In Spain, Publicly Financed Projects Founder
In headier times, Ciudad de la Luz was envisioned as a mega-movie studio “where fairy tales are made real.” Its state-of-the-art wave-making machines could whip up a tsunami-style disaster in an enormous water tank facing the Mediterranean Sea, like a Hollywood on the Spanish Riviera.
But today the water cannons at Ciudad de la Luz, which means City of Light, are dry, and the studio’s 54 acres of back lots are nearly deserted. The publicly financed compound is up for sale, and struggling to attract film production companies. European Union authorities have issued an ultimatum to the regional government of Valencia to explain by this week how it intends to recover $325 million in taxpayers’ money improperly spent on movie mogul ambitions.
The answer could be brief.
“Effectively, there is no money to give back,” said José Ciscar Bolufer, the vice president of Valencia’s current regional government.
The studio’s creation, in 2005, was part of a building binge repeated throughout Spain’s 17 autonomous regions. As the nation’s crisis now deepens, the combination of interests — bankers, construction magnates and regional government officials — responsible for excesses like Ciudad de la Luz has come under new scrutiny here and elsewhere.