As flagged up in the Bulletin a couple of weeks ago ("Dues Cerveses, Sisplau", 31 July), tourists are to be able to make use of cards that provide them with some basic Catalan - "bon dia", "gràcies", "bon profit", for example. Under the general title of "Benvinguts" (welcome), the culture ministry is spending 24,500 euros on letting tourists know some Catalan and on letting them know that Catalan is spoken in the Balearics.
The cards are translations for nine languages - English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Basque and Galician. The cards, over four million of them in all, are to be distributed through tourist accommodation establishments and tourist information offices. The Balearic agency for tourism strategy is to take care of this distribution. The culture ministry will distribute some of the cards via museums. Most of the distribution points (1,187) are in Majorca. There are 182 in Ibiza, 136 in Minorca and 49 in Formentera.
The choice of the nine languages was based on data for tourist numbers from the Balearics Statistics Institute.