Cartagena Spain, One of the most important fiestas for tourism in Cartagena

Quite a few people have emailed over the weekend asking about the dates for the Romans and Carthaginians fiestas which are taking place at the end of September.

This is one of the best known Fiestas in the Region, and annually attracts thousands of people into Cartagena to celebrate its' historic past and enjoy the atmosphere of this journey into history.

Normally the Programme is out and available during July, but this year the organizers have struggled to hold the main acts of the Fiesta together due to the lack of sponsors

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Although the councils do subsidise these events to some degree, the majority of the costs of most of the fiestas we all enjoy so much are borne by private businesses and the groups of people who actually put themselves forward to organise the programmes. Fundraising takes place throughout the year at many other events, which is why it is so important for the fiestas to be recognized as being of Regional or national interest as this enables the organizers to attract more money from sponsors.

This year everyone is struggling to bring in the money, and the net result of this is that the organizers of the Romans and Carthaginians have been forced to make cuts to the programme, rescheduling the events to cheaper locations and removing the more expensive spectaculars altogether.

In the case of the Romans and Carthaginians this has meant that the spectacular Roman Circus, in which Gladiators battle it our for supremacy, Charioteers race around a circuit at breakneck speed and live circus animals roam around the ring, has been cancelled altogether, as the money just couldn't be raised to make it happen.

 

The living chess has also been cancelled this year, and several changes made to the locations and schedule to cut costs and save money, without damaging the core parades and other activities which make these fiestas such a wonderful event to visit.

Organisers have been struggling until the very last to try and raise the money, and hopes that perhaps the council might be able to help out were unfulfilled when the council announced in turn  that it would not be financing the Feria de Dia which normally accompanies the event this year due to financial cutbacks, so this has also been cancelled..

 

This has caused a great deal of resentment within Cartagena, as the council have recently spent 600,000 hosting the Audi Med Cup sailing event.

 

The council have justified this by showing that over 32,000,000 people worldwide would have seen coverage of the racing which took place in Cartagena, so the publicity value to the city, they say, is far in excess of what they have spent, and hotel and restaurant owners expressed their satisfaction with hotel occupancy and the amount of food and drink sold during the 12 day event, over 26,000 rations of tapas being consumed during the tapas route.

The company responsible for promotion said that over 172,000 people are estimated to have come into the public village area during the event, based on a snap count taken for two minutes out of every hour, although there is no way of knowing how many of these people were part of the 216,000 residents of the City enjoying the concerts and events, or visitors from outside the city

 

The Concejal for tourism, Javier Herrero,  said that he " fully understood the delay" that lack of financing has caused in the production of the Romans and Carthaginians programme, and "regretted " that the organizers of the fiestas had missed out on the opportunity to promote the Fiestas to all of the people who had come into Cartagena to watch the Audi Med Cup.

 

The organizers have struggled to pull this programme together and get it out to print, hoping that negotiations with supporters of the event would yield a little more money to avoid the cancellations which are now necessary ,and which have lead to the delay.

Fortunately the programme is now available, so we can confirm that the main events will all take place between Friday the 17^th September and Sunday 26^th September.

We now have the amended programme and will work through to translate properly and confirm all the changes this week. You'll have it by the weekend.

If you'd like to see the programme for last year and get an idea of what it's all about, Click here for Romans and Carthaginians 2009, and be assured, even without the Roman circus and chess, this is a spectacular Fiesta and is well worth visiting, so watch out for the Full Programme which will be on this weeks Thursday night bulletin.

 

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