Spain looked into the abyss while the chirigotas sang derisively to the coronavirus in narrow streets crowded with people. It happened on March 8, the last day of this edition of the Cádiz Carnival and the last day of the old partying normality of the city. Since that day, not a few people from Cádiz have assumed that, for now, this way of celebrating their quintessential party seems almost impossible. So much so that the City Council announced this Wednesday that it will propose the direct suspension of the contest and subsequent street events since "it is not viable in the current health context," as stated by the mayor of Cádiz José María González Kichi. A meeting called for next September 1 will decide if finally authors and associations accept the cancellation proposed by the Consistory.
“The current regulations make the trials that should begin in September or October unfeasible. Furthermore, the authors are concerned and discouraged. I see it difficult for us to change the chip ”, Miguel Villanueva, president of the Cádiz Carnival Authors Association, has acknowledged without hot cloths. Your entity will be one of those that next Tuesday is summoned to the meeting of the Board of Trustees that will have to make a final decision that, given the prevailing pessimism, could be to accept the municipal proposal. On the table of that appointment is the already distant option of holding the contest and the party on its scheduled date (from January when the contest starts at the Falla Theater until February 12 when the party would begin in the street), postpone everything to the months of April and May or, directly, suspend the 2021 edition, the option that is earning more and more integers.
The negativity of those summoned to the appointment was a procession that went inside until this Wednesday the City Council - which holds the presidency of the Board - has verbalized it. “Holding the contest is unfeasible in the current health context, since although we can guarantee that there are no contagions inside the Falla Theater [where the contest is held], the rest of the spaces would be excluded [in reference to the street party in the following days], which is why it represents an unacceptable risk in the current context, ”stated González. If the carnival people decided to support the City Council in its cancellation proposal, the city would face a situation that had not been experienced since the postwar period, when the Franco regime kept it prohibited until the late 1940s and allowed it again with prior censorship. .
Whatever is decided, Antonio Procopio has known for a week that this 2021 he will not get on the boards of the Falla Theater. "As the new rules [regarding the meeting of people who govern in the different autonomous communities] came out, it was increasingly difficult for us to participate," explained the author and president of the Ascoga chorus association. Its genre, that of choirs, is the most numerous of those who participate in the party with more than 40 members. This made it practically impossible to guarantee interpersonal distance, both in rehearsals that were to begin and during the performance in the contest. And the same would happen to them to get on the rafts in which the choristers sing in the street.
"It has been common sense, we could not put our families at risk," added Procopio, spokesman for the 22 choirs that this contest is already sure will not have. The choristers have made their decision after a summer that started with more hope for the carnival men. Since the first meetings of the Board of Trustees in June in which there was talk of the more than probable celebration of the discouragement with which the September 1 appointment is faced, a summer of constant increase in infections has passed that does not escape those involved in the party. “We have even suspended all the Carnival competitions and performances scheduled for these months. We had the prospect of the summer valley without contagion, but that valley has turned out to be one of tears ”, Villanueva explained sadly.
In between, the postponement of the Carnival has even been proposed for the months of April and May, another of the options that will be considered this Tuesday, but which is now moving away with González's announcement about his position in favor of the cancellation . "The trials should begin at the latest in January, the date on which it is very unlikely that the vaccine will be regularized," said the mayor. Next Tuesday the doubt will be cleared as to whether the virus will be able to temporarily destroy the freedom and fun that dictatorships and censors had a hard time banning.