Mallorca Live will receive more than €330,000 in public funds, among other revenues, for organizing Patrona, the new Cort festival.

PalmIn addition to the 332,750 euros in public funds that the company Mallorca Live Fest will receive for the design and production of Patrona, an event organized by Palma City Council that will take place this Saturday, September 6, and which will cause the closure of the Paseo Marítimo, the same company will have the right to "install a merchandising point during the concert", to "contract" marketing, and "the sale of drinks and food", that is, to four additional sources of income, as stated in the tender documents, where it is not stated that any of them will entail a decrease in the contribution planned by Cort. Nor is it expected that there will be any type of return to the City Council in any of these cases, as is the case in similar events organized by other municipalities such as Felanitx.

The different music promoters consulted by ARA Baleares question conditions that they consider "unusual and illogical in a public event and, on the other hand, very beneficial for a private company that already has sufficient support institutional". "They don't always allow you to set up a merchandising point, much less have sponsors for a public event, and the issue of managing the bars is often done separately, as in the case of San Sebastián, which is normally distributed in different lots and this, which can generate a lot of income, usually ends up with entities and neighborhood associations," explains an active manager.

The Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Palma, an entity that brings together around fifty associations and that has nothing to do with the Federation of Neighbors of the City of Palma, co-organizer of the event, is surprised at the budget allocated to this new municipal festival, especially when this year the allocations for neighbors and the allocations they receive have been reduced The subsidies allocated for this year are still pending collection. "On average, associations now have around 4,000 euros for all the year's festivities, which include summer festivities, the Three Kings' Day, and everything else, when in some years some had more than double that amount," says Maribel Alcázar, head of the federation, in conversation with ARA Baleares. "The budget for Sant Joan, which is the largest we organize, doesn't exceed 100,000 euros, and a significant portion is for the fire run, meaning the 300,000 euros allocated to this Saturday festivities, when the associations' share of the festivities has been so cut this year,"

Furthermore, some of these music industry professionals consulted question the use made of this event by its organizers, calling it "malpractice." "If you organize a municipal festival, you're in charge of all the management and ensuring everything is ready: designing the poster, hiring the artists, sometimes even the technical side... but usually you don't appear anywhere; you're an intermediary, and you don't use it to promote the rest of your activities. The City Council doesn't see it, does it have anything to do with them?" says a manager who has worked with Palma City Council on several occasions. In this sense, not only do the official posters for Saturday's event begin with a revealing "Mallorca Live Presenta," but the festival's social media channels have been filled in recent days with posts announcing the raffle for season tickets to the 2026 edition of the festival if users share the Patrona poster and start.

It should be noted that the call for the organization of this event opened last May and four companies applied: in addition to Mallorca Live Music SL, Deejaysgrup SL, Deep Delay Producciones SL and Grup Trui Mallorca also applied, the latter being excluded for not putting forward a musical proposal but rather... Among the evaluation criteria was the number of monthly listeners on Spotify: of the 100 possible points for each of the candidates, 20 were assigned to whoever had the most listeners on the platform, and the rest obtained a proportional score. "There is little room for a local artist to obtain 20 points, if this is the criterion, which also does not fully understand what it is looking for: the listeners of this platform are from all over the world, what good is it to us to have an artist who is widely listened to on a global scale come? What does this certify? Are we looking for artistic quality or simply numerical quality?"

In any case, the 332,750 euros awarded to the company organizing Mallorca Live, festival that in its last five editions has received more than three million euros in public funds, is a budget slightly lower than the 341,621 that were allocated for the agreement with that Antònia Font closed the San Sebastián festivities in 2023. In fact, when presenting the Hombres G concert held in the same context a year later, in January 2024, Councilor Lourdes Roca, also responsible for the Patrona events, wanted to refer to the reduction in the budget that had been obtained for that concert, down to the 290,000 euros that were allocated for the Hombres G concert, although with that it exceeds 330,000.

MÁS por Palma describes the party as "a gift to a private company"

This Thursday, MÁS por Palma issued a statement denouncing that "the Patron Saint festivities have become a private showcase for the contracted company, Mallorca Live" and demanding that the City Council "stop acting as an extra for a private business and defend the public and civic nature of the patron saint festivities." Furthermore, they point out that the advance sale of alcoholic beverages through the company's social media channels "violates the Municipal Addiction Prevention Plan by encouraging and promoting alcohol consumption." "It's monumentally hypocritical: the City Council has a plan to prevent addictions that requires no event organized or supported by the City Council to promote alcoholic beverages, yet at the same time it endorses posters advertising beer combos or free drinks," notes MÉS por Palma councilor Miquel À.