Spain Launches Program to Encourage Access to Movie Theaters for People Over 65 Years Old

The Council of Ministers has agreed, at the proposal of the Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta, the design of a program aimed at encouraging people over 65 years of age to access movie theaters. It will have a budget of 10 million euros and is carried out in collaboration with the exhibition sector.

The measure, which must be defined by the Ministry of Culture and Sport, will allow movie tickets to cost 2 euros one day a week for the more than 9.5 million people over 65 in all of Spain.

This is the age group that is taking the longest to resume the habits of attending the cinema in theaters prior to the pandemic. Thus, notable differences are observed between age groups: if 49.3% of young people aged 20 to 24 went to the cinema at least once a year between 2021 and 2022, that percentage drops to 6% in the population older.

In addition, according to numerous international institutions such as the OECD and the European Union itself, access to culture is essential in achieving an active and healthy aging process.

Hand in hand with the industry

The Ministry of Culture and Sports will design the program in collaboration with the main associations in the exhibition sector, to which all interested rooms that so wish may join, discounting the price of tickets for people over 65 throughout the territory . The objective is to create or reinforce one day a week dedicated especially to the senior public, who will pay two euros for their ticket.

This measure is aligned with the objectives of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. Its component 24 seeks to facilitate access to culture and promote the transition to the new digital environment that allows the incorporation of new possibilities and realities. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals also recognize the safeguarding and promotion of culture as two ends in themselves.

Likewise, it is necessary to guarantee access to culture in the terms established by the European Commission in its New European Agenda for Culture (2018) in which it is ruled that culture is an ideal means to promote social cohesion. In short, it is about facilitating access to culture as an engine of growth.

In this sense, component 25 of the Recovery Plan, Spain Audiovisual Hub, also aims to promote the audiovisual sector.

audiovisual culture

As recognized in its preamble to the draft Law on Cinema and Audiovisual Culture, audiovisual culture constitutes an engine of transformation and social and economic development; contributes to artistic expression and critical, free and creative expression; models collective imaginaries; generates identity and community; expands knowledge of the world; and it reflects and exports an image of the country, at the same time that it produces wealth, creates employment and promotes technological progress.

Of all the cultural sectors, cinema is one of the most affected, still today, by the pandemic. The sanitary measures taken as a result of COVID-19 caused a significant drop in the average attendance at movie theaters among the Spanish public, an attendance that has not fully recovered. Despite the upturns experienced in 2022, the sector still finds itself with approximately 40% fewer viewers compared to the average for the years 2017 to 2019.

With a measure of these characteristics, the Government wants to continue promoting access to culture for the Spanish population as a whole, something that has already justified the launch of the Young Cultural Bonus. Now it is a matter of continuing to contribute to the growth of a fundamental sector of our economy, while favoring an active and healthy aging of the population over 65 years of age.