Without time to catch his breath, the councilor for Fiestas de Santa Cruz, Alfonso Cabello, gets fully into the carnival 2022, when there are still acts of the Fiestas de Mayo ahead. “We are very satisfied with the response of the people, both in the Magicians’ Ball and in the days of the García Sanabria, and now it’s time to focus on another act of massive influx such as the Carnival”, he told yesterday DIARY OF NOTICES the also mayor of Presidency and Internal Organization. Today, the Governing Council of the Autonomous Organism for Festivities and Recreational Activities (Oafar) will proceed to approve the first ones aimed at making this June Carnival look as similar as possible to that of February. And it is that the bases for the installation of bars and kiosks are going to be approved, because yes, there will be kiosks in the street. For this, the Oafar is going to approve a linear reduction in the prices of occupation of the public domain with the aim of encouraging participation.
“In Carnival there are four types of occupation in the street. We have the vendors, the bar counters, the kiosks, and within the kiosks there are two types, some linked to sponsorship and others to auctions. What the City Council is considering is to have the maximum deployment of services, because we are preparing for a carnival with maximum influx. At the end of next week we want to hold the auction for the Carnival kiosks and what we are going to do is a linear 65% discount on kiosks and bars, while in the case of the fair the discount will be 50%”, explained the mayor.
The difference between one and the other is due to the fact that “kiosks and bars can only be there for three and a half days, while we are going to allow the fair to be between 10 and 13 days,” explains Cabello.
This linear reduction means that one of the most expensive inns, which in previous years have been around 17,000 euros, this year, with the discount, would be around 5,800.
85 kiosks will be auctioned. “In 2020, 69 and 35 bars were mounted. The bars do not go to auction, they request it in writing. In the case of the latter, the square meter of bar, which normally costs 485 euros, will be around 170 euros with the discount”, explained the mayor.
The councilman admits that it is proving to be a first-level organizational challenge to simultaneously organize the May Festivities, Carnival and other activities that depend on the area that Cabello directs. “We are still immersed in the middle of the May Festivities, with pending concerts, plus everything that happens on Canary Islands Day, for which we are proposing a plan of important activities, and we are already focused on Carnival and working on all the machinery”, said.
A machinery that will physically start next Monday, the 9th, with the assembly of the Carnival stage, so that it is ready for the first official act, which will be on June 3, with the presentation of the candidates for Queen. “And, as if that were not enough, on top of that, the calendar leads us to the fact that the 2023 Carnival, without finishing this year’s, we have to start preparing it now, since it will be the one that begins the soonest in the last 15 years, on the 20th of January,” adds Cabello.
Asked about the mayor’s words about the possibility of repeating in some way the experience of a summer Carnival, the mayor admits that it is a proposal to study: “This is an experiment that, if it goes well, it is difficult not to maintain it.” “There are two aspects to this -he continues-. I maintain the liturgy that Carnival has to be when it is, which is around the month of February, linked to Easter, but it is also true that a party like this , a brand of the size of the Santa Cruz Carnival has an attraction and pull in the summer month, touristically speaking, which I think can be taken advantage of and I certainly think it can be taken advantage of”. As for the possibility of the level of restrictions being raised, Cabello assures that it is not a scenario that arises. “The global context and the information that we handle, beyond the necessary prudence, is for a scenario that is only 100% Carnival, and always bearing in mind that the June party has been conceptualized to be held in January, in a context pandemic”.
For this reason, in what will be his first full Carnival as Councilor for Fiestas, he admits that “we will probably generate a lot of dissatisfaction, because we are used to a specific Carnival structure. We know that the Queen’s gala is the Wednesday before the parade, and people already know what a Friday parade means in Santa Cruz, or what kind of people go out every day; This whole structure is altered this year”.
