President Llorenç Galmés and the second vice-president and councillor of Environment, Pedro Bestard, have visited the workshop of mestres d’aixa of the insular institution.

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Open a line of aid of 50,000 euros for the recovery of boats with historical and cultural value

The president of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés, and the second vice-president and councillor of the Environment, Rural Affairs and Sports, Pedro Bestard, visited the workshop of mestres d’aixa of the Consell de Mallorca this Monday to see the work that the institution’s artisans are currently carrying out. President Galmés announced that “next year we are going to set up a line of aid for individuals who have boats with historical and cultural value but who find it very difficult to repair these boats due to the high cost involved. We want to protect our maritime heritage and we want to protect a profession, that of mestres d’aixa, which is a source of pride for Mallorcans”.

The second vice-president and councillor for the Environment, Rural Affairs and Sports, Pedro Bestard, said that “setting up this line of aid is a demand of the Consell de Mallorca’s Maritime Heritage unit that we want to meet. The entire process of selecting the boats and assessing them will be carried out by this unit. In addition, the maritime heritage unit will supervise that the repair of the boats is carried out by qualified and recognised craftsmen. With this line of aid we manage to preserve our maritime heritage, we manage to promote the work of the mestres d’aixa who have their own workshops and we prevent many private individuals, desperate at not being able to restore their boats, from being forced to throw them away”.

The Department of the Environment will launch the line of aid in 2024. “We are working with the maritime heritage unit to have everything ready in 2024 so that individuals can apply for the grants. We must protect this traditional trade and protect our heritage, and that is what our efforts are focused on,” Bestard said.

The workshop of mestres d’aixa develops the traditional technique of building wooden boats and the main objectives are the conservation, repair and maintenance of traditional boats, as well as the dissemination of the craft. During the visit to the mestres d’aixa workshop, the president and second vice-president of the Consell de Mallorca supervised the restoration work being carried out by the craftsmen on three boats. One of the boats is La Agustina, a llaüt owned by the Alcudia Town Council. The other boat they have seen is a small wooden boat owned by the Association of Traditional Boats of Portocolom. Finally, they were able to review the work being carried out on El David, a boat owned by the Maritime Museum Consortium.

Galmés and Bestard praised the work carried out by the five mestres d’aixa of the workshop. “I would like to publicly thank them for the immense work they do here: maintenance of the Consell de Mallorca’s boats, such as La Balear, and all the educational and dissemination work they do, especially with young people, with schools,” said the president of the Consell de Mallorca.