BARCELONA, Spain (CelebrityAccess) — With just a month left before the gates were due to open, Organizers for Doctor Music Festival announced that the 2019 edition of the event has been canceled.
A statement from festival founder Neo Sala explained that the forced relocation of the festival earlier this year had proven to be too large of an obstacle to overcome.
With deep regrets the promoters of Doctor Music Festival (DMF) have decided to cancel this year’s edition. After a 19-year hiatus, DMF’s comeback was due to take place at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Montelmó from July 12-14.
Festival founder Neo Sala explains the reason behind this decision: Cancelling the comeback edition of Doctor Music Festival is among the toughest decisions of my promoter career. At the same time, it is inevitable. The recent relocation of the festival has not been well-received by the public. Since the ACA (Catalan Agency d’Aigues) surprisingly ordered us to the DMF, we’ve seen a huge number of fans cancelling their tickets. While sales for our new location in Montelmó have risen in recent weeks, we ultimately won’t be able to offer the experience were striving for.”
DMF will fully refund all tickets bought for the event. The refund process will start next Friday, June 21st and will be an automatic process for people who bought their tickets through doctormusicfestival.com, who will receive the total amount paid without having to process any application. For any questions about the return process, please write to help@doctormusicfestival.com
Neo Sala adds: “I’d like to thank everyone who, over the past three years, gave a helping hand in revitalizing one of Southern Europe’s most successful festival brands – artists, representatives, sponsors, partners, and, above all, the fans. A special thanks goes to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, who have done everything possible to adapt their spaces to a festival that had originally been designed to occupy a whole valley of the Pyrenees. Today, the Doctor Music Festival is canceled. But the spirit of the cow is still alive.”
In April, the festival was forced to relocate from its original planned location in the Escalarre Vall d’Àneu after the Catalan Agency d’Aigues (The Catalan Water Agency) warned that the location chosen for the festival was at risk of flooding.
As a result of the move, festival organizers were forced to reconfigure the event, reducing the festival from four days to three, and revising the lineup.
At the time, the festival team expressed public disagreement with the ACA’s assessment, noting that the festival grounds had never flooded in the summer, at least according to available information.
“In our opinion, there has been a very over-exaggerated and destructive interpretation of the regulations surroundings theoretical flood risks in the valley, which has never before flooded in summer (at least as far as current data shows). The stringency levels which have been applied in this case far surpass the norm and we have therefore been forced to abandon the originally planned location in order to ensure that all artistic commitments made are complied with, and make sure that the festival goes ahead as per originally designed for this new edition.”
2019 was to mark a return of the festival brand which has been on hiatus for the last two decades. The relaunch was facilitated by the German promoter and ticketing company CTS Eventim, which acquired a majority stake the festival brand in 2018.
