SPAIN – The Generalitat Valenciana and the Benidorm City Council are very clear about the potential of the Benidorm Fest after the success of Chanel Terrero in the Eurovision Song Contest and are already working to reinforce the next edition of 2023 with more activities and space.

And among these novelties is one that demonstrates the strong commitment of the Administrations and that will leave the festival forever stamped on the streets of Benidorm: the creation of a walk of fame with the winners of the Benidorm Fest on the city’s seafront Alicante.

As BLUPER has learned, this proposal was born from the Department of Communication and Participation of RTVE after the visit last February to the San Remo Festival, where there is a walk with the names of the winners. After raising the idea this week at the first meeting of the Benidorm Fest 2023, the mayor of the city, Antonio Pérez Pérez, gave his approval.

In this way, in the coming weeks, the authorities will inaugurate this new walk taking advantage of the celebration of the first press conference of the event, where details about it will be advanced.

At the moment, as the director of Communication and Participation of RTVE, María Eizaguirre, commented in La Hora de La 1, the Eurovision committee of the Corporation is finalizing the bases of the festival. The objective of public broadcasting is to open a participatory dialogue to improve the entire process.

As we already told, the general director of Tourism, Herick Campos, announced that the national and international promotion of the meeting will be increased. This is “a priority” as it has advanced that the objective of reaching the maximum number of impacts and diffusion of the Valencian Community is marked.

Among the planned actions is also the expansion of the capacity of the Palacio de l’Illa de Benidorm and the creation of the Benidorm Fest Village so that Beni fans can follow the festival all week with music, visits by participants, cultural events, exhibitions, talks, conferences about the festival and its history.

Only with the figures obtained last January, Campos already values ​​the importance of this reinforcement. The Generalitat’s calculations estimate that the economic impact on the Twitter network alone accounted for 13.3 million euros that night, and the occupancy in the different tourist accommodations increased by 10%.

Around with FORTAVISION

This week we have also learned that RTVE has proposed to the channels that are part of the Federation of Autonomous Radio and Television Organizations (FORTA) to carry out a kind of regional Eurovision that precedes the Benidorm Fest, with the possibility that they can reserve “a or two places” for the semifinals of the Spanish preselection to the winners of this new contest.

This idea, which is still in a very preliminary phase, pursues the objective that the different autonomous communities can be represented in the Benidorm Fest candidacies while maintaining the mechanics of direct invitations and inscriptions by the artists in the contest. In this way, according to the aforementioned media, RTVE would guarantee that the Alicante city festival does not become a competition between the different Spanish regions.

The winner or winners of this new ‘Fortavisión’, therefore, would have to compete with the rest of the artists selected in the semifinals of the Benidorm Fest to achieve one of the passes to the final and fight to become the next representative of Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest.

RTVE’s proposal was born after the interest shown by television channels such as the Valencian À Punt for having its own pre-selection for the Benidorm Fest. It should be noted that the Generalitat Valenciana has been one of the main promoters of the return of this historic Spanish event, contributing a third of its budget in an agreement that has been renewed for three more years.

an oikotimes original text

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