A room with tables, easels, and neon paint that glows with the lights off. The activity has specialist teachers in fine arts and at the end of the session, you take your masterpiece home. Of course, there is no shortage of free wine while the creativity lasts. It is a 'paint party', a new activity in the catalog of companies that organize bachelor parties.
With the idea, they want to get away from the bad image of a type of tourism that is seen more and more in cities like Valencia or Alicante. "We are the first involved in providing a good service, generating wealth for our city and providing a quality service, to distinguish ourselves from the rest and generate a quality standard to which the others join", they explain from the Valencian group As de Picas , specialized in this type of proposals.
Its manager defends that there is a lot of intrusion in the sector and that they have always fought for "there to be a better product, one that is better seen". Aware of the discomfort generated in certain neighborhoods of the city -in Valencia and many others- by the presence of groups with brass bands, making a ruckus and drinking bottles, they want to stand out and defend that there is professionalism and new ideas in the sector. That there can be 'quiet' goodbyes. The paint party is an idea, as is the workshop to learn how to cook paellas that they are preparing.
But the bad image is there. And the hotels are the first to admit that they have little interest in this clientele. From Hosbec, the hotel business association of the Valencian Community, they assure that the majority of establishments do not accept goodbyes and even reject clients if they discover individual reservations of "many people" for the same period. "It is increasingly widespread that it does not generate any attraction," says its general secretary Mayte García Córcoles. She explains that many groups do not conform to the internal rules of the accommodation in question, and that this scares the hotel.
That is why looking for alternatives to the proposals of recent years, and moving away from the Magaluz model seems almost an obligation, given the bad image. Activities such as the beer-bike, or the patented Bicibirra -devised by a Swedish firm, in Valencia- have fallen out of the catalogue. Obtaining a license for this type of activity "is complicated", they explain from the Viajes en Pandilla group, based in Galicia, but with a presence in other cities, such as Valencia, where they subcontract services with companies in the industry.
They point out that many cities did not give permission for a bicycle with many drunk people to circulate... "Now you can do it, but without alcohol, and of course, that does not matter so much. It is normal that there are activities that come out of the offer, we had problems even with a group of Englishmen in which a young man died on a catamaran trip", says its manager.
Because municipal regulation also intervenes in this transformation of the offer. Malaga was in the news a few months ago because the city council had opened a new procedure in order to modify the Citizen Coexistence Ordinance and now it does not allow inflatable dolls on the street or people dressed in clothes or accessories in the form of genitals walking on public roads .
In Valencia, the use of brass bands at farewells is recurrent, but it is only allowed freely during Fallas. However, many hire the service without going through the process, they denounce. In the case of As de Picas, the group offers the activity, but warns that as these are considered traveling musical shows, regulated by the Valencian Community Entertainment Law and the Municipal Ordinance on activities in open-air spaces, in order to perform This activity requires prior authorization from the authorities in writing. "Many don't do it and then we all pay for it," laments their manager.
Measures such as that of Russafa Conviu, which took its mediators out into the streets a few months ago to inform these groups of the restrictions in place in Valencia in terms of sound, are some steps in a tourism product that works in many Mediterranean cities. In Valencia there can be more than 20 in a single weekend.
