SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Jan. 18 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, José Manuel Bermúdez, met this Monday afternoon with the representatives of the groups that make up the Chicharrero Carnival, via videoconference, and raised the possibility of postponing the organization of Carnival 2022 until June .
“Arrived in this situation, it is risky to work on the planning of activities, especially in the short and medium term, at least as long as the health panorama does not yield more certainties,” he says in a note.
Accompanied by the Councilor for Fiestas, Alfonso Cabello; the director of the different galas, Enrique Camacho, and the manager of Fiestas, Guillermo Martínez, the mayor analyzed with the groups the current sanitary conditions and that have forced a clear restriction on the preparations and rehearsals of the groups that give life to the Carnival , which bring together around 9,000 people.
For this reason, “the conclusion has been reached to postpone the 2022 Carnival, placing its celebration in a more appropriate temporary scenario, without as many uncertainties as the current ones, in the next month of June,” he announced.
According to the mayor, “everything seems to indicate that, as the months go by, the conditions may be much more conducive to the celebration of activities with the profile of the Carnival, favoring a more adequate preparation to maintain the level of splendor as a Festival of Interest International Tourist”.
Along these lines, he added that “this change of dates is unprecedented in the history of the festival, but the experience of other popular events of this significance, such as the Fallas de Valencia, last year, or this year the Carnival of Cádiz, that it has already announced for the same month of June, invites us to consider its viability”.
Tenerife is currently at alert level 4 and at the same time, the discrepancies about the evolution of the pandemic that is currently nesting in the health authorities as a whole, as well as within the scientific community, “make us consider that The situation seems more complicated when it comes to activities related to a significant volume of the population, as is the case of the Carnivals, originally scheduled for the second half of February,” argued Bermúdez.
For his part, the Councilor for Fiestas, Alfonso Cabello, stressed the importance of the meeting, “since it is urgent to make decisions regarding the facilities necessary to carry out activities, with the corresponding procedures for contracting equipment and infrastructure.”
Thus, he added that “for this reason, the OAFAR will summon the groups linked to the Carnival to the meetings that will take place this Thursday and Friday, at the Fairgrounds, in person, in order to resolve any doubts that arise, to listen, exchange impressions and work towards that call”.
In his opinion, the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, “with an economic impact on the city of more than 32 million euros, requires a detailed assessment, since we are talking, in most cases, of the economy of a lot of families”.
