April is the cruellest month, if instead of reading poets we read what has been published in the press about San Sebastian 2016, April has been the noisiest month. The European Capital of Culture project was shaken by the resignation of the former Director-General, Itziar Nogeras, on the second day of this month. The same week, cultural director Guadalupe Echevarría and communication officer Itziar Elizondo fell as chips. And it seemed, or so did some sectors understand, that the whole project would sink into the iceberg without a remedy.

Things have changed a great deal: Juan Karlos Izagirre’s statements on the resignation of the director had a bitter taste, surely because he did not agree with the decision. Three months later, when asked about the subject in the City Hall of the Gipuzkoan capital, he is not recognized the remains of the bad drink, he has on several occasions praised the work of Nogeras. A week before the interview they went through Donostia-San Sebastián Steve Green, member of the Cultural Capital Monitoring and Advisory Committee, and Ulrich Fuchs and Gloria Lorenzo, representative of the European Commission. Judgment: That the project is going in the right direction.

Do you feel relieved by the City Hall after this statement? Izagirre relativizes the importance of the last visit: he states that the reports they have written on the subject were not very different, only that the interpretations that have been made when they have filtered those documents to various media have fueled the “political confrontation”. “What was the novelty of the last visit? They have held a press conference. And there has appeared the perspective they really have of Brussels: many myths have been abandoned.”

In his view, the crisis has already been overcome and the project is underway.” However, it does not deny that there is much to do. The year 2016 is approaching and, asked about the work of the house for everything to be ready, has chosen to put the capital letter in five tasks.

Job Vacancy: Seeking Managers

After a critical week, the Patronato of the San Sebastian Foundation 2016, composed of the Basque Government, the City Hall of Donostia-San Sebastián, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Spanish Ministry of Culture, appointed an interim management team. Thanks to the rapid reaction, they have achieved some stability in order to be able to continue working in the 2016 office. The project, led since then by Xabi Paya (cultural programme), Enara García (participation and organization) and Garbiñe Muñoa (financial sector), has successfully overcome some of the outstanding challenges, such as the 2014 Olatu Talka organization or the official opening of the new Cultural Capital headquarters.

In the meantime, the Director-General ' s search process has never stopped. The mayor says that "the profile of the manager is symbolized". Having a good communicator like Paya facing the outside, we wanted to know if the role of the person who will occupy the place left by Nogeras, giving the fokupas to the programmer, is going to be an internal matter. In Izagirre’s view, it will also have to work with the public to make the Donostia project known to foreign agents and potential sponsors, among other obligations. “But the cultural project is going to be very advanced by the time it comes, and that’s now in the hands of Xabi Paya.”

In July the press announced the beginning of the selection process and a committee will decide who of the people presented has the characteristics best suited to the needs of Cultural Capital. The call places special emphasis on the values it defends in 2016 and on the knowledge of the “social and cultural reality” of the territory where the program is developed. Upon completion of the first comb of those presented, those who remain will receive a call for a personal interview before 23 August. Three people will have the last word: Izagirre himself, the director of the National Sculpture Factory in Ireland, Mary McCarthy, and the professor of management and cultural policy at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Jordi Pascual.

The parties, hungry in the year of the elections

In 2015, the Donostiarras will have to vote again who will run the Municipal Government of Donostia-San Sebastián. The current authorities envisage a difficult course. The Mayor’s campaign has already started – if it has ever stopped since 2011 – and the question of what the opposition’s Mayor of Donostia expects about the 2016 management has escaped laughter. “The question I ask myself is: If instead of ruling Bildu would have ruled here by another person, what stage would we have? The safest thing would be very different.”

The opposition is debated as a pendulum in the debate of the Cultural Capital: the issue often comes out to criticize the authorities, but the participation of each party in the project outside the City Hall (the PNV through the Government, the PP from the Government of Spain and the people of confidence of the PSE, indirectly, through the municipal ad hoc coordination commission of the Board of Directors), also brings in support.

It is a sensitive issue for the parties, as no one wants to oppose something that will be for the whole city. But, on the other hand, it looks like the only large calibre cartridge that remains to be worn down by Bildu: The possibility of Igeldo becoming a municipality has not aroused too many passions by the Donostia unit; the City Hall reacted quickly to the shattering caused by the storm in winter; there are no significant deficiencies in daily functioning; and the urbanism is not stopped, in operation and within the time limits foreseen, the infrastructures that will come with the capitality – the new bus station and the work of Tabakalera – are being carried out.

“Some would prefer mismanagement, rather than making it clear that this government can manage this, even if this goes wrong,” says Izagirre. The European Monitoring Commission, in Donostia-San Sebastián, has also warned that the political climate "does not favour" the project.

Private sponsors need a plan

Private funding for 2016, which was initially supposed to reach 15%, has been convinced that the challenge could be higher, reaching 25%. And the goal is to get that money through the sponsors. “Contacts have been made with large companies,” explains Izagirre and adds that he has personally worked in this kind of endeavour.

The continuity of this work will be for the new director, who, from the moment he takes office, will have to work in black, as he appears in red on the list of improvements of Capitals of Culture.

Although he did not want to give names, Izagirre has pointed out that he has two important Basque companies with international projection in the head and that they will be willing to support Donostia-San Sebastián 2016 in the Guipuzkoan capital. At the moment the problem is the lack of a plan that will help provide the framework for the agreement to be signed with each of these sponsors. Nogeras took the first steps in that direction while he was in office, and the mayor believes that the new director is not going to start from scratch. In any case, he added that the responsibility of the sponsors will be beyond the office, demanding between the lines the involvement of the other institutions: “The Board and its members must do their job.”

Can 2016 be tackled?

As far as institutional funding is concerned, he suggested that it is not clear whether the amount that the Ministry of Culture should provide – EUR 11 million, as was approved in the vote in which the ministry itself abstained – will come, but has made it less important. “What I always say is that the project is going to go ahead even if one institution fails, if we manage to involve the citizens.”

In replying that the response of the Donostiarras is a cold one, he brought to the table some of what he was told at the visit of the Brussels committee: “They say that cultural capitals have different phases of enthusiasm. That there is a significant increase at the time of designation, then a descent from the skies, and as the year approaches, according to how things are done, of course, the illusion grows again.”

It is the day after the concert of Manu Chao on the beach of Zurriola and the question has inevitably come: What role can this movement play in Cultural Capital? Can Donostia 2016 be tackled? Izagirre was at the concert and the Pirates take them as a model, as he believes that popular movements have to have something to say in the capitality. “They are things to work, you can give that confluence.” Pirates, for their part, have not yet positioned themselves on 2016 and, within the movement, there has not yet been a debate.

Programme, programme and programme

Management issues have inevitably occupied most of the evening, but the time is approaching to start talking about content, the Cultural Capital Program. This is the main request from Brussels and it will be resolved after the summer, because that is when artists and initiatives coming to Donostia will be named and named. Europe has opened the deadline until autumn to present the programme. So, even if time is not too long, the team leading Xabi Paya will be within the game deadlines.

In April, Itziar Nogeras presented to the Foundation's Board of Trustees an advance in programming, which days before had been filtered to the journal El Diario Vasco. Some of the things that can be brought forward are striking, for example, that 10,000 musicians will come to San Sebastian within the European Festival of Young Musicians, to offer 1,000 concerts in three days – this summer they have organised something similar to Birmingham. Short films by Basque directors – Julio Medem, Victor Erice and others selected in the Kimuak programme – and an exhibition on the appearance of violence in the history of art were other offers of this advancement of the program.

European minority languages and culture and the value of culture as a tool for coexistence will focus programming, if we look at the issues that Izagirre has highlighted. He has described the project as a “unique opportunity” to carry out a “deep exercise” of the hand of culture in Donostia and Euskal Herria: “We have had a conflict and steps have to be taken to overcome it. We have to have the ability to speak and live normally, not to forget what has happened, but to move forward. If it serves that, it’s not a little.”