RECORD HIGH

THE best year ever for tourism in Murcia, was the prediction made by the President of the Mur ‐cia Region, Fernando López Miras at the begin ‐ning of the year.

During the FITUR tourism fair in Madrid

López Miras made these grand statements an ‐nouncing during a TV in ‐terview that it will be the best year for tourism not just better than the year before.

So far these predictions are coming through with Murcia exceeding 2019 figures by 6.1 per cent in the first quarter. Exceltur, who has released these results, anticipates that in the second quarter, the Murcia Region is on track for an increase of 8.4 per cent.

This increase is credited to a very successful Sem ‐ana Santa but also to oth‐ er factors. Many businesses used the quiet period after the pandemic to make im ‐provements to their prod‐ucts or services, impact ‐ing revenue. Credit is also given to the labour re ‐

EXCITING TIMES: Tourists love parades.

THE waters of the Mar Menor have been declared excellent quality for bathing this summer but we have been advised that the lagoon still has a fragile ecosystem. Eleven million euros has been allocated to the removal of biomass in the Mar Menor and this project will be ongoing until the end of summer.

The biomass is removed to avoid decomposition protecting the sand so it doesn’t lose its tex‐ture, as many beachgoers com ‐plained about the sludge ‐ like quality of the sand last summer. A total of €13 million was also as ‐signed to sanitation and purifica ‐tion in the entire lagoon.

The Scientific Advisory Commit‐tee of the Mar Menor has advised that there may be another ‘bloom of algae’ as the amounts of ‘nutri‐ents’ that enter the Mar Menor in