Weekend Beach music festival brings big economic boost for Costa del Sol town

Jennie Rhodes

Torre del Mar

Monday, 10 July 2023, 17:12

This year’s Weekend Beach Festival closed its doors in the early hours of Sunday 9 July following four nights of live music on three stages on Torre del Mar’s Poniente Beach. A total of 100,000 festival-goers, affectionately known as ‘Weekers’ attended the four-day festival.

Now in its eighth year (the first one took place in 2014 and in 2020 and 2021 there was no festival due to the pandemic), the festival offered something for all musical tastes, with highlights being British Indie band Editors, Colombian singer Maluma who co-sang the 2022 FIFA Fan Festival song Tukoh Taka; and Spanish rapper Morad, whose free concert at Torre del Mar’s 'feria' in 2022 made the headlines as the lack of control ended in crushes, fights and injuries. There were no reports of incidents at the Weekend Beach festival, which as ever enjoyed military-style organisation and planning from the company that runs the event.

There was rock from Swedish band Mando Diao, reggae from Jamaican-American singer Tarrus Riley and as ever, the Sunrise stage provided dance music from international DJs including Brit Carl Craig well into the early hours of each morning.

While the festival has failed to attract the big international names that it was doing prior to the pandemic like Black Eyed Peas, David Guetta and The Prodigy, it has managed to add well-known Spanish and Latin American stars to its line-up and remains a popular event among local Spanish and foreign residents and visitors from all over Spain who come to enjoy a summer music festival with a relaxed atmosphere, right on the beach.

This year the festival had a ‘punto violeta’ (purple point) providing information and advice on the control of gender-based violence, which was organised by Vélez-Málaga town hall's social services department and the town's women's information centre.

Angela and Jairo who were running the information point told SUR in English that they were there “to share information about what is acceptable and not” and while that in some parts of Spain, including Galicia such points are “required by law” at large-scale events. "We hope all we have to do is raise awareness, but people know we are here to help if anyone needs us. It's important that they know to come here," they added.

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Organisers of the festival pointed out that 60 per cent of the suppliers of catering, technicians, transport companies and other suppliers were local and that the event brought in around six million euros to the town on the eastern strip of the Costa del Sol.