This will be the Festival de les Humanitats that will make Dénia the capital of critical thinking in the Mediterranean
This Tuesday, the festival that can forever change the perception of the city from the outside was presented in Dénia, putting it on the map of the most brilliant minds in different fields: the Festival de les Humanitats.
The mayor of Dénia, Vicent Grimalt, together with the director of the festival coordination team, Josep Ramoneda, finally unveiled this week the program that has generated great expectation, accompanied by the president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, the vice president of the Fundació Dénia Creative City of Gastronomy, Cristina Sellés, and the president of Baleària, Adolfo Utor.
An idea with a single possible scenario: Dénia
This Festival de les Humanitats was born after a conversation between Ximo Puig and the members of the magazine Portbou's Suitcase, about the concern of what the world will be like after the pandemic and the crisis of democracy, threatened by totalitarianism. “It seems that the world is advancing at one pace with science and technology, and at another pace in terms of thought,” Puig said. They decided to create, therefore, a great international meeting in which thought and debate on the main concerns of society would be encouraged. Once the idea was concretized, only one important question remained to be clarified: what would the scenario be?
«We quickly think of Dénia» as «the best environment». The seed of the festival had to be planted in a place with a history linked to great thinkers, so Dénia could recover its privileged position as a meeting place for philosophers and scholars. The mayor, they say, received the idea enthusiastically, offering the city to host the significant event. "It will mark a before and after in the image and prestige of our city, because its objective is to make it a benchmark for thought, reflection and the humanities and to recover, in a certain way, the cultural splendor of that Islamic Daniya," he declared. Grimalt.
According to Puig, "attaching Dénia to the space of thought and reflection will offer a new attribute to the city", a new attraction that joins gastronomy, places and other claims that seek to deseasonalize tourism in the town.
A space to answer big questions
The ultimate purpose of the Humanities Festival, according to Josep Ramoneda, is «to talk, to reason together about things that happen to us in a context like the current one, in which the world has accelerated so much that it seems that machines can do more than us, for which the first obligation is to reflect on the human condition and ask ourselves the classic questions of "who are we?", "where do we come from?" and “where are we going?” Specifically, the theme of this first edition will be Mutations: what awaits us in the near future?.
The festival will be held from October 27 to 29, with, for the time being, two main stages that show its commitment to public-private collaboration: the Social Center and the Sala l'Androna de Baleària Port. However, the objective, according to the mayor, "is to focus the next editions and activities linked to the festival in the future University Center of Torrecremada, which is being rehabilitated, and in other emblematic spaces that we will soon have available, such as the convent of Poor Jesus.
Among its participants there are names of great significance, including Ximo Puig, Josep Ramoneda and Adolfo Utor themselves, who will be joined by national and international experts from thought, science, economics and other fields, including the current Minister of Universities from Spain, Joan Subirats.
beyond the festival
On the other hand, throughout the year activities related to the festival will be taking place, which was born with a vocation for continuity over time. These activities will be eminently cultural in nature and entities such as the Institute of Regional Studies of the Marina Alta (IECMA), the Chirbes Foundation and the Dénia Musical Artistic Association collaborate in their development.
The Humanities Festival is designed to be attended by university and secondary school teachers and students, but also by researchers, writers, plastic and audiovisual artists, musicians and the general public.
Great business reception
This project has been very well received by Dénia's business community, represented in the presentation by Cristina Sellés and Adolfo Utor. Sellés, who in addition to being vice president of the Dénia Ciutat Creativa de la Gastronomia Foundation is the president of Aehtma, has indicated that "the organization of the festival is an opportunity to turn Dénia into the epicenter of thought and from the business side of the foundation we have believed that Events like this must be promoted together with public collaboration.”
The president of Baleària, Adolfo Utor, for his part, referred to the Espai Lluís Vives, a part of the program of debates focused on the humanities and business, and expressed his conviction of the "value of the humanities and their incorporation into the company". In line with what was stated by the mayor, Adolfo Utor also believes that turning Dénia into "the capital of thought is to go back to the XNUMXth century of Daniya", a splendid time in which Dénia achieved prestige that with initiatives such as this Festival of the Humanities "is going to try to recover and remember".
The impact on the city
Finally, President Puig has highlighted that the Dénia Humanities Festival "constitutes a space for thought, reflection and dialogue between cultures and different ways of seeing the world", as well as an exercise of great importance to strengthen democracy, since it has been shown that advances in rights and freedoms are "reversible" and it is necessary to fight permanently to consolidate them.
The president has also stressed that the initiative will have a positive economic, social and cultural impact, both in Dénia and the Marina Alta and in the Valencian Community as a whole.