The Consell de Mallorca organises a new edition of the Ignition of Towers, Talaies and Talaiots, which has also reached other cities in Spain and the Mediterranean.

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84 towers of Mallorca have been lit up this Saturday for human rights

A total of 84 towers and layouts of Mallorca have been lit this Saturday for human rights. The Consell de Mallorca has organised a new edition of the Ignition, which has also reached other cities in Spain and the Mediterranean, such as Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, Morocco, Lebanon and Tunisia.

This eighth edition was held this Saturday, 13 January, at two different times: at 1 pm and 6.30 pm. Eighty-four venues in Mallorca took part, which is 6% more than last year.

The vice-president of the Consell de Mallorca and councillor of Culture and Heritage, Antònia Roca, was in charge of opening the central ceremony of the switch-on, which was held in Palma’s Bellver Castle, specifically in the Torre del Homenaje (Homage Tower). Roca assured that the island institution will continue to organise this initiative to raise awareness and sensitise the population about the dramatic situation in the Mediterranean: “Thousands of people are forced to leave their homeland every year to find new opportunities, and they die along the way”. In addition, the Vice-President stressed that this initiative also aims to “vindicate and assert the towers, watchtowers and watchtowers,

The lighting of the skies turned 84 points of Mallorca into light simultaneously, recreating the visual communication that took place between the watchtowers, which were essentially a means of self-defence and which, with this action, became beacons of welcome. Before the event began, a manifesto was read out, which this year was drawn up by the Catalan writer Josep Vallverdú Aixalà.

The initiative arose in Mallorca in 2016 as an initiative of a group of teachers from the Marratxí Secondary School and the Balearic Mathematics Society who acted to make the visual connection between the towers possible again on the occasion of the commemoration of the 4th centenary of the death of Joan Baptista Binimelis, mathematician and author of the system of fire and smoke signals that was used from the 17th century onwards.

Over the last few years, the initiative has grown and expanded between the islands of Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera and other territories such as Catalonia, Aragon, the Valencian Community, Andalusia and countries in North Africa and the Middle East. This growth has been possible thanks to the participation of different sectors of the public, town councils, private companies, civil society organisations and the academic world.