THE COLD spell over the last week affected a few of the activities planned around Torrevieja and the surrounding region. The patronal fiesta concert program started on December 1 with the International Gala at the Grand Marquee in the City’s Port Area. The first concert night featured an excellent evening of music presented by Maria O’Hara, the Everly Brothers and Route 69. The first very cold night of year kept many away from the free concert as only about 300 turned up. It was the first time that Councillor for Culture and Fiestas Eduaro Dolon, had seen these acts perform and was impressed enough to say that they should be given the opportunity to perform in one of Torrevieja’s Theatres to a larger (and warmer) audience.
Two nights later, Spanish singer, TV presenter and actor Bertin Osborne performed to a full and appreciative full house of a thousand plus, who sang along, clapped and cheered for a full two hours he was on stage performing many well known favourites, including a few in English, such as “My Way", “Love Mediterranean”, "Forgive me”, "What happens to us this morning" and a selection of Mexican hits, Rancheros style.
While 1,000 or more braved the cold in Torrevieja for Bertin Osborne, across town at the Orihuela Costa Resort, there were few happy faces as the main event, Richard Street and the Temptations failed to show. The website of Heatwave Promotions explained the situation:
“Due to circumstances completely beyond our control, The Temptations were unable to appear at The Orihuela Costa Resort Hotel on Friday 3rd December 2010. Here are full details of the course of events. Following their show in Helsinki on Thursday evening, The Temptations were booked on an early morning flight to Murcia. This flight was cancelled due to adverse weather conditions on the route they were due to take. We were able to find another route for the group to fly, which would have seen them arrive in time for the concert. This route came via Rome, Madrid and then on to Murcia. However, the flight from Helsinki was further delayed due to ice on the plane and resulted in the group arriving late in Rome and missing their flight to Madrid.
We were able to find a flight direct to Valencia which we booked them on. This flight would have meant that the group would have arrived late, hence the delay in the start of the concert. At this point we were confident of the arrival of The Temptations and took the decision to go ahead one hour late rather than cancel altogether. We sent a fast car to Valencia in order to transport the group to the venue. When the driver was half way there we received the news that Spanish Air Traffic Controllers had walked out and no flights whatsoever were coming in to Spain.
We received the news that The Temptations would be happy to appear on Sunday 5th December 2011, weather, strike action and so on depending. Saturday was impossible as they had an appearance in the UK that night. We were unable to book a Sunday flight until 6pm on Saturday evening as we were waiting for the Spanish flight restrictions to be lifted. We managed to arrange a flight for Sunday morning which would have seen the group arrive at around midday giving them plenty of time to prepare for a performance on Sunday evening. Unfortunately, this flight too was cancelled.
It is our intention to present The Temptations again in February and to invite all ticket holders from the original concert back free of charge. We will keep everyone informed of progress via our website and in the local media.”
Wildcat Strikes aside, it seems that the Temptations’ management are mostly to blame for this situation because of the tight schedule they had arranged for the group, with no ‘Plan B’ in case of inclement weather or flight cancellations. Hopefully fans and ticketholders will have another chance of seeing them perform in February but that does not make up for the disappointment of some of the guests who had arranged their Christmas Office parties around the event. For more information please visit www.heatwavepromotions.com.
On Saturday night, there were more disappointed audience members at the Theatre in Rojales, who had gone to watch the Rojales Pantomime Group perform. This was nothing to do with the cast or any technical difficulties but because of ‘improvements’ being made to the Theatre, which have not been completed in time. Christine Smith from the group said “On behalf of the Rojales Pantomime group I would like to apologise to all the people that supported us in the freezing conditions of the theatre. We were promised that the heating system would be sorted out but as you will know that was not the case. The back stage was just as cold as the front of house. It is such a pity when we have worked so hard to put on this show for charity and the Town Hall do not do their part by getting some heating on. To all those who managed to freeze their way through to end, Thank you and I hope you enjoyed the show but sorry to all the ones who could not stay to face more cold in the second half.”
Regardless of the single digit temperatures inside the theatre, the cast did their very best to raise spirits and temperatures and those who stayed played along and enjoyed the show. As the saying goes, ‘The best laid plans’ did not happen to come off for many last weekend, though no fault of the organisors who tried their best to entertain local audiences.
