Sources: Última Hora Menorca and Spain public holidays. The executive council of the Spanish Autonomous Community of the Baleares has announced the list of 2008 regional public holidays for the autonomy and regions within. Of note is the inclusion, for the first time, at the autonomy level, of Easter Monday, and, an even rarer occurrence in Spain, the specification of a day in lieu on the day after Día de la Hispanidad as that holiday falls on a Sunday in 2008.Analysis: Recall that Spanish regions, towns, villages and cities can each have additional public holidays of their own. There is a base of, usually 9, public holidays that are common to all regions of Spain, plus Epiphany and Maundy Thursday which each region can replace with one or two region-specific public holidays. Regions also have the option of adding a regional public holiday, without removing any of the common ones, or Epiphany and Maundy Thursday. The main reason why the specific public holidays for each province and municipality change every year, such as is the case here, is that these are usually patron saint days, which always occur on a fixed date. Therefore, when these fixed dates fall on a weekend, another holiday or patron saint is chosen for that year, to avoid "wasting" a holiday.
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