Magí Seritjol closed his stage at the helm of Tarraco Viva this Sunday after the twenty-eighth edition of the festival and handed over the direction to Julio Villar, a collaborator of the event since 2014. The handover came at a closing ceremony with an attendance forecast slightly higher than last year's, when the festival brought together nearly 80,000 people.
The farewell of the outgoing director coincided with a moment of growth for the festival. Seritjol summarized this mix of balance and ambition with a phrase that set the bar for the new stage by assuring that they now have "a fantastic ship," although he had "dreamed of a fleet."
Julio Villar took over after a decade organizing activities on Egypt
Villar has known Tarraco Viva since his time as a History student at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. His first collaboration came in 2014, in the edition dedicated to Augustus, and in the last ten years he has organized proposals focused on the Egyptian world.
During the closing ceremony, the new director addressed Seritjol to acknowledge his influence on his career within the festival.
"I have learned almost everything from you" - Julio Villar, new director of Tarraco Viva
Then the outgoing director took the floor to encourage his successor to expand the scope of the event. Seritjol stated that the festival's path is "enormous" and expressed his conviction that Villar will take it "further."
El Camp de Mart was full all weekend and the Sala del Sarcòfag premiered a new format
The edition that has just ended incorporated as a novelty in-depth conversations in the Sala del Sarcòfag, a proposal that registered high attendance. The festival also maintained a strong public response in other spaces in Tarragona.
In El Camp de Mart, in fact, the capacity was full throughout the weekend, a behavior that accompanies the forecast of slightly exceeding the participation of the previous year. In this assessment, the Councilor for Heritage, Nacho García Latorre, valued that the festival continues to grow without losing historical rigor or its educational purpose.
The next edition of Tarraco Viva will focus on women and society in the ancient Mediterranean. The twenty-ninth event will be held between May 3 and 16 to avoid coinciding with the municipal election campaign.