Transparency

#AsnotTakesTheHatOff
Padrón’s Asnot Festival decided to take a break this year to stand up
for its values and get stronger.
#SeeYouAtAsnot2024

Asnot Festival Will Not Be Celebrated This Year

We want to improve with every edition of the festival. That’s why we are becoming more transparent to show you how we run things behind the curtains of Asnot Palace.

Let’s start with why this year Asnot Festival won’t be celebrated:

We are unsure about the support from the council of Padrón due to the lack of
confirmation regarding the festival date for this year. On the 25 th of January 2023, we met with Padrón councillors of the Culture Committee to request the 24 th of July as the festival’s date. On the 24 th of May, we still didn’t have a reply. And organising a festival like Asnot takes time.

This lack of permit was also the reason for not celebrating the festival in 2022 on the
regular date of the 24 th of July. The Council didn’t give us a licence to hold it on Praza de Macías (Macías Square) due to Sundays’ market taking place at this location, so we moved the date to celebrate it on this square of the old town.

Nevertheless, our transparency didn’t end here.

We are also sharing our manifesto and account statements:

Manifesto

  1. Asnot is a cultural cross-generational public festival celebrated in Padrón that everybody is welcome to attend.
  2. Asnot Asociación Cultural (Asnot Cultural Association) organises the festival with the support of sponsors, businesses of Padrón, neighbours, other cultural associations and public entities. This help is essential to celebrate the festival and be free of charge for you.
  3. Asnot Asociación Cultural is a non-profit group. We do not get paid to organise or celebrate the festival.
  4. Organising the festival is volunteer work. We combine it with our paid jobs, daily tasks, and family responsibilities.
  5. Asnot started as a parody of Ascot, a British festival celebrated around horse races and formal attire that we adapted with a hidden meaning to our context.
  6. This hidden meaning intends to develop ideas and ways of Padrón to adapt them to the present time. Donkeys are in danger, and we must protect them.
  7. Taking the donkeys out of the surroundings they are used to and making them run around the streets surrounded by people not only stresses the animals, but they could also hurt somebody.
  8. With every Asnot edition since 2018, we donated part of the income to O fogar
    do meu burro (My Donkey’s Home) to show our commitment to protecting
    these animals.
  9. We promote Padrón’s cultural wealth, Galician hatter craftwork, and emerging
    music groups. In general, Galician artistic creativity in the Galician language.
  10. We always seek to welcome women in all spheres of the association and festival, from the artists to the management team.

Since Asnot started, we have organised the festival with the best intentions, and we
are proud of what we’ve achieved so far. The support of our neighbours, sponsors and public entities was essential to get here.

For us, this festival should remain public and free of charge. That’s why collaborating with the Council is essential: We seek to negotiate with them and their active participation.

Account Statements

We also know there is no better thing than checking the numbers for yourself to verify with your own eyes the account statements of Asnot Palace. That’s why we publicly share the income and expenditure of the Asnot festival since 2018, the year we officially became an association.

Come and Check