After Blagnac gave up, Patrice Gausserand found a new host city for the Chinese Lantern Festival. It will be Montauban. A press conference presenting the event is scheduled next Thursday.
The lantern festival will bounce back in Tarn-et-Garonne, precisely in Montauban. The event created in 2017 in Gaillac by Patrice Gausserand, the former mayor of the wine-growing city of Tarn, and who had been moved to Blagnac in Haute-Garonne last winter, will therefore settle in the city of Ingres . The information will be officially announced on Thursday, April 21. Contacted by The Dispatch this Friday evening, Brigitte Barèges, mayor of Montauban and president of Grand Montauban, does not wish to speak but confirms the holding of a press conference, next Thursday at 11 a.m., in the presence of Patrice Gausserand, head of Mag Conseil, the communication agency official producer of the lanterns.
On March 7, when Joseph Carles, the mayor of Blagnac announced to The Midi Dispatch that he was renouncing to organize the next lantern festival in his city, Patrice Gausserand, the disappointment passed, had expressed his desire to maintain the event in the Occitanie Region, even if he planned to prospect further afield if necessary. The message did get across 40 short kilometers north of Blagnac… in Montauban and Brigitte Barèges certainly saw there an opportunity to draw the light of the lanterns to the capital town of Tarn-et-Garonne at one time (December -January) where cultural events are not legion.
The Blagnac edition had attracted 410,000 visitors to Ritouret Park, despite health constraints and often gloomy weather. Will Montauban have this capacity? Difficult to say as long as the location of the festival is not known.
The community council of Grand Montauban, convened Thursday, April 21 at 6 p.m., will debate the subject since a deliberation, scheduled at the end of the session, concerns “the approval of the principle of hosting the lantern festival”. The adventure born in Gaillac will therefore experience a new chapter.