Tourism: realities and commitments

2015 was a good year for tourism. The beach season, annual data of overnight and business stays, and the organization of events are a perfect indicators. Results were good, but we must manage and interpret them with a clear mind, but with a well fundamented confidence to continue our path. These three areas (beaches, conferences and events) are the three routes, all necessary and complementary, that are allowing us to maintain a good position. But at the same time, such areas constitute unique future challenges. If we can properly manage the moderate growth, and at the same time generate and take advantage of opportunities that arise in such  three areas, we will ensure the future.

1. Beaches 

No need to dwell on the crucial importance of beach tourism for Sitges. But it is also true that beaches are not enough to maintain our current level. But without competitive beaches, our future would face uncertainties. For this reason, during 2015, 2013 and 2014,  we did not hesitate a second to pour sand to our beaches to save the season. Storms in recent years, especially during 2014, seriously threatened our beach season, and without beach season, everything starts to look bleak in Sitges.

I am fully aware that the timely actions of the last few summers to gain sand are just temporary patches. Those interventions are no long-term solutions, their only goal was to save their respective seasons. A very essential action. The solution to prevent investing new resources every summer to bring sand is the definitive regeneration of our beaches. Sitges has been expecting this project for over 20 years, but until now no Ministry has backed us with the guarantees and requirements needed for such an intervention. In recent months, however, we have been working with various stakeholders to finalize the necessary project, that we want to agree with the new Ministry arising out of elections next Sunday. The Deputy Mayor, Aurora Carbonell, together with Councilor Jordi Mas and myself, are totally committed in the project, which will require patience, skill and support from other governments where we can make our voice heard.

2. Night stays 

The summer of 2015 has been remarkably successful. And the annual aggregate gives us positive results overall thanks to full recovery of the arrival of congresses. This year, there has been an overall increase in the organization and reception of conventions and corporative visitors, and such data confirms two trends:

• On one hand, an improvement in economic indicators in Catalonia, which confirms the strength of our economy despite the abondance of biased bad omens.
• And, on the other, the positioning of our town as a town of congresses is gaining positions and improving results. Sitges was again this year, the second town of Catalonia in the organization of conferences, having lost that status for several years. And that fills us with satisfaction.

In anticipation of closing the data for the year, 2015 will exceed the figure of 600 professional events held in Sitges and a global turnover of 40 million euros distributed among all stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in services.

The data and results are positive and invite to a tempered satisfaction. But we must be aware that other localities are also celebrating a successful 2015. Competition is growing and you know better than anyone that every client and customer requires special attention and extra effort.

In Sitges, we certainly have some very important elements that support our commitment to conventions. We have a brand- that is undeniably. We have the experience of  generations in managing political and tourist facilities, and in addition to its privileged location,  hotel facilities are tailored to the needs, although some improvements must be addressed in the future.

But we are still missing some features that until now could be necessary but that now are increasingly essential. This is the case of a congress and exhibition center, which responds to a real and growing demand. This is a challenge both the private and the public sector, a challenge we must face together immediately. We can not wait any longer because we risk losing vital opportunities.

For this reason, our City Hall has envisaged a Governance Plan to pave the way to complete an infrastructure of this kind for Sitges. Facilities that ensure the future of Sitges as a convention center, but that help at the same time to retain the present. If we do not do it, if we keep looking the other way because we believe that we already have the brand and the other virtues that I mentioned, we would be at risk of taking a step back.

In this regard, authorities and the tourism sector must act as one voice, capable of unifying efforts needs. The first step is to decide which profile -and which location- should host fairgrounds.. And, in parallel, to explore all possibilities and find suitable investors. For this reason, Joan Anton, in the coming weeks we will summon you to a meeting that must lay the foundations of this required  facility and where we will present preliminary work.

3. Events

If the first two poles of future challenges (beaches and convention tourism) require additional effort, the third should not appear as relegated. I mean the organization of events intended to transform Sitges into a relevant point of attraction. Namely, festivals, fairs, sectoral initiatives or cultural facilities such as renovated museums, which next week will be a year since we reopened and constitute an excellent business card: in the first year they received 50,000 visits.

This year we have added two more festivals in our stable calendar. On one hand, Sitges Next, the festival of innovation and communication, which brought together 500 advertisers and creatives past April, some coming from the United States. We are already working on the next edition. And, again, just ten days ago, the Sitges Christmas Festival, which has enabled us to strengthen our position as a patchwork town, extending the offer with a complementary event with great quality.

In parallel, we are working on two festivals in which we want you to be particularly visible and significant. First, an international music festival that we would love to hold summer months in the gardens of Terramar. It would be a fastival following the format of Cap Roig, Peralada or Pedralbes, hosting groups of different profiles and music allowing to generate quality and attractiveness. And, again, a summer sports festival, in which Aurora Carbonell and Carmen Almirall are already working for 2017.

We want to make Sitges a land of festivals. What We want Sitges to be what Cannes was in France during the second half of the twentieth century, not only in Catalonia, but in the whole of the western Mediterranean. The Councillor of Culture, Rosa Tubau, is considering other proposals to promote festivals during the coming years. She wants to set a stable timetable positioning Sitges as the first Catalan city, besides Barcelona, ​​in this field, and with a clear international projection. And to further progress in this field, fairgrounds for fair and congresses will be increasingly essential.

Last week, the Board of Film Festival confirmed the growth figures recorded this year, a 20% increase of tickets sold and 10,000 news appearing in the media. A promotional tool, and as you can ascertain, a extraordinary tool that keeps growing. For this reason, this year we wanted to add new screens and activities spread around the town, with the intention that the direct impact of the Festival  is also clearly noticed in the center of town.

The Municipal Government's commitment is clear and unequivocal in its quest to provide the necessary tools to Sitges. The current Mayor is totally devoted to such an end, wether as Mayor and as Deputy of Tourism in the Provincial Government, a condition which will advance the cause of our town. The Governance Plan, which can be visited at the web of Sitges City Hall, describes such goals and all the future challenges we have full ahead. Our dream is to transform Sitges into a entrepeneurial town that champions high quality and sustainable tourism and that becomes an international cultural capital.

Culture with character

Councilors of the City Hall of Sitges, President and Councilor of the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation, Presidents of civil organizations, Artists, cultural managers, scholars, representatives of associations and groups, good night everyone.

First, let me congratulate the real stars of the evening: the winners in the different categories. The very much needed public recognition for your talent -whether by your vital trajectories or specific feats- is the main reason that justifies this evening. Today, we are gathered here to highlight: 

• The bright careers of photographer Tony Keeler and journalist Albert Sáez; 
• We want to stress that cultural gastronomy is associated with creativity and quality, as evidenced by "Club del Tast" and "Bar El Cable"-; 
• The evocative works of Gonzalo Romero and  Dogny Abreu,  winners of Sanvisens Award for painting  and Pere Jou Award for sculpture, which underline the condition of Sitges as home of the arts; 
• The fundamental role in our culture that represents Grup d'Estudis Sitgetans, or local group devoted to Historical Studies;
• And in the same vein, the interesting works made by three young women that were awarded with Carbonell i Gener Award, that highlight the work of study and exposure of our local reality.

To all of you, congratulations.

A year ago, when we held Sitges 2013 Night of Awards, I wanted to share with you three cultural projects that would become protagonists during the coming months. I mentioned in the first place the reopening of Cau Ferrat and Maricel museums after a thorough and careful reform, which allowed to maintain and preserve our legacy. Today, eleven months after its reopening, our museums have received more than 50,000 visits and now play an important role in the local fabric, not only cultural but social and even economic. The museums act as attraction poles for Sitges and contribute decisively to put us in the cultural hub of excellence.

The other project that I stressed last year during the Awards Night was also linked to our legacy: the reform of the Santiago Rusiñol Library. Last Saturday we organized the second open day to see the library, one of the buildings composing the Maricel ensemble- that was completely empty; without bookshelves and furniture that will be reinstalled in the coming months. The work of reform and restoration of the library allowed us to highlight the "noucentista" spirit and restore some of the original elements present one hundred years ago.

And the third point of the Awards Night a year ago was the announcement of the celebration of the Media and Advertising Festival of Catalonia, Sitges Next, for which we organized the first edition last April. We are already working on the second call, also next April. Sitges is a land of festivals, we want to stress and strengthen such a fact even more. In addition to film festival, the first in the world in its sector and that this year witnessed a significant growth- there are other festivals that coexist in Sitges that allow us to snap a cultural picture, which, viewed as a whole, has a quite extraordinary strenght: Jazz, Tango, Classical, Pop, Catalan-Irish Folklore, Ecology, Music at the Marina .. Now we want to complete this route of festivals with new additions and we are planning other initiatives. This is the case of the music festival next summer, which will form a plural and heterogeneous array of quality and ambitious challenge.

Wednesday, I had the pleasure of presenting to the media, accompanied by Deputy Mayor, Aurora Carbonell, and government spokesman, Pep Moliné- the Governance Plan 2015-2019. The Governance Plan is the tool that presents action lines and core strategies of the Municipal Government. The current Governance Plan includes six core strategies, and as it could not be otherwise, one is focused on cultural policy. We have called "Culture with Character."

The political culture that we are designing for this term has a very strong challenge: 

• Promoting cultural value as an expression of local diversity,
• Strengthen it as a tool for socio-economic development 
• And provide them with the necessary tools and instruments to act as the channel of creativity, talent and participation.

Note that we are stressing different concepts:

1. Heritage
2. Infrastructure
3. Creativity
4. Talent
5. Participation
6. Social cohesion

The sum of these elements are the ones that compose "Culture with Character" with which we want to identify our cultural schedule in coming years.

And what this means?

• During the coming months we will present the Forfet Cultural or Cultural Pass. It is a tool to promote cultural activities, to bring them closer to all citizens and contribute to what we want to achieve, which is promotion and dissemination through actions that encourage participation. The pass is intended as a tool at the service of culture that promotes spending both for residents and for people from the entire county, visitors and tourists.
• We will open Can Falç as a museum and heritage center. We are already working on the landmark building facing the sea, so the building can expose how was Sitges when agriculture, shoe industry and fishing were the bread baskets, and at the same time, to act as a space generator for tourist and cultural initiatives.
• We are negotiating with the Catalonian Autonomous Government to buy the Patronat. Abandoned for nearly 20 years, the Patronat is intended to be at the service of the culture of Sitges and civil organizations.
• We prepared the  project of the Center for Interpretation of Festivals, a space geared as headquarters and broadcasting center for the most important festivals in the calendar: the Festa Major or annual festival, Carnival and Corpus Christi.
• We will implement a regular art market, offering the possibility to disseminate and project the work of our artists and at the same time, to act as a magnet for talent. In parallel, we are working on the creation of the Biennial of Artists from Sitges, a platform capable of providing visibility and presence to our artists through exhibitions, meetings and competitions. 
• And, as I indicated earlier, we are in the late stages of the project to create the International Music Festival of Sitges. It is intended to be a meeting point to present a quality program to attract to Sitges stars from various genres and capable of strengthening the cultural offer during summer, as present in several coastal towns. 
• With this new Festival -and other proposals that we have received- we will create an stable map of Festivals, capable of allowing the promotion of the town as a land that generates and receives cultural initiatives with a national vision and, in some cases, international exposure.

These are some -not all- important initiatives and projects that we have designed for our cultural policy in the coming years. These are the different legs of a major project: Sitges exercising its status as a cultural capital through:

• Specific events;
• Promoting creativity and talent, 
• The provision of necessary equipment, 
• Creating tools that facilitate access to culture; 
• And reform, restoration and recovery of our heritage in terms of adapting to new needs, but above all, preservation and protection of our history and legacy.

And in this task to reinforce the cultural character of Sitges and its condition as capital, there is a key element. Crucial. In Sitges, probably more than anywhere else: THE CIVIL SOCIETY. That is, organizations, associations and cultural groups, either civilian or based in festivals, which are a driving force of cultural actions, social cohesion and channeling of participation.

During the past years, the organizations and associations had to suffer the bitterest face of the crisis: the reduction of subsidies and resources. The financial collapse in which some institutions entered directly affected the economic capacity of the associations. Currently, the conditions and the economic environment have improved. And in the case of the City Hall of Sitges, the economic recovery has allowed to gain back lost ground and improve performance and economic support.

But as you know, the improvement of resources has been accompanied by other obstacles, such as those imposed by the General Comptroller.  The new control environment in public spending have resulted in the application of national laws which exert a pronounced control over public resources. 

Firstly, I have to say that some of these measures are necessary to ensure the proper use of public money, so I share them. But it is also true that the interpretation of certain processes allows different views. In Sitges we are suffereing those measures that are being exerted by civil servants designated by central government and occupying strategic positions in our City Council. 

The organizations that receive public funding must be subject -and it can not be otherwise- to the verification that the funds are used correctly. But this process can not be carried out disregarding the reality of associations, and ignoring the civic and cultural fabric of our town. 

For this reason, I have to inform you that we are seeking and finding the necessary ways to solve the limitations of municipal subventions that you have suffered during 2015 and previous years. In the coming weeks, we will send you the criteria and measures adopted. Always complying with the law, our desire is that no organization in Sitges stops receiving a single euro of their agreed subsidies. 

I also have to announce that it will be essential to follow the rigorous criteria established for receiving all the agreed subsidies. We are preparing a training session with you to make the path smoother. So bureaucratic red tape will not be an impediment to continue strengtening and developing a solid and stable cultural system in which organizations and associations play a crucial role. The role of the City Hall in our cultural system must involve the promotion of the creation of events that fit our needs, respect the character of our City and deliver public value, whatever the size. Because culture must be measured using a quantitative criteria (if any), but mainly qualitative. 

Associations, creativity, talent, promotion, facilities, protection of heritage, popular culture, festivals... Notice the words that I wrote down. Those are the words that set apart a culture with character. The need to reinforce our status as a cultural capital.

Many thanks to all.

Sitges 2015 Awards Night (27^th November 2015)