The words KKR or Superstruct Entertainment have not pronounced, but the influence and consequences of the US investment group with Palestine interests purchased the Sónar owner in 2024 has dominated a debate of more than two hours in the morning start of Friday, the second day of the festival. Half a hundred people have attended the forum The role of culture in the global cultural contexta debate in the Sonaràgora with seven speakers and with the open participation of the public to open the melon that accompanies all the conversations about this year’s edition: what happens when an investment fund purchases cultural festivals? Can culture stop a genocide? How should culture inhabit horror? Can macrofestivals continue to operate in this new scenario of impact investments? Would a real cultural system with institutionalized cultural rights avoid these financing and scenarios?
Driven by the sociologist Liliana Arroyo and Mexican journalist Victor Beltri, on stage, different voices to contribute all possible prisms. The journalist, essayist and manager Rafel Vilasanjuan, who was also general secretary of doctors without borders, has contributed his experience in the conflict areas. “Culture can save some lives, but cannot save a war. Humanitarians also even stop them, but culture has a mission that goes from the local to the global,” he said. The author of The borders of Ulysses. The refugee trip to Europe (Debate, 2021) He stressed that there are currently 50 armed conflicts in the world, he recalled that “the brutality in the Gaza Strip we have built all of us” and has defended that “a festival, like no judgment of any international criminal court, has stopped a genocide, but culture can show what is happening.”
The doctor in Law and President of the Association of Music Festivals (AFM), Patricia Gabeirras, has been in charge of contextualizing the problematic economic survival of Spanish macrofestivals today. In a country that leads the festive industry on a global scale, but without rights or cultural system defined at the institutional level, the ghost of financing appears in the face of these events with the arrival of the impact investment carried out by investment funds on cultural agents. “Pandemia led us to the universal statements of culture as a world public good, of first necessity. But we have nothing more than those statements. There has been no construction of culture as a system, there are no laws that establish the role of the private and public in culture. And hence the problem of financing comes,” he said.
Alicia Rubí, an expert in the strategic and financial integration of sustainability and member of the IFRS Advisory Council, recalled that impact investment is not philanthropy, but it does seek to generate a positive social or environmental impact, in addition to financial profitability. “Is the impact the last border or can we consider something more transformative with the knowledge of culture?”
Faced with this dependence on investment groups, Gabeirras recalled that in Spain there are 129,000 small companies linked to culture. “They are SMEs that have values of the new economy, mostly transformative and change in a humanized society.” On the problem of Sónar, the lawyer recalled that 98% of financing in Spain for cultural industries goes to project. “There is no financing for industries that have been running in a solvent manner like Sónar for 32 years, the financial fabric does not trust them. The public sector has done nothing so that a company can look five years old. While the start ups Yes they are financed and supported, nobody finances it. From the public and private, you should think what are the principles to be carried out. Something that is not a little patronage, a little subsidy, an improvised vision. Legal frameworks create democratic spaces, ”he emphasized.
“Self -criticism.” That is what the musician, producer and cultural researcher Daniel Granados has requested in the face of that pro -cultural scenario, and has regretted that there is no “a social critical mass that defends cultural rights such as the rights to health or education”. Granados recalled that “the arts cannot be relegated to their symbolic value and that the material is important. Housing is also culture,” he emphasized, remembering that in Barcelona 30% of students is suffering forced displacements due to evictions.
While the Cultural Manager Tere Badia recalled that “culture is a space for resistance”, about participating or not in the festivals indicated, the Berta Segura trends analyst has defended the yes. “Should we take advantage of those free, safe, criticism and struggle spaces where there are brands and investment funds behind? You have to be yes or yes, beyond who is above. But there must be a long -term change. We cannot be before the death of culture,” he defended. A position that has supported the manager of cultural companies Jordi Selles I Ferrés. “How do we organize to ensure that Sónar continues to spend 32 years?
“How much is a fertilizer?”
And in the word shift with the public, after the participation of several artists who have denounced the institutional obstacles to continue forming and receiving aid, the story of a couple that has visible many of the dilemmas that the city’s neighbors face in front of the festival. “How much is a Sónar fertilizer? How will a person who dedicates 70% of his salary to pay the rent? Why is this not full of teenagers from the city’s schools? expats Installed in Barcelona, but I have the feeling that we are performing cultural oralism and we could think actions that do not cost so much money, ”said one of them. The couple assured that he will not return to the festival due to the difficulties they suffered on Thursday in the festival’s accesses, since one of them has reduced mobility after an accident.
His contribution, who listened to the three directors of the festival, sitting among the public, demonstrated the possibility of debate, but left in the air many of the doubts that assail an event that is living its most complicated edition. On Wednesday the traditional paella with friends was not held and everything indicates that there will be no press conference this Saturday. After the debate, the hype, outside, gave its first notices. Follow the party.