The tourist department of Ibiza Town is pushing ahead with its scheme to renew all the tourist information signs in the town although they have already admitted that the situation is 'polemical.'
Why? Because all the signs are in Catalan, a language spoken by only 50% of the residents here, who presumably already know where the cathedral is, and a tiny fraction of the island's 4 million tourists!
We think pride in our regional culture and language is fine in the right place, however our opinion is that Spanish would have been a better choice as a 'lingua Franca' to communicate information, especially when the whole economy depends on tourist visitors.
Whilst on the subject of language it is both amusing and tragic to note that at the recent Madrid tourist fair, the Spanish World Heritage Cities' stand had a large map with the word EIBISSA (they meant Eivissa) emblazoned across it.
Here in Ibiza the new plaque unveiled to mark the illumination of the cathedral
contained not only spelling mistakes and grammatical errors with the Catalan words,
but it also had the wrong date inscribed on it!