It was one of the new festivals that emerged in 2022 in the heat of the pandemic, a year in which musical events have multiplied in order to make up for lost time. Diversity Valéncia had positioned itself at the beginning of January as one of the most ambitious debutantes and the City of Arts and Sciences was reserved for the celebration on July 21, 22 and 23. But she has finished DJing.
Metallica t-shirts and boat shoes at Mad Cool, the festival that no one can leave
Know more
“We cannot guarantee the realization of the festival under the necessary conditions for its proper development,” the Diversity organization said in a statement on Monday, confirming the suspicions of the last few hours, when its website has stopped working. . Antonio Torres, director of the City of Arts and Sciences, and sponsor of the festival, assured this newspaper minutes before the release of the statement that they had “no information about the alleged cancellation.”
On the other hand, sources close have admitted to local media which is due to the fact that the minimum number of tickets sold or of investors has not been reached to guarantee economic solvency.
The subscriptions for the three days of concerts cost from 170 euros the most basic, up to 1,200 euros the premium. The latter included access to a “premium” area in front of the main stage, access to a “premium” terrace with a privileged view from a raised platform, access to the L’Umbracle Terrace, access to a “premium” area with furniture, bars and toilets. “premium”, a gourmet tasting dinner and drinks included according to offer. According to what they stated on their social networks on July 6, they had sold 85% of the general passes and 70% of the premium. This Monday they have assured that, shortly, they will communicate “the procedure for the full return of the tickets”.
“We have come across the complex situation that the culture sector, and more specifically music, is going through at a global level,” the statement continues. The one at Diversity had one of the most powerful headliners on the festival scene for a novel event. It was going to bring together Iggy Pop, Christina Aguilera, Martin Garrix, Black Eyed Peas and the only concert of the most famous reggaeton artist in the world in Spain, Karol G.
Last week, the press team was contacting the media to offer interviews with its director, promoter Jesús Lumbreras, and asking for publicity as it is the festival with the most equal lineup in our country. We come to say that your sum, here, does not subtract. That your name does not erase us. That your inclusion is the human essence that makes existence free. You are a unique galactic code made of infinite combinations of stars“, they assured in their manifesto.
In his official presentation last June, Lumbreras announced that the first year of a festival “is always hard”, but he remained optimistic about filling the capacity of 24,000 people a day. “The Diversity organizing team has been working day after day with the aim of being able to introduce a musical window that sought to cover a base of values that would live up to the expectations of our public,” they said in their farewell statement.
On their page you can still see the sponsors of the event, most of them Valencian institutions. Mediterranew Musix, VLC Visit Valencia, Valencia Turisme or The City of Arts and Sciences. Renfe, the festival’s official transport, the ticket sales platform for Mediaset and Radio 3, also put up money.
An unassailable bubble
The Diversity Valencia has been one of the first to fall in a summer in which almost a thousand festivals are held. An absolute congestion where the newborns or the little ones have a hard time competing against the macro ones, like the Mad Cool –held just two weeks before the Valencian one– or the Primavera Sound. A bubble that, one way or another, had to burst.
The first tragedy that caused this bottleneck was experienced at O Son do Camiño, the event in Santiago de Compostela where a stage collapsed, trapping several workers. “We are witnessing a bubble of musical events. As a consequence, people assume more workload than they can attend to and situations arise in which there are people setting up stages for the first time in their lives”, assured a Galician promoter who asked to remain anonymous.
Oversupply also causes caches to skyrocket and can only be afforded by those with a huge public subsidy or spotless reputation. That is why Diversity València was a rarity on the festival map. Those who set the standards in this regard are Mad Cool and Primavera Sound. The director of the latter explained the differences between setting up a festival in a big city or doing it in Bilbao or Malaga, or in this case Valencia: “In Madrid or Barcelona you find two cities with a very important critical mass, an enormous hotel capacity and 150 or 200 air destinations and part of them with a daily frequency” so, in a smaller site, “beyond what you have, the important thing is what you are”. And Diversity hasn’t even had time to be.
www.eldiario.es