City Hall and Aehtma consider themselves "lucky" that Masterchef chose Dénia to record at a "very cheap" price

An announcement of 20 seconds in a national chain, in prime time -from the 22: 00 hours-, costs around 20.000 euros. Dénia has paid 18.000 euros for the recording of the Masterchef semifinal, in addition to 13.000 euros in the form of transport, hotels and others.

The controversy that has sparked the Popular Party of Denia on Tuesday is, in the words of the mayor of Dénia "sad". The first mayor, who is also a councilor for tourism, explained that this contract is included in the tourism promotion actions carried out by the city throughout the year «como las que se realizan en el metro de Madrid». Grimalt wanted to specify that it is a contract «muy económico», taking into account that Dénia will be the protagonist of a program that has an average of 3 millions of spectators per week, which is a great impact for the city.

Grimalt recalled that the signed contract included a confidentiality clause, so that the City Council could not tell what was happening, although the economic information is published in the Portal of Transparency of the consistory.

The president of Aehtma, Cristina Sellés, has shown her support to the City Council, with whom they collaborated in this action. For Sellés, it is "incredible" that they chose Dénia for this recording, and we should consider ourselves «afortunados» of being the scene of one of the editions of Masterchef.

Cristina Sellés says that «no entiendo las críticas» when «cualquier destino estaría deseando que les llamen para algo así». The president of Aehtma has explained that since the association was managed the accommodation of the 140 people who were those two days in Dénia, and that if there were doubts about the fate of the money «era tan fácil como preguntar».

For his part, the mayor wanted to clarify that the dinner of the judges in the restaurant Peix i Brases It was totally foreign to the City Council, and that is unknown whether they paid or were invited by the restaurant itself.