Schumacher not being moved to Mallorca: spokeswoman

GENEVA: Ex-Formula One champion Michael Schumacher is not being moved from his home in Switzerland to the Spanish island of Mallorca, a spokeswoman said Thursday, denying a report by a Swiss magazine.

Swiss news magazine L’Illustre reported this week that the seven-time world champion, who sustained serious head injuries in a 2013 skiing accident, was being moved to a vast property in the village of Andratx on Mallorca, recently purchased by his wife Corinna.

A number of media around the world have picked up the story in recent days, prompting the family to exit its habitual silence on all private manners.“The Schumacher family does not plan to move to Mallorca,” family spokeswoman Sabine Kehm told AFP in an email.

L’Illustre based its story on a comment from Andratx mayor Katia Rouarch, saying she could “officially confirm” the 49-year-old German sportsman would be settling in the village.“Everything is being put in place to accommodate him,” she was quoted by the magazine as saying.

But the municipality on Thursday issued a statement maintaining that Rouarch had been misquoted, “probably (as a) result of misinterpretation or misunderstanding, perhaps due to language translation.”

In its statement, the Andratx city council said the mayor had confirmed that the Schumacher family had bought a house there.Schumacher fell and hit his head against a rock while skiing in the French Alps with his family in December 2013.

He spent time in hospital in Grenoble and Lausanne before being brought to his home on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland in September 2014 to continue his rehabilitation.Schumacher’s family has avoided providing any details about his health, insisting it is not a public issue, and his current condition remains a mystery.