The Arrecife City Council is already taking its first steps towards the creation of the Carnival Board, and it is doing so in a plenary session held this Monday, September 18th.
Yonathan de León and the Councilor for Festivities, Echedey Eugenio, convened this Monday in the institution's plenary hall the groups and collectives that participate every year in the capital's carnivals, with the aim of "starting to organize now the program of events that next February 2024 will fill the city with color".
A program that must "be worthy" of the third capital of the Canary Islands and that, as both leaders emphasized on several occasions throughout the meeting, and shared by the more than 50 representatives of different sectors linked to the carnival who attended the event, "we have to design it together".
Thus, De León and Eugenio summoned adult and children's murgas, comparsas, batucadas, float builders, designers, and the marine parranda 'Los Buches' and 'Los Diabletes' as representatives of the traditional carnival, to participate in "specific days" with working tables for each of the groups, which will take place on September 29th and 30th and October 1st, and which will culminate with the elaboration of "a document that will lay the foundations for the 2024 carnivals".
"It is vital that all carnival groups participate in the design of the festivities, that is why we are working in a coordinated manner and with so much foresight," says the mayor. "We want the Arrecife Carnival to have the recognition and importance it should have, and that is something we can only achieve if we all work together," he says.
For his part, the Councilor for Festivities, insists that the Arrecife carnival needs "a boost from the administration so that it can regain its importance." "We have to get involved to determine that the carnival industry is also a tourist industry," he said, adding that "the idea is to go to the carnival that our capital deserves."
"The idea is to go to the carnival that our capital deserves."
To this end, Eugenio emphasizes that "it is necessary that we have everything settled and moving as soon as possible; that before the end of November the order of participation in the contests, parades... is known. If there is an exhibition, if there is a Queen, that the float builders have the approved bases so that there are no last-minute changes, etcetera."
Another issue to take into account is that "the same fairgrounds as in previous years will no longer be able to be used, as that land has just been ceded for the construction of the Congress Palace, so other alternatives are already being considered," they point out.
Likewise, due to "the works" of a section for the pedestrianization of Avenida Fred Olsen, it will be necessary to "redesign the routes of the traditional float parade and the burial of the sardine," they conclude.
