Stato da Màr

Despite promising signs for other parts of the country as regards the number of flights and seat bookings for the 2024 tourism season, Mykonos is seeing a decline in both indices for the second year in a row.

The figures so far show that this season will be exceptionally good for Greek tourism. However, this does not seem to be the case for Mykonos, which for the second consecutive year is showing that it will have fewer visitors.

Data show a fresh reduction, not only in bookings, but also in available airline seats.

Aegina's water pipeline was not sabotaged, as previously believed, but rather burst due to technical faults, the island's mayor Giannis Zorbas said during municipal council meeting on Wednesday.

On the one hand, the government repeats it is pushing for "innovation, extroversion, modernization," but, on the other hand, in the bowels of the shadowy deep state, some illegible "interests" are following a reverse course. On Friday, serious acts of infrastructure sabotage were made public that had affected two Greek islands, Aegina and Crete.

Greece is investing - as it should - in modern infrastructure. It is a public asset that should not be left unguarded, exposed to petty and destructive local interests, as is the case with Aegina, where repeated instances of sabotage remain unsolved.

The Attica Regional Authority has attributed the latest damage to the underwater pipeline for Aegina island in the Saronic Gulf to sabotage. 

It was the fourth time that the pipeline has suffered damage and now there are indications that an explosive device was used.

The islands of Mykonos and Santorini, historically the flagships of Greek tourism, are now paying the price for their overexploitation, without the upgrading of their key infrastructures, in order to manage the large number of visitors.

The stringent measures and fines announced by the government to safeguard the country's beaches must be effectively enforced by a mechanism capable of promptly identifying and addressing violations.

Although it pulled the plug on a marina which would accompany a tourist development in Kalo Livadi on Mykonos, the Council of State rejected two other appeals against the project, ruling that it was correct to exclude large tourist investments from the general suspension of issuing new building permits for tourist units in areas of the island outside planning zones.

Rain pounded many parts of Greece on Friday, with Arkadia, Ilia and Achaia in the Peloponnese recording the highest volume of water, according to meteo.gr. 

"Strong winds were also recorded in areas of the Peloponnese, such as Pylos and Kalamata," Dr Kostas Lagouvardos, director of research at the National Observatory of Athens, told Kathimerini.