Laura Pons, Majorcan and the Only Female Minehunter Diver in Spain

Laura Pons is the first and only female minehunter diver in Spain; she joined the Armed Forces for three years, which could serve as experience before being able to return to what she believed, influenced by her youth, to be a better regarded private company. But what she found was so captivating that she has already celebrated her "silver wedding" anniversary at her institution, the Navy.

Pons received from the hands of the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, the "Soldado Idoia Rodríguez" award, which, in memory of the first female military member to die on an international mission -she died in 2007 in Herat (Afghanistan)- recognizes relevant or exemplary actions that enhance the role of women in the Armed Forces.

The Majorcan diver tells EFE in an interview that she joined the Navy in December 1999, when she was 23 years old. At that time, she was working at a crew agency for luxury yachts.

Very "self-disciplined," because "I have inherited the genetics of trying to do things well," but also "very adventurous," as she describes herself, Pons had always been attracted to "the military."

On an island, Majorca, where luxury yachts and millionaire people moor, Pons thought, like other young people, that in the world of boats she could find a very well-paid job.

And since she was already a secretary at the crew agency for yachts, she believed that if she joined the Navy, it would remove the "itch" to serve her country and, in addition, load her backpack with significant experience on boats that would allow her to later work in the private world in a well-paid position.

Three years would be enough to gain that experience, and she chose to specialize in maneuvering and navigation, something that would come in very handy in her "civil" project.

But the Navy changed her plans. "What I found was very professional people, great people to work side by side with, combining sacrifice and effort to achieve something. All this created in me a feeling of team, camaraderie, belonging to a group. Something I had never felt before, not even when I played volleyball," Pons relates.

And it was that - she continues - "what hooked me to the Navy and the three years have turned into 25."

With the good English she brought from home because her mother is English, Pons, who is now preparing to become a sergeant, was best at communications on the ship, but also at navigation maneuvers on the bridge.

On the Castilla Ship she coincided with a Commander who, soon, would command as an admiral a NATO grouping in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and who suggested she try to join, as a photographer, the team he was going to lead. A challenge she accepted and, after passing several interviews and a training period, she achieved and fulfilled for a year.

She recognizes that she did not enter the Navy with the goal of a specific position, but rather she found different options along the way. "That's the good thing about the Navy, because in the same institution you can work in a thousand different things," Pons emphasizes.

When she joined, there were very few women in her brigade. They didn't even reach 10%. From the beginning - this sergeant candidate asserts - they were very well accepted, and except for some colleagues with a "more conservative" attitude, everyone valued the competence of their female colleagues.

After a year on the amphibious ship, Pons moved on to ships of a different scope, specifically to the Canarias frigate. She suffered a small period of "discouragement" and was assigned to the naval station of Porto Pi, near her family, with the intention of "maybe" resigning.

However, what she saw in Mallorca did not appeal to her compared to what she was experiencing in the Navy. So she requested the corporal course and was "accumulating experiences" from north to south, from Rota (Cadiz) to Ferrol (A Coruña).

It was what she wanted, to collect experiences given her adventurous spirit, which she still maintains "despite my 49 years," she tells EFE. Because she believes that if life puts something in front of you, you have to try to grab it to "keep discovering things."

It was her current partner who, seeing her "play" in the water, discovered Pons's potential as a diver. As nothing was too much for her, and despite having never had a relationship with diving, she tried her luck and found that she was good at it.

Thus, in 2009 she did in Cartagena (Murcia) the most basic course, which qualifies for diving with air diving equipment, and also includes for crew a specialty of rescue swimmer.

From there, she moved on to the more complex course, that of minehunter diving, which involves more technical diving with a semi-closed equipment. This means that instead of expelling the exhaled mixture outside, part of it is reintroduced into the equipment passing through a CO2 absorbent filter, which removes it and thus can be breathed again.

What do bottom and mooring minehunter divers do? Pons explains that the first thing is to locate them to then neutralize them by placing a small amount of explosive at a certain distance and detonating them in a controlled manner.

It can be dangerous, Pons acknowledges, but that is why they prepare with endless exercises to know all types of mines and how to approach them taking into account their characteristics, i.e., whether their activation system is by pressure, sound, magnetic influence...

There are not many specialists in the Cartagena Mine Countermeasures Divers Unit. Between 35 and 40 are those who perform tasks like Pons, the only woman in this specialty in the Navy and, therefore, in Spain.

She does not know why none of the other women who have the basic diving course perform the mine hunting course, and yet she encourages them and tells them that she needs companions in the locker room. "I guess many things have to come together: adventurous spirit, physical faculties, daring, not minding embarking here, now there... I guess all those things have come together in me," she concludes.