The Formentera Council's Office of Culture reports that today until April 12, submissions —either in person at the Citizen Information Office (OAC) or by certified mail directly to the Formentera Council— will be accepted to the Beni Trutmann photo competition. Entering into its seventeenth year, the contest has become a fixture on the island.

The photo contest is a tribute to Beni Trutmann, a prodigious Swiss photographer who fell in love with Formentera on a visit and went on to spend 44 years on the island, during which time he took upwards of thirty thousand photos, each a demonstration of his love for the island and its natural spaces. It is the reason the Beni Trutmann photo contest is all about nature —landscapes, fauna and humans interacting in the outdoors— and defending our environment.

Colour/Black & White
In the Colour and Black & White categories, participants can submit up to three prints (analog or digital) in square, digital, classic and panorama format. Contestants must also state which prize—first, second or third, with cash prizes of €500, €300 and €200, respectively—they wish to compete for.

Social justice photography
This year, organisers have added a new category —fotodenúncia— for photography that is political in nature, seeking to denounce injustices, demand change or encourage reflection on a particular environmental issue. Cash prizes for the first-, second- and third-place winners are €500, €300 and €200, respectively.

Smart shots
Tuned for youth aged 12 to 18, another category that has become increasingly established with time is for photos snapped with smartphones. These submissions can be emailed to concursfoto@conselldeformentera.cat. Contestants are asked to include no more than three photos taken with their smartphone.

Jury
As every year, a panel of judges will be made up of a spokesperson from the local chapter of the Balearic association for birdwatching and the defence of nature; one representative of the local chapter of Obra Cultural Balear; three individuals renowned for their work in the visual arts; plus a president and secretary.

Winning submissions will be included in Formentera's image and sound archive, the AISF, and become property of the Council, which reserves the right to reproduce them as it deems fit (on posters, signs, internet-based campaigns, etc), though not for profit.

History
In its 17 years, the competition has amassed a valuable archive of roughly 1,200 photos from 300 participants. No better proof of the contest's growth can be found than the participation of photographers from as far away as mainland Spain and other countries in Europe.

CiF culture and patrimony councillor Susana Labrador encouraged islanders to trawl their boxes of old photos or “walk the island, camera in hand, and be ready—absolutely anyone can be in the right place and right time and snap a classic”. Highlighting the youth category, Labrador called on young islanders in particular to scour the island —personal phone (or their parents') in hand— and dive right into photography.

For more information and to see submission conditions, visit the Formentera Council website: http://conselldeformentera.cat/images/stories/tauler_danuncis/educacio_cultura_i_patrimoni/2019/Bases_Beni_Trutmann_catal%C3%A0_pdf.pdf

Exhibit and awards
Capping Beni Trutmann is an exhibit of selected photo submissions at the Sala d'Exposicions (Ajuntament Vell) through May 11. The show opens Monday, April 29, when there will also be a ceremony to deliver prizes to the seventeenth edition's winning photographers. For more information and to review submission conditions, visit the Formentera Council website:

Àrea de Comunicació
Formentera Council
March 12, 2019

CiF chairman Jaume Ferrer plus Susana Labrador, who is both deputy chair and councillor of culture and patrimony, were joined by regional minister of culture, participation and sport Fanny Tur and Luis Ruiz, the chair of Eivissa and Formentera's Fòrum per a la Memòria Històrica, in attending a symbolism-charged ceremony involving the remains of five islanders killed by Franco supporters on March 1, 1937 along the back wall of the cemetery in Sant Ferran.

On Saturday March 9 at the very same cemetery, the officials handed over the remains of Jame Ferrer Ferrer, Josep Ribas Marí, Joan Tur Mayans, Jaume Serra Juan and Vicent Cardona Colomar to surviving members of the victims' families. The remains were found as part of an effort to locate, excavate and subsequently exhume a mass grave at the inside of the Sant Ferran cemetery, which is property of the Eivissa-Formentera bishopric.

Exhumation effort
Crews performed various targeted digs on and adjacent to the 125-square-metre lot (six and five, respectively) which has been used as a burial ground since 1903. Inspections inside the cemetery followed conventional wisdom about where the interred remains might lie: beside the cemetery entrance, underneath headstones built in 1956 and 1984, below another gravesite and in a portion of the cemetery without grave markers.

Popular memory again directed the probes outside the cemetery walls, conducted with the help of excavating machinery. Patches of cement found on the southeast wall served to confirm the hypothesis that holes were pocked into the walls by executioners' bullets. Four bullets were detected as well; one wedged into the wall was uncovered with the help of a metal detector.

The major discoveries emerged thanks to investigation of skeletal remains, which suggested the bodies of the five executed were at some point transported to the ossuary to make room in the cemetery for new burials, then a common practice with ageing remains.

Crews unearthed a piece of a humerus bone and two fragmented skulls bearing firearm damage not unlike others found in Civil War burial sites. The crew of specialists carried out two checks to confirm the skeletons belonged to the individuals in question. The first involved reviewing entries in the civil registry from 1991 to 1994 and confirmed the absence among the 156 deaths catalogued of any caused by impact of a projectile, which would indicate that the three bone fragments might indeed correspond to one of the five victims.

The second test involved DNA cross-checking of the remains and living relatives of the victims. Due to imperfectly preserved DNA samples, however, it was impossible to establish consanguinity. Saturday's gathering included a symbolic ceremony during which the remains of three individuals who had been shot were deposited into a niche that will be accessible to the victims' families.

Other actions
Last year on March 1, eighty-one years after the islanders were killed, a monolith with the engraved names of the five victims was unveiled in the cementery as a symbol of the effort to reclaim this portion of local historic memory.

The regional ministry of culture, participation and sport's efforts to locate and then exhume the mass grave were conducted thanks to a grant received by the Fòrum and additional support from the Formentera Council.

Published on June 16 in issue 76/2016 of the BOIB, a piece of legislation known as “Law 10/2016 (June 13)” to recover the bodies of people who disappeared during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship sets out measures to ensure the protection and dignity of resting grounds of Spanish Civil War victims.

Formentera Council
Àrea de Comunicació
March 11, 2019