The Ibiza Preservation Fund (IPF) recently announced a significant victory in the long-running campaign to stop oil and gas exploration in the seas near Ibiza. In early March of this year the Mar Blava Alliance, which IPF created in 2013, succeeded in winning support in the Spanish Parliament for a bill that will ban prospecting and exploration throughout Spanish Mediterranean waters. This new law should go into effect by early 2022, and it is the culmination of many years’ work.

In 2013 several different groups were against the presence of oil prospecting near Ibiza, but their efforts were not coordinated. IPF took a leading role in creating Mar Blava as an umbrella organization that all of the protestors could rally around. The resistance became more focused, and as a result that prospecting was cancelled. But like a bad horror film – where the monster whom you thought was dead rises up – the spectre of new oil prospecting near Ibiza arose once again. With this new law that danger to our seas will finally have ended... and the dolphins will dance with joy!