor ca now have a may oress for the first time ever. Following the local elections at the end of May and a period of negotiations between different parties, Montuïri, Llucmajor, Lloseta, Banyalbufar and Capdpera are among the 13 towns to be governed by women on the island. Paula Maria Amen gual (Més), Xisca Las colas (PP), Angelina Pérez (Més), Eleonor Bosch (el Pi) y Mireia Ferrer (PP) are the first female council leaders to enter office in their respective town halls. Ferrer, aged 27, is also the youngest mayoress in Mallorca. Amengual declared that it is an “enor mous step” for a woman to take charge of the local council and that there is still work to be done to make it “something normal” and create role models for young girls.
Xisca Lascolas, first female mayor of Llucmajor.
MALLORCA • EUROWEEKLYNEWS.COM
Credit: Neil Agius Facebook
Issue No. 1982
REAL CHALLENGE: Neil Agius starts his record attempt.
FORMER Olympic swimmer Neil Agius from Malta has un dertaken a world record at tempt to swim 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Mallorca to Ibiza. He announced his plans at the Palma International Boat Show on April 26 and finally entered the water on Mon day June 26 with the target of completing the swim in around 72 hours. According to the swimmer, this attempt will be the longest nonstop, unassisted, current neutral, open water sea swim ever undertaken. There is more to this swim
than a simple attempt to set a world record as he wants use the publicity to draw atten tion to the ongoing problem of pollution and pollutants in the seas and oceans. Neil entered a swarm of jel lyfish around 46km into the swim in the Mallorca Ibiza channel at around 1am on the morning of June 27. After nearly four hours, multiple stings and several at tempts to resume the swim, Neil’s stings were causing too much swelling and pain and Neil voluntarily decided that the safest thing to do, was to abandon the swim plan.
Speaking after calling the swim off, he said “It is so sad to see all that hard work we put into this challenge came to such a premature end. “The real challenge for ocean conservation still stands, I will be back.” With the Balearic Islands and Malta being so depen dent upon the sea, Mallorca seemed a natural starting point for this ambitious record attempt with both territories trying to combat the dangers to the marine environment whilst at the same time hav ing to rely on tourism as a way of enhancing their economies.
FREE • GRATIS
Base reopening LOWCOST airline Norwegian has announced plans to reopen its operating base in Palma ready for summer next year. This will be Norwegian’s fourth base in Spain, in addition to Alicante, Malaga, and Barcelona. The Palma base will operate only during the summer season, say company sources. The company is reportedly planning to expand its fleet to 85 aircraft in the summer of 2024, hiring 300 crew members across Europe. With the six routes to and from Palma starting next year, Norwegian will operate a total of 62 routes between Spain and the Nordic countries. The airline carried 3.39 million passengers to and from Spain between May 2022 and May this year, representing an 81 per cent increase compared to the previous year.