*6.2. The Impact of Meninas in the Neighborhood of Canido*

The interviews with the neighbors and entities of the neighborhood allow us to affirm that the cultural event of Las Meninas de Canido has managed to position the neighborhood on the map on an international scale. The neighborhood has regained its life and has become a fashionable space. As a consequence:


the Meninas are celebrated but also during the rest of the year, thanks to the activities being promoted since becoming a civic center of the neighborhood.

**Figure 8.** Distribution of the Meninas in Canido neighborhood.

Therefore, there is no doubt that Las Meninas have been a turning point whereby Canido is the fashionable neighborhood of Ferrol, and that both the city and the neighborhood have positioned themselves on the map at national and international levels. If Ferrol was the typical example of a shrinking city in permanent crisis as a result of the reconversion of the naval sector, the Meninas initiative has managed to transfer a new image of the city, more dynamic and with good practices in order to rehabilitate degraded spaces.

However, a part of the social and business fabric observes that the original idea has been progressively transformed, and that behind the Meninas event another reality is hidden that they want to show. They fear that the success of Las Meninas will be a screen that will leave other initiatives in the background that are not less important and launched by government institutions, neighborhood associations and the business community, as well as many other problems that remain unsolved.

First, they consider that, although Las Meninas began as a cultural initiative, a popular event, in which the neighbors collaborated with the artists and one in which the local hospitality industry played an active role organizing the meals, in recent years, it has become a more private event, with the emergence of a brand of beer as a sponsor, the commissioning of food services to companies outside the neighborhood and not to the bars in the area, and the hiring of personnel that do not belong to the neighborhood to attend said services. All this has meant a quantitative and qualitative change with respect to the original idea. Las Meninas have gone from being a neighborhood event, where the neighbors used to eat together in the street, with 400 people in the neighborhood sitting at a large table, to becoming an international event attended by more than 50,000 people in which the popular character has disappeared. Given this circumstance, and with the aim of recovering precisely that link with the neighborhood, the last edition decided to reduce the contribution of the sponsor and give more opportunities to the population and businesses of the neighborhood.

On the other hand, if at the beginning the idea was for enthusiasts to paint Las Meninas on small walls or parts of houses, now, the tendency is for invited international artists to paint large murals on buildings. Obviously, these works are an element of attraction for visitors and tourists, who come to the neighborhood and have the opportunity to see real works of art in the street. However, the neighbors miss the freshness and initial spontaneity.

With regard to the neighborhood, it is true that Canido is now a pleasant and uncomplicated place to live. However, the Association of Neighbors state that this is not due to the Meninas movement so much but rather to an urban plan, of which little is said. It is a plan that modified the physiognomy of the neighborhood through the humanization of several streets (Alegre, A Rocha), the opening of new roads and the construction of a civic center. The interventions carried out in the Stone cross square turned this space (traditionally occupied by a small roundabout) into the epicenter of the neighborhood and a public space in which to socialize, taking away that functionality from Canido Square. In that same period, the plot occupied by the old Fenya factory was built upon. These homes were occupied by young families with medium-high purchasing power and with children, a circumstance that favored the socio-demographic rejuvenation of the neighborhood. On the other hand, there was an interest on the part of some neighbors to rehabilitate some homes in the neighborhood and stay there. In this sense, a study is being carried out on the existing properties in the neighborhood to analyze the possibility of rehabilitating them. More than 100 properties have been accounted for, all suffering from different levels of degradation. In any case, the recovery of some of them would be a significant improvement, and it would be a mechanism to improve the resident population in the neighborhood and to attract more residents with medium-high purchasing power. In this sense, it should be noted that gentrification processes have not yet been observed, as has happened in other Spanish or European cities, where cultural initiatives such as those of Las Meninas have been launched. At the moment, traditional rents remain stable, and there has been no replacement of the original population of the neighborhood.

There is a consensus on the part of retailers and hoteliers that the Meninas have managed to revitalize the neighborhood and generate a synergy of activism and participation by the business and associative fabric of the neighborhood, which was consolidated with the creation of Hoscompro, an association of merchants and hoteliers whose purpose was to energize life in the neighborhood. This association has always been collaborative with the association of neighbors of Canido, whose objective is to create a community project in the neighborhood, launching cultural activities, leisure and consolidating traditional festivals, which despite being less known than Las Meninas, provide equivalent income to the catering sector.

The neighborhood association seeks to generate and consolidate intra-neighborhood dynamics, collaborating with all the entities of the neighborhood (cultural, religious, sports) to seek a complicity that allows them to develop activities together and become a driver when requesting that institutions make greater investments in the neighborhood and improvement initiatives, both physically and socially. They insist that behind the festivity and the playful nature of Las Meninas lies a reality of sub-standard housing, streets affected by serious degradation, a high percentage of the population in a situation of endemic poverty, numerous elderly people living alone and without suitable services, while there is a deficit of spaces for young people who come to the neighborhood to play sports or games. Some successes have already been achieved, such as those derived from the "happy city" project, through which sports exhibitions, dance shows, musical performances, gastronomic routes, and even a curious slow bicycle race were held in different parts of the neighborhood.

What is definitively pursued by these processes of social construction of the urban space is to change the perception of the public about Canido. Thanks to Las Meninas, the urban imaginary of the neighborhood has been improved. The cultural action of the Girls has served as a loud protest against the situation of the crisis, as an element of tourist attraction that had not experienced before. However, we ask if the imaginary created on the barrio will not be surpassing the reality—hence, the insistence on the part of the association that we not see Canido as the new Soho, where everything is perfect and beautiful and all of the problems have been solved, but as a neighborhood where institutions need to

continue investing to generate public spaces of coexistence, where people can play, dance, listen to music, or just chat with neighbors.

Eduardo Hermida, the promoter of Las Meninas, has the same opinion. He is aware that this event may continue for some time, but that it will have to come to an end. With the objective that the neighborhood continues to improve, from a physical, social, economic, and environmental point of view, several projects are already underway. Among them is the recovery of an agricultural green space, turning abandoned gardens into urban leisure spaces or environmental education spaces for schools in the area. For this they have already begun to plant fruit trees, turning this abandoned space into a meeting place for neighbors of all ages. Another collective artistic initiative consists of recovering the environment of the missing Hispania pencil factory by installing 40 wooden pencil-shaped posts, each with five faces and a height of 2.85 m. This initiative aims to spread the experience of Las Meninas in the historic center of Ferrol, an area also affected by serious processes of urban deterioration; if successful, it could be used as a link between the two neighborhoods.
