The City Council is developing the guidelines for the contest to create the first sculptures of the route: the characters from the novel Arroz y Tartana, by Blasco Ibáñez, and the movie La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón, by Javier Fesser.
The project aims to establish a route of life-sized sculptures of characters from movies and literary works set in the city or filmed in València. The statues, made of bronze and figurative in nature, will be placed in locations where fictional storylines unfold, accompanied by QR codes for accessing information about each piece.
The València City Council has initiated the selection process for the artist or artists who will sculpt the first pieces of the Literary and Cinematic Character Route that will traverse the city, showcasing urban spaces that have been the backdrop for novels, literary works, and film shoots.
To this end, the municipal services of the Culture Department are drafting the guidelines for a public competition to commission the creation of the first three characters of the Route. Artists can participate individually or as a group in two phases: an open preselection round and a second phase for proposals that pass the initial stage.
The chosen artist(s) will be responsible for the design, production, and installation of sculptures representing literary characters like ‘Doña Manuela’ and ‘the Aragonese boy’ from Blasco Ibáñez’s novel Arroz y tartana (1894), and cinematic characters like ‘Mortadelo and Filemón’ (a sculptural group) from the movie La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón (2003) by Javier Fesser, the first installations of the Route.
The budget for this initial call is set at 145,000 euros (including taxes), with 65,000 euros allocated to the cinematic sculpture group (Mortadelo and Filemón) and 80,000 euros for the two literary characters by Blasco Ibáñez (40,000 per sculpture).
In addition to artistic quality, the selection criteria will consider the artists’ knowledge of Valencian cultural context, particularly in the literary, historical, and artistic heritage, aiming to integrate proposals into the city’s cultural identity and promote its literary and cinematic figures.
The jury, chaired by the Councilor for Cultural Action, Heritage, and Cultural Resources, José Luis Moreno, will include experts from the Heritage and Artistic Heritage Service of the City Council, the Fine Arts Museum of València, and the Fine Arts Faculty of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). The jury will also include the philologist and writer Francisco López Porcal, author of the literary route, and the journalist Carlos Aimeur Urios, author of the cinematic route.
The Literary Route features characters from 15 literary works spanning from the Renaissance to the present day, all set in various locations in València. The Cinematic Route includes scenes from 10 feature films shot and set in the city throughout the 20th century and into the present day.
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