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STAFF REPORTER THE Balearic government has declared 2010 to be “Chopin Year” to commemorate the bicentenary of the composer's birth - “one of the greatest in history,” said spokesman Joana Barcelo after a cabinet meeting yesterday.

She said that there is a full programme of events in which the general public can partake by way of homage to the half Polish, half French musician who spent three months of his life on Majorca from November 1838 to January 1839. Frederic-Francois Chopin lived in the monastery at Valldemossa in search of a gentle climate to help cure the tuberculosis from which he was suffering.

His lover George Sand wrote a cameo of their seasonal experience: “A Winter on Majorca.” The regional government is thus signing up to a series of concerts and exhibitions being promoted by the Polish authorities on an international scale in homage to their famous son born in the district of Zelazowa-Wola.