José Chulvi: “El Año Balenciaga will deepen the fashion designer’s relationship with Xàbia”
Exhibitions, conferences and talks will help both residents and visitors to understand his relationship with Xàbia.
Thursday 20th January 2022 – CARLOS LÓPEZ with Mike Smith
2022 will be the year of Balenciaga in Xàbia. This was announced by mayor José Chulvi, and councillor Toni Miragall (Tourism) during a press conference at the FITUR International Tourism Fair in Madrid.
The former spoke with XAD during this first day of the fair and explained that residents and visitors “will be able to enjoy a whole selection of the work” of the renowned fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga, but there will also be “exhibitions, conferences and talks” that will allow people to “deepen their understanding of his relationship with Xàbia“.
Chulvi acknowledged that there was a “desire to have a greater presence” at the fair and stressed that the Council has worked hard “across the board” to develop “alternative proposals to the sun and the beach“, such as cultural programming and festivals in the municipality.
He explained that the central axis will be the sample of the fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga, who will fill the municipal exhibition spaces from June 1st to September 30th, but he has also highlighted the different music festivals organized by Xàbia which offer “music of almost all styles“, including Xàbia Folk (which turns 20), Xàbia Jazz and Montgorock as well as the Xàbia Negra and the Riurau Film Festival or the Festival Internacional de Fotografía Ojos Rojos.
“This allows Xàbia to be enjoyed practically 365 days a year,” said the mayor.
Chulvi cited the tourist assets of the municipality “landscape, an exceptional quality of life, gastronomy, and the relationship between the different nationalities that coexist in Xàbia“, as well as the climate, 25 kilometres of coastline and the natural park of Montgó. When all this is “added to the cultural and festive programming“, it places the municipality “in an important leadership“.
Chulvi has called for 2020 to be “the year of economic recovery” and has expressed his gratitude to the entire business sector in Xàbia for continuing to open its businesses every day “in these two years of great difficulty“. All of them, he remarked, “deserve have a year of the return to normality that we all long for“.
Who was Cristobál Balenciaga?
Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre was a Spanish fashion designer and the founder of the Balenciaga fashion house. He was referred to as “the master of us all” by Christian Dior and as “the only couturier in the truest sense of the word” by Coco Chanel. When he died in Xàbia in 1972, aged 77, the fashion industry trade journal Women’s Wear Daily ran the headline “The King is Dead”.
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