Who Actually Benefits from the Torrevieja Summer Fiestas?

Torrevieja town hall is boasting that the summer festivals organised in the town will have an economic benefit of 12 million euro, according to a report they commissioned, and have justified spending 481,000 euro on marketing and advertising on behalf of the festival organisers. Almost half a million of public money, when the organisers themselves are set to make millions, if the events are successful.

Across all the fiestas, the town hall has based the earnings on 85,000 visitors. That is 45,000 for Brilla Torrevieja, and 40,000 for RBF.

Coincidentally, the Councillor for Tourism, Commerce and Consumption in Murcia, Jes˙s Pacheco, as reported by The Leader, this week commented how the concerts there, including Iron Maiden and Rod Stewart, attended by 131,567 people, brought with them an economic impact of more than 12 million euro for the area (91 euro per person), the same amount that the 85,000 people in Torrevieja are allegedly spending, so either the people attending Torrevieja are spending considerable more (141 euro per person), or the figures simply don¥t add up.

Regarding the expected capacity for RBF, the town hall says 40,000 people, but the reality is that the tickets are firstly promoted as two-day tickets, so the real figure is in fact a maximum of 20,000, not the 40,000 the town hall boasts.

The Madrid version, which was cancelled, as the organiser couldnít satisfy the minimum safety standards, was billed at a 50,000 capacity, again highlighting the unlikeliness of Torreviejaís initial and erroneous estimate.

For Brilla Torrevieja, the 45,000 is spread over all the days of the festival, the reality being that only 3,000 people the expected on the peak days, including for the Black Eyed Peas.

Although we can see that the original figure of 85,000 people is at best questionable, one other thing the town hall has neglected to consider, or are assuming would not be the case, is that residents of Torrevieja might actually want to attend these festivals, and even some tourists who might actually be in Torrevieja at the time anyway, so they too have to be taken off the total figure.

As a final point of reference, the town hall said last year that more than 50,000 people enjoyed Brilla Torrevieja, and then revised their initial estimates down to say that it had a direct and indirect economic impact of almost 3 million euro (60 euro per person, consid- erably lower than the 141 euro per person they are quoting this time), according to the press release issued after the FITUR tourism event, somewhat lower than the 8 million initially reported by the town hall in their press release of August 2022.