18/09/2013 00:00
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STAFF REPORTER

PALMA
THE Balearic Ports Authority hopes to sign a draft agreement this week which could lead to the construction of the new Maritime Museum in Palma.
Joint signatories on the document will be the Balearic government, the Council of Majorca and Pama City Council. Maritime Affairs director, Bartomeu Calafell, said yesterday: “Right from the start, the Ports Authority will be involved in the creation of the future Maritime Museum which forms part of the overall development plans for Palma's “Old Wharf” (Muelle Viejo).

Calafell explained that once the Ports Authority has adjusted the draft document and the final agreement is signed, the Authority will cede an already existing building in the Old Wharf area so that the exhibition centre project can get under way as quickly as possible.

The selected building could conceivably be complemented with the construction of an extra floor or extension, “since the port buildings were not originally designed to house exhibitions and an integral reform could prove complicated,” said the Maritime director. Part of a second phase of the museum development would be “to bring the traditional shipbuilders' centre from Son Bonet, east of Palma, to the Maritime exhibition so that visitors could see how the art was mastered in days gone by in a workign dockyard before mechanisation set in.” Calafell said triumphantly that “once the agreement for the museum is signed, the Maritime exhibition project will cease to be a matter about which people talked a great deal and did little.” His remark was a reflection of the fact that the earlier intention of the government, council and City hall in Palma in May this year had been to establish a special Foundation to create the Maritime Museum in the building formally occupied by the shipping company Trasmediterranea, but it was not to be as in July the Ports Authority announced that its own administration hub was to move into the selected site. “The government's legal department advised against creating a Foundation without a property or goods to administer,” said Calafell.
It was therefore decided that developing a three-way agreement, bringing in the Ports Authority was the best way to handle the project. “The establishment of the Maritime Museum is settling an oustanding debt with the people of Majorca,” added Calafell “as the original one disappeared some 30 years ago.