At midnight from 19 to 20 January, women and men dressed in nineteenth century military men have met in the plaza of the Constitution of San Sebastian, ready to beat drums no more than 00:00 of the clock, and with armed drums, other people dressed in cooks, a deafening army, and a public posture that seems more civilized than that of the Sanfermines, with very special emotion, with many public, The Basque Derbi will last 24 hours, special for the Donostiarras. And for Europeans? You're right Mariano: that guiri who doesn't know how to act in the middle of the salsa doesn't want to give the impression that it's out of place: he's taken the phone out of his pocket. To send a photo, two, pussy, a sample of the noise from here to his friends, he has started to record a video among the crowd, saying some “crazys” and some “awesomes”. I was there when San Sebastian became the European Capital of Culture, I can say that I saw live how he was beaten with drums, in addition to compositions by Sarriegi, a piece by Miguel Ríos, or was it Beethoven? Is Karajan? – While the European Union flag was dancing at the tip of the mast.

The authorities have agreed with the protagonists of the festival to play the European anthem at the last moment, but working against the clock is not new if we speak of Donostia 2016. One person working in the office explained that things have changed a long time after the new institutional composition that left the elections on 24 May last. “The staff has doubled since June, we’re working at a very fast pace and we’ll get right to the opening. Things that were previously deliberately slowed down have begun to work now.” The explanation for this slowdown must be sought in the clash of models that in the last legislature almost all areas of Gipuzkoan policy emerged: The board of the foundation of the Cultural Capital is composed of four institutions, two in the hands of Bildu (Provincial Council and City Council), and the other two (Basque Government and Ministry of Culture), divided between the PNV and pp, namely in which drawer of the table the culture of coexistence was lost.

The votes “have solved everything”

Following the elections in Donostia-San Sebastián and Gipuzkoa in which the PNV has handed over power to EH Bildu, the ciaboga started after the transfer of the PSE to Ernesto Gasco, one of the representatives of the City Hall at the patronato in 2016, both for the recruitment of the necessary staff and for the financing. After several lengths in which a work by Axularri was inspired, a number of large companies have been willing to pay for the project following the adoption of the stick by the new authorities. December: In an event presenting the official programming in Madrid, the 2016 director, Pablo Berástegui, announced that Telefónica will put money. January: With the help of 300,000 euros to the Biziz and Itsasfest projects and a light facility for the city hall of 262,000 euros, Iberdrola has become the second main sponsor of the project.

But one piece of news appeared in the newspapers on October 29 last year and the string it brought below explain why the project has now won economic sponsors and why not before. Berastegui has stood before the microphones with the mayor of San Sebastian, Eneko Goia, and the president of Kutxa, Xabier Iturbe, on the proposal of the PNV in 2014 for this position: the banking foundation will contribute 500,000 euros to the Cultural Capital as the general sponsor of the initiative. Based on the contributions you will make apart from that, the account goes up to one and a half million euros, according to Kutxa.

Iturbe also said something else. He explained that Juan Karlos Izagirre, when he was mayor, never called him or made him any offer to be a sponsor of 2016. In November comes Izagirre’s answer via Facebook: Reviewing the contents of the meetings held with Kutxa for four years, he has denounced that the banking foundation asked the City Hall to change the qualification of some official protection homes for sale as free; he has reminded him of the way in which Kutxa postponed its payments in the Tabakalera project, even though Kutxabank announced that it had benefits; and he has also referred to the appeals to the Obviously, these are not events directly related to Cultural Capital, but they help to understand what has conditioned the relationship between the new sponsor and the project.

Doubts about the ruins of a gaztetxe

The curious thing is that Cultural Capital, which has aroused so many political controversies, is also a space of consensus for the majority parties. That is, from pp to EH Bildu, no party questions Donostia 2016, because everyone has participated in the project. That doesn't mean it's a project that hasn't been criticized, but in the city there are very few people who can stand up to 100 percent of the vote. On the one hand, they could have been critical because the cultural agents participate in some way in projects of Cultural Capital; and on the other, because the “2016 Desokupatu” movement that has shown a clearer position of opposition has not yet achieved the full involvement of the other social movements, which may have more than one explanation, but surely the fact that Bildu has had for four years the direction of the project has fallen into principle.

Since the decommissioning of gaztetxe Kortxoenea in late 2015, several agents have begun to question the neutral image projected by Donostia 2016. In the banner of the demonstration on November 7 denouncing the demolition of the occupied cultural space was read “Dono$tia 2016: capitalar€n kultura”. On January 23, the San Sebastian Pirates will carry out a “toast for popular culture”. It can be the meeting point of the critics with the project.

“The staff of the office is committed to their work, not to everything the City Hall does,” says a person who works at the Easo headquarters asked about this matter. Another group of workers this year also maintains a similar attitude and after the eviction decided to publicly disclose their presence on the Boulevard’s kiosk with posters saying “Kortxoenea bizirik”. The cultural director of the project, Xabi Paya, also set the distance with the operation against gaztetxe: “The Foundation made public that the demolition is out of its business and that we hope that, according to the values of the Foundation and the project, the conversations between the City Hall and the members of the Gaztetxe will progress. However, as the creator of Xabi Paya, I cannot fail to regret the demolition of all kinds of cultural centers. I see it like this. To the same extent, I am convinced that certain cultural movements can coexist in Donostia.”

Donostia-San Sebastián

“When they mention the word culture you have to swallow everything, it has an almost religious aura, untouchable. Only fascists oppose culture” says historian Alessi Dell’Umbria in the documentary La fête est finie, in order to explain how difficult it is to be critical of such projects. This work, led by Nicolas Burlaud, analyzes the consequences of being the European Capital of Culture to Marseille – which will soon be seen in Basque subtitles – by comparing the film with the horse of Troya Capital Cultural: a celebration that citizens consider a gift, no matter what damage it may cause them.

The capital arrived there with great urban transformations and, as explained in the documentary, the new urban projects displaced several neighbors from their homes. Others, especially non-white youth, were limited to the possibilities of relaxing in the center, due to increased police control. Special mention deserves to be made of the construction in the port, where the boats from Tunisia and Algeria once arrived, and where the tourists’ cruises were imposed after 2013. The documentary describes the process as a war map that must give the image of a peaceful space to climb the tourist rankings. The street becomes a space of representation, not a place where the people reinvent themselves. People who don't adapt to this transformation don't exist. Literally: We see the mayor of Marseille at the opening of a mall. “I don’t see those who opposed this project,” he says aloud from the microphone.

Marseille and San Sebastian are, of course, different cities. Also the projects of Capitals of Culture. But they coincide in one thing: in the importance they attach to the subject called tourist, which you already know, which we have seen before in the Plaza de la Constitución. Estimated mammal: As long as the sunglasses in San Sebastian are not removed, objects are seen with the camera ready to shoot at any time and marked on the map, as it is away from home, they are used as bait to hunt an animal that needs to consume everything. The Basque Government’s Minister for Economic Development and Competitiveness, Arantxa Tapia, has offered on Twitter the good results of the information disseminated last December: “The most important travel guide of the USA (sic) has chosen San Sebastian as a recommended destination for 2016.”

City for whom?

The question is whether they fit once. Or, more specifically, how the city is changing so they can fit. Xabier Arberas, member of the neighborhood association Part Zaharrean Bizi of Donostia-San Sebastián, denounced in an article published in Berria (Old Part, a neighborhood never left to rest) the situation in which they find themselves: “In the neighborhood there are 210 hospitality establishments. That is, 3.45 bars per 100 inhabitants, or almost one bar per 25 inhabitants”. Terraz talks about the occupation of public space and its private use, noise pollution or mobility difficulties, and they are problems to consider in a neighborhood with a high rate of aging population.

On the other hand, measures are being taken at Donostia-San Sebastian to increase the influx of public to the Old Party: a “free-time” shopping area has been declared, that is, they will be able to open every day of the week – this possibility was limited to the previous legislature to San Juan Street until the pier, and only in the months of July and August. Prices have also given much to talk about last summer: on social networks the 16 euros bill that a bar in the Plaza de la Constitución paid for four beers has been extended and that can explain why some Donostiarras use the expression “hostelero”. Asked about the topic, the chairman of the Gipuzkoa Hotel Association, Mikel Ubarrechena, stated in the Chain Ser: “We don’t want to be a cheap tourist destination, we would become Magaluf.” Translation: In the most emblematic square of the Old Party, prices are set according to the foreign population.

This is a problem that goes beyond 2016, but you can ask what role these kinds of events play in the planning of a city. Turning the port of Donostia into a marina is not necessarily something that is justified by the Capital Cultural, nor the hotel they want to build in Sagües, nor the metro they intend to build by crossing the Center underground. But capitality can soften the slope of this type of operations, uniting culture and urbanism under the discourse of the progress of San Sebastián. Debates of the European Parliament The Cultural Capital has the vocation of representing the whole of San Sebastian and questioning it becomes something similar to acting against the whole city.

Representation begins. Perhaps by the end of the work we will get a better understanding of what this 2016 account is.