Learning from the past

the existence of a new virus that was spreading quickly through the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The Balearic and Catalan in‐vestigators hope to replicate this tool to anticipate future epidemics.

“We know there will be more cases in the future, but we don’t know what they will be like,” declared investiga‐tion leader Joana Maria Pu‐jadas.

“Social sciences, and specif‐ically historical demographics, are vital to make advances in the prediction and the fight against epidemics and to as‐sess their consequences,” added Dr Pujadas.

The project is expected to

Illegal holiday let clampdown

STAFF from the Balearic Islands University (UIB) will carry out questionnaires to uncover illegal tourism lets in Palma.

Their aim is to visit up to 20,000 suspicious multifamily properties to locate an estimated 500 offenders to help the inspectors employed by the Island Council.

The UIB team will use geolocation software to collaborate with the Sustainable Tourism department of the Consell to clamp down on illegal holiday rentals in a scheme that was previously carried out successfully in Ibiza.

The aim is to find out whether multifamily apartment blocks have residents all year round or if they are used for unlicensed holi‐day lets, targeting neighbourhoods where the most advertisements from platforms such as Airbnb or Expedia have been detected.

The UIB staff will visit suspicious properties

THE economy of the Balearic Islands grew by more than 6 per cent in January and Febru‐ary.

According to regional Em‐ployment, Tourism and Eco‐nomic Model councillor Iago Negueruela, the figure is “bet‐ter than expected,” although up to five times if necessary, combing the city centre and informing the inspection service when an offending property has been verified.

According to the Consell, up to 26 illegal tourist rentals were uncovered in just four days of inspections in Palma over Easter, with fines of up to €240,000 issued for offenders.

Economy boost

he admits that it should be taken with a pinch of salt as the increase is compared to

Palma at one click

PALMA Council this week launched a new mobile phone app enabling users to access local information and carry out town hall procedures with just a couple of clicks.

MobiPalma is now available to download at the Google Playstore and the Apple App Store and is cur‐rently in a pilot stage, with new functions to be added in the future.

The new platform has been designed taking into ac‐count the procedures most frequently required by citi‐zens, such as generating a residence certificate, obtain‐ing an appointment or paying fines online.

It also enables users to access the local culture diary and municipal information, as well as encouraging citi‐zen participation by offering the possibility of notifying incidents and attaching images.

take up to three years to complete and the results will then be published in all the major international scientific journals.

All set for the summer

THE high‐risk campaign for forest fires kicked off in Mallorca this week with 350 firefighters on call for the summer season.

As of this Monday it is strictly forbidden to start fires at distances of less than 50 metres from for‐est areas, and to do so be‐tween 50 and 500 metres requires an authorisation from the authorities.

the first two months of 2022, when certain restrictions due to Covid were still in place.

The councillor predicted that the percentage of growth will gradually drop through‐out the year, with initial esti‐mates placing the year‐end figure closer to 3.9 per cent.

With the results for March still pending, Sr Iago reported that the global growth per‐centage for the first quarter of the year could sit at more than 4 per cent above the re‐gion’s gross domestic product (GDP) from before the pan‐demic.

Regarding GDP per capita, the councillor predicted an in‐crease of 2.8 per cent this year ‐ a 1.1 per cent growth with regards to 2019.

The service sector, including tourism activity, was responsi‐ble for the largest fraction of the growth percentage over the first two months of the year with 7 per cent.

Balearic Islands Envi‐ronment councillor Miquel Mir officially pre‐sented the launch of this year’s campaign that will last until October 15, warning that the greatest concerns are the previ‐sions of large numbers of visitors and the accumu‐lated biomass in the is‐lands’ forest and moun‐tain areas.

Sr Mir asked residents to “be extremely cautious and avoid carelessness,” with last weekend already registering unseasonably high temperatures.

The councillor also ex‐plained that storm Juliette in fact had a beneficial ef‐fect in this regard, as wa‐ter supplies were topped up and the ground is not as dry in Mallorca as in mainland Spain going into the summer.

Up to 29 forest fires have broken out in Mal‐lorca already this year, al‐though the vast majority were extinguished after affecting less than one hectare.