Urban festivities: From celebration practices to festival engineering
Western urban cultures are characterized by their festival engineering, typical of our cultural industry, and by the intervention from Administrations or NGOs in the creation of celebrations wherever and whenever there is none. Such fact has propitiated a comparison between what some call "authentic" celebrations and "designed" festivals, although what would expected is to distinguish those celebrations that actually take place from those that do not. A celebration, after all, is an event around which people congregate and nothing more. In any case, the theoretical distinction between "celebration practices" and "festival engineering" shall be of use. The first refers to those events which make people celebrate spontaneously; and the second defines all the public events that have been deliberately designed, no matter by whom. Tradition: divine and profane Festivities are, among other things, ceremonies. They hold large series of profane and