This week, Fitur, the main tourism fair of the State, opens in Madrid. A meeting point for professionals and industry players and a place that gathers businesses, operators, destinations and media specialized in the tourist industry. Sitges will be there. And Sitges will sport its own profile covered by the new Costa de Barcelona trademark, a brand that gathers all tourist destinations near the capital.
The municipal government of Sitges is committed to strengthen its profile and touristic offer, everything included within a framework of quality. From the Municipal Government of Sitges and its Tourist Agency, we have enabled lines of work aimed at strengthening our brand; attract new markets, promoting the position as organizers of conferences and conventions. We also want to take full advantage of the media coverage of the many events organized in our town, like the Film Festival, Carnival and Corpus, among many others.
Tourism is and must remain the driving force of Sitges. For this reason, we must ensure that its development is harmonious, but at the same time equipped with the necessary resources that contribute to their full implementation. In this line, and working together with the Industry, we are exploring all the possibilities that could be beneficial to the municipality. Among the many existing possibilities are the condition of Sitges as cultural capital, the promotion of our festivals and development of senior tourism, strengthening of retail trade or the possibility of turning the port of Vilanova into a cruise destination, a fact that will benefit us directly. The last option is the goal of a project that we have initiated together with the City Hall of Vilanova, and that will be completed by the NodeGarraf Development Agency.
The recent approval of the Costa de Barcelona trademark, in which we are integrated, is destined to become a new driving force for the promotion and development of tourism in our town. Internationally, at fairs and among tourist operator, the name "Barcelona" is endowed with a special power that will contribute to the promotion and positioning of Sitges. We want to appear under this umbrella. We are already under its cover and, dare I say, Sitges has important prominence which is the result of many years of work, efforts and strategies that have made our town into a first category destination, but we must gain strenght to adapt to changing times.
For this reason, it is essential that the overnight rate, currently under preparation by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia, should have a direct bearing on the finances of tourist municipalities. Sitges, like other towns that attract a large number of visitors, takes care of a package of public services expenditures that must be partially assumed by the users, in this case, the visitors.
L'AGNÈS DE SITGES IS NOW CLOSER. Last week we announced that the Generalitat de Catalunya (Autonomous Government of Catalonia) has agreed to allocate an initial sum of 600,000 Euros for the construction of the school Agnes de Sitges in the budget for 2012, expected to be approved in the coming weeks. With this initial investment, construction could begin this year. We find ourselves at the beginning of the end of the prefabricated modules that have occupied this school during the last seven years. Today, Monday 16 January, I am happy to celebrate this news, an issue that we have dealt directly with the Education Department of the Catalonian Autonomous Government. The same day that we celebrate the 36th anniversary of the school Miquel Utrillo, a major step forward in education during the first years of democracy in Sitges.
