There are just over 70 days left before the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife begins. It will do so on January 20 with the presentation of the candidates, a show that returns to the Parque Marítimo facilities, because, as the Councilor for Fiestas, Alfonso Cabello, celebrates, “we return to the essence of our Carnival, in its dates, and in the street, to give everything”. To do this, “all the technical and administrative machinery is working at 120%, at a frenetic pace, to arrive with all possible guarantees,” he explains.
A machinery that tomorrow, in the Governing Council of the Autonomous Organism for Festivities and Recreational Activities (Oafar), will approve the bases of the Carnival Queens contests and will put out to tender the construction of the Fairground stage, whose design was presented last Monday . “We already have 112 groups pre-registered and delivering the documentation to be able to contract and make the first payment to the groups this month. Everyone is rehearsing normally. With the approval of the bases of the Queens we will be able to open the registration of candidates”, he details.
And it is that one of the main novelties is, precisely that, that Fiestas advances the registration of candidates, which closes on November 21. “This is due to organizational needs that have to do with designs, security plans and even construction,” says Cabello. And it is that he remembers the “complicated” moment that was experienced at the June Carnival, when the excessive weight of a candidate ended up sinking part of the stage, “which has led us to also limit the weight of fantasies.”
Cabello defends the need to improve the organization in terms of deadlines, and it is something that other parts of the party have already understood. “Something that I always ask designers is that they understand that this is an organization that has been evolving, and things that until now may have been valid, now it has to be organized in a different way. Currently, I need 25-30 days to work on self-protection and evacuation plans, a series of conditions that have to be worked on a lot in this festival of international tourist interest, ”he said. “It does not seem reasonable that the administrative aspects are modulated so much, that the groups need their four or five months to rehearse and that other disciplines linked to the Carnival do not follow the same path”, he continued.
The also CEO of the Development Society admits that the only thing in which the pandemic may have helped is in “doing things differently”. However, the pandemic has caused “we to lose momentum in many aspects, starting with ourselves, in the Autonomous Organization for Festivities and Recreational Activities, which arrived with exhausted machinery, from a Carnival in June, with frenetic activity, and we are with a lot of pressure throughout the assembly”.
organizational change
A way of doing things that, as Cabello points out, needs an organizational change, since “the current model is exhausted.” “For years the organization has been pulling the commitment of many people and going at a level and at a pace that is not sustainable, in a flight forward, but it is an exhausted model, which depends a lot on the good will of the people who are involved”, insists Cabello, who sets a complete review of the organizational model as a goal for the next term.
As for next year’s Carnival, the councilor admits that he has a special “illusion” in being able to do something that enhances the Parade on Friday night. “Daytime Carnivals go like a shot, also on Carnival Monday, but I would like to bet on something different for the Cavalcade Friday,” he added. Some changes that he would like to address also in the children’s part of the Carnival, although it is more long-term. “Many of the things that we are doing with the little ones I think we should review, from the schedules, or the habits that we encourage, such as competitiveness and rivalry, which I think are not better,” he explains.
A great artist or an ‘all star’ of singers for the party in 2023
An important part of the Carnival are the performances that animate galas and the street itself. This is something that, admits Cabello, is being especially complicated. “Let’s say that we are in bitter negotiations with the entire artistic part of international singers, because if there is something that has risen a lot in these years of pandemic, it is the caches of the artists, especially with the return to normality, which has multiplied the acts ”, Explains Hair. In addition, he adds that “we are talking about artists that I have handled caches of 35,000 or 40,000 euros that are now at 135,000.”
Even so, although the mayor does not want to advance names, he details that two options are being worked on. “They are two different lines of work. We need a multigenerational artistic proposal, which makes it even more complicated for us, and always with a marked Latin character, because it is the essence of the music that is heard in our Carnival”. “The difference between one and the other is that in one we talk about bringing in a great star and some complement, and the other pivots on a set of names, something like an all star of the Carnival”, he commented.
