The Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport and the manager of the Institute of Cultural Industries of the Balearic Islands led the institutional coordination meeting attended by representatives of the Government of the Balearic Islands, the four island councils, the FELIB, agents from the sector and other institutions with competencies in the field of audiovisual licences.
The Regional Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport and the ICIB brought together institutional representatives and representatives of the audiovisual sector this morning at the Regional Ministry’s headquarters to propose a joint work plan to facilitate relations between the filming industry and public institutions to promote the Balearic Islands as an audiovisual destination. The meeting laid the foundations for the creation of an inter-institutional round table for dialogue aimed at responding to the needs of the sector.
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The Government creates an inter-institutional working group to relaunch the Balearic Islands as an audiovisual destination
Minister Bauzà stressed that ‘although the Balearic Islands have all the necessary elements to lead the ranking of preferred destinations for national and international filming, the margin for improvement is very high and necessarily involves institutional commitment’. Likewise, the director of the ICIB acknowledged that ‘the audiovisual filming sector has its peculiarities and if we want to promote it, we must adapt to its needs. This does not mean that the Administration should adopt unconditionally, but rather that it should do so with clear rules of the game that the sector is capable of complying with.
For his part, Chencho Coll, director of the association The Base, defended the need for the administrations to understand that the filming industry is strategic and generates very important investments, contributing to a large volume of business and many quality jobs. He stressed the importance of the Illes Balears Film Commission as a valid interlocutor and public body respected internally by the other institutions; and the extreme need for coordination to avoid discrediting the industry in the face of some decisions that historically have not helped the image of the Balearic Islands as a safe and reliable destination for audiovisual productions.
The attendees agreed to create an interdepartmental round table that will be led by the IBFC and whose meetings will be held regularly.
The objectives set for the first meeting of this working group are to define and homogenise the typology of audiovisual productions and define the requirements proportional to each category; to define and homogenise as far as possible the deadlines and procedures for filming authorisation applications; and to study the possibility of creating a system of pre-authorisations or provisional authorisations, following the example of the Canary Islands. To this end, the IBFC will request and compile all the existing protocols and analyse them to find common points and draw up guides to facilitate the procedures.
In this way, Diana de la Cuadra insisted that the IBFC ‘offers itself as a point of connection and support between the industry, represented by the association The Base, the network of insular Film Commissioners (Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza) and the Local Film Offices and the institutions with competencies in the field of audiovisual filming.
Today’s meeting was attended by the Government delegation, the Regional Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sports; the Regional Ministry of the Sea and Water Cycle; the Regional Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and the Environment; the Provincial Traffic Headquarters of the Balearic Islands, the Directorate General of Coasts, Ports IB, the Balearic Islands Port Authority, the island councils of Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza; the FELIB, the General Command of the Balearic Islands and the producers’ association The Base.