The Bishop who transformed Ibiza

Manuel Abad y Lasierra was the first bishop of Ibiza (from 1783 to 1787). He was born in Aragón, studied at university and was ordained as a priest. Soon after, he became a Benedictine monk and joined a monastery. Thanks to his research into historical archives, he obtained the gratitude of the king, because he was discovering old privileges that the crown had enjoyed centuries before and that had been forgotten. He was the prior of a small, quite arid territory, where he began to introduce his ideas of concentrating the population and to carry out improvements regarding food growing, techniques that he would later suggest when he arrived on Ibiza.
In 1783 he was appointed as bishop for Ibiza. He did not like the idea much, but a year later he moved to Ibiza and organized the construction of all the new parishes on the Pitiusas islands. With him, Spanish language started to be used in religious documents, instead of Catalan. He founded a hospice in Dalt Vila in order to attend the poorest people, amongst other actions.
His tasks were increased. He prepared a document in which he informed that Ibiza and Formentera were rich and fertile but that the waning desire of its locals to work had taken them to a state of destitution. His criticisms were also extensive to the institutional and legislative systems. Therefore, he requested the formation of a local Board of Governors with an Improvement Plan. The Plan was approved 5 months later. Meanwhile, he requested being moved because, in his own words, “the African heat of the summer on these lands” were damaging his health, and thus he returned to the mainland.
In 2009, a bronze sculpture of this bishop made by Pere Joan Hormigo was placed in the church square of Santa Gertrudis.