The exhibition of the selected works will take place from March 2nd to 16th at the Casa del Fester, and the awards ceremony will be held in the auditorium of the Cultural Center.

The La Barqueta Cultural and Recreational Association and the Benidorm City Council’s Department of Culture presented this morning the 23rd edition of the School Drawing Competition, the rules of which have already been sent to all schools in the city. This year, according to organizers, the competition will award more prizes to participants.

The official theme will remain the same: the Discovery of the Virgin Mary, whose reenactment is a Festival of Regional Tourist Interest. However, as the Councilor for Culture, Jaime Jesús Pérez, explained, “as we commemorate the centenary of the coronation of our patron saint, schoolchildren can adapt their drawings to this anniversary if they wish.” The councilor emphasized that each year the competition receives well over a thousand drawings, making it “one of the initiatives that best represents our identity because it depicts the arrival of our patron saint to our shores.”

Jaime Jesús Pérez expressed his desire to “reach as many schools as possible” and announced that after the competition, the schools will select ten works per grade level for an exhibition that will be open to the public from March 2nd to 16th at the Casa del Fester. This year, there will also be a change to the awards ceremony. “Due to the large number of attendees, we will be moving the event to the auditorium of the Cultural Center,” Pérez explained.

The Department of Culture, whose head thanked all the collaborating organizations for their participation, will award a prize of 300 euros “to the three schools that have shown the most interest in participating.”

Francisco Llorens and Jaume Lloret, president and director of La Barqueta, also expressed their gratitude for the presence of additional collaborating organizations, “which will allow us to award around ninety prizes to the participants.” Lloret also noted that the poster for the next competition will be chosen from all the drawings submitted. He specified that over the past 22 editions, the number of drawings submitted to this initiative has exceeded 42,000. “We are the school competition with the highest participation in the Valencian Community,” he added.