In record time, the Balearic Hotel and Catering School in Ibiza (EH Ibiza) went from a dream to The school will begin its first academic year in October with 70 students in training. Some may think it is too many, others too few. The reality is that there are 70 more future professionals with first level training for the tourism sector in Ibiza than last year.
Pepita Costa (Ibiza, 1963) is the director of the center funded by the community, through the consortium formed by the Ministry of Tourism and the UIB, a position in which she has been working since May and the tireless engine behind what was and is “a challenge” and which is already an achievement with a long and promising road ahead, especially considering the training offer, the Michelin-starred teachers and great professionals who teach the courses, and the capital importance of having a leading training center in one of the world’s leading hospitality destinations.
Far from the cruising speed to which it aspires, the school has capacity for 450 students and, for the moment, is far from reaching that number. As reported by the Balearic Government (which promised and fulfilled with 4.6 million euros of funding to complete 100% of the investment), in the last days of October, there were already 30 students in the Sommel course. In the last days of October, there were already 30 students in the Sommelier course and another 11 in the Ham Cutting and Plating course. In addition, half of the places for the Master’s Degree in Haute Gastronomy and Culinary Management, with a capacity for 16 people, were already covered.
On the other hand, the First Specialist Course in Cooking and Pastry, which will begin in November with a total duration of two years, already had 13 enrolled out of a maximum of 16 students.
Pending is the one for the hall because the minimum number of students has not yet been reached. They expect to do so in January.
Pepita Costa and a new path: the Ibiza School of Hotel Management
First and last, educator. Pepita Costa is a biologist by training and worked for years as a teacher of secondary education. She also taught at the School of Tourism of Ibiza and at the University of Ibiza, Faculty of Nursing, in Biochemistry.
He has also been involved in politics. During two legislatures she was deputy mayor in the City Council of Ibiza in PP governments. She also worked as councilor of Culture and Heritage in the Consell Insultar of Ibiza.
Now, with the School of Hotel Management behind her, she is clear that she is in the position as a “civil servant” with a “vocation of service” and that her time in politics helps her to understand how things work in this world. And to relativize things.
We found a blank canvas, a very well-equipped building, marvelous infrastructures, first-rate machinery, but no content. It is a great success that it has been able to start up in five months.
-In fact, the building is very well equipped and has noor there was content. And we are happy. We gave up our summer vacation, which is difficult in August, but the challenge was worth it. The important thing was to open and, from here, to keep pedaling more and more every day. You always make a few mistakes, it’s inevitable, but We have started and it is a success that we have students in the center today and that there are almost 70 people who are receiving training.
-What is the current situation of the School of Hotel Management?
-We startedthe course on October 11. I joined as director on May 8. My colleague María José Lorente, who is the academic director, joined us in July. We both came from CIFP Can Marines. I asked her to join me because she knew everything about academics and has experience in management. The two of us started and then two people joined us in the administration. At the moment, this is the staff.
-Four people to run a hotel school seems too few to me.
–Yes, we hope to complete the staff, we still have five positions to fill: a head of administrative services, a training manager, two maintenance people and an administrative person.
The beginnings of the Ibiza School of Hotel Management
-It’s still not enough. Is it where you’d like it to be?
-We havegenerated a program from scratch, because we did not find any kind of program when we arrived. We have tried to make it a program that responds to the use of the facilities we have and also to what, in the short time we have been there, we have been able to detect as a need on the part of the sector.
The center has three departments: accommodation, kitchen and living room. The facilities are very powerful, in the dining room we also have the sommelier’s classroom, the restaurant, the cafeteria, and we lack accommodation. We started with these two departments, the first thing we had to manage to get started, but next year we would like to be able to start training in the accommodation department as well.
We also had the good fortune to coincide, through Toni Tur and Óscar Molina, with the management of the Escuela del Gremio Pasteleros de Barcelona, and from here the Master’s Degree in Haute Gastronomy and Culinary Management that has just begun was conceived. Oscar Molina is involved with the whole group of La Gaia, we have Rafa Zafra and Arnau Subías, we have Walter Sidoravicious, Paco Roncero, Ramón Salto, Iván Yarza, who is an authority on bread and will teach that part. Pastry will begin in the second quarter, with teachers from the Escuela del Gremio de Pasteleros de Barcelona: José Romero, Adrián Ruiz, Sara Ruiz, Olivier Fernández, Mariana Rey, and Miquel Guarro will also come.
It is a very important cast of teachers. Today we started with breakfasts with Oscar Molina and the group of La Gaia, winner of the prize for the best breakfast in Spain. It is a luxury.
-It is a luxury, yes. As well as the facilities that I have been able to visit, with machinery and equipment of the first brands that are only found in first class restaurants. Is there anything that has been left in the pipeline, that would have been realistic to achieve and that you would have liked to start with but you have not been able to?
-No. The important thing was to start and we have started. A center like this, with these facilities, needs to get started, and from there we have to adapt the programming to the real needs of the sector. That is why we have interviewed many people, and we continue to do so. We also have an advisory board on which a wide range of the sector is represented. It will meet once or twice a year. We will have to be able to bring all that together, to have programming that responds to the needs and requests of the sector.
-Does your political experience help?
-It helps to know how public administrations are managed. We are a public school with public funds. This implies that all budget execution guidelines are the guidelines of the administration.
-How long will it take for the Ibiza School of Hotel Management to be at full capacity?
-We don’t know. I hope that next year and with each course we will grow. It will also depend on the demand, on the students, and on what the gastronomic and hotel sector asks of us. The intention is to be able to offer our own training courses and organize specific training courses for a specific entity, with quality training plans that we can program and execute ourselves. On the other hand, there is also the possibility of collaborating with the entities, of ceding the facilities for a certain period of time so that they can carry out their own training.
-I think it is very ambitious to aim for the Ibiza Hotel and Catering School to be at full capacity next year.
-It is. I will rephrase the answer. Little by little, year by year, we are going to increase training. For it to be at full capacity we have to define what the needs are and we will even have to define what full capacity is. I believe that it will be when we achieve that a person who wants to train in these areas, in Ibiza, can do it directly here. And we will be able to attract people from abroad to train here. This requires a trajectory that, at the moment, we do not have simply because it is a new center.
-Another way of defining full output is that all factors of production have a reasonable intensity of use. Not everything needs to be at 100% all the time, but there needs to be reasonable activity.
-We are lacking a little bit for that. For example, in the restaurant area where we can make a menu that people from outside can come to, as they do in the center of Palma. Until we have the whole value chain, we won’t be able to open it. Another thing is that this classroom can be used at some point, that we make a demonstration, that teachers or family members are invited, that is another thing.
-In La Voz de Ibiza we interviewed many professionals in the sector. There was a kind of longing, a great expectation with the Ibiza Hotel and Catering School, with grandiloquent phrases, such as that it is a Ferrari… There is still praise, but for some time now it has ceased to be part of the debate. There is still praise, but for some time now it has ceased to be part of the debate. Has the illusion that it had generated been deflated?
-No, I think that what people wanted was for it to open, and it has opened. We have been welcomed with great enthusiasm by companies and professionals in the sector. .
Criticism of the Ibiza School of Hotel Management
-How do you feel about the PSOE’s criticisms?
-I am not involved in this. I am a civil servant and they have the right to give their opinion. I can tell you what I found. I arrived here and on May 8 I was alone, there was no telephone, there was no program, there was no one hired, nothing? I think what you have to do in this life is to be positive and go for the job and make things work out. Then everyone can give their opinion and they will be right in some things and wrong in others. But it is not for me to go into that, this is an educational center and I have always separated what is education and what is my performance as a civil servant, which is what I am at the moment. My function is to provide service.
-One of the criticisms was that there were no teachers.
-Well, because there are no tenured teachers.
-Are they necessary?
-They are necessary for the organization, but not for other more specific things. The school has to have its teaching staff, of course, and it has to be able to hire specialists, who, even if they do not meet some of the requirements demanded by the administration to enter as civil servants, can offer the student what is required by the administration, but they can still offer the student the best possible service. you are looking for. Any chef may not have a master’s degree in education, because it is not required, but we are enriched by the fact that he or she wants to participate with us. No It takes manpower to organize, to be attentive, to receive the guest professor. This is a sum of efforts and different profiles, and everyone contributes different work.
-Can the UIB’s university extension model be a reference, with professors from Palma coming here and certain training courses that can be done online?
-It is an option, as well as teachers from here going to Mallorca.
Palma’s support to the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management
-I deduce that there is total independence from the Escuela de Hostelería de Palma.
-Yes, I have not encountered any kind of obstacle; on the contrary, they have supported us in everything.
-What is the center’s budget?
-We have carte blanche for whatever we need. No budget problems.
