Step toward green festivals: Santander no longer sponsoring Primavera Sound

Banco Santander is Europe’s largest financier of Amazon Oil and Gas. For over a year we’ve been working hard to pressure the bank in different ways. Sometimes these ways are not so obvious.

Santander funds Spain’s most prominent cultural institutions, like the Reina Sofía Museum, in Madrid, as well as universities, research programs and scholarships in countries from Brasil, UK to Argentina and Uruguay. It also sponsors music festivals – including the iconic Primavera Sound in Barcelona.

We asked ourselves a question – does Primavera know what’s behind the sponsorship? The bank has enough money to greenwash its brand because it profits from deals with companies drilling for oil in the Amazon and in industrial agribusiness driving deforestation in Brazil. 

Last year, we joined forces with several Spanish and international organizations, including Ecologistas en Acción, Allianza por la Solidaridad and Mighty Earth to call on Primavera Sound to reconsider its partnership with the Banco Santander Foundation. We highlighted the growing concerns about Santander’s ongoing financing of fossil fuels, and other industries like agribusiness, that drive the deforestation of critical ecosystems like the Amazon and deepen the climate crisis.

After a few months of conversations with the festival, we learned from Primavera Sound that the Banco Santander Foundation is no longer a sponsor of the festival.

Ahead of the upcoming edition, Primavera reiterated its commitments to reduce waste, lower its carbon footprint, and take environmental impact seriously. Dropping a major fossil bank sponsor is an important step toward making those values tangible and should be celebrated.

But the fight is far from over. 

While Santander continues its efforts to artwash its image, like when it sponsored a free Lady Gaga concert in Brazil, it’s our mission to show what’s behind these high-profile deals. We want more funding for culture all around the world. But if financial institutions fund culture to boost their image, while continuing to profit from wars, destruction, and human rights violations, we call them out. And we encourage all of you – festival organizers and participants – to reflect: What can we all do to support alternatives and work towards a high-quality, ethically financed culture for all?

In many places, the world of culture and music festivals saw bands refuse to perform because the sponsorships are linked to companies of dubious human rights and environmental commitments.

The role of Banco Santander in the fossil fuel industry has even attracted attention of UK’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams, who together with other entities, urged Santander and other banks to stop financing the fossil industry, making visible the impacts of these operations and warning that, otherwise, they could risk losing customers.

We hope this growing movement against artwashing will in the end help Santander and other financial institutions to come to a simple conclusion: instead of spending millions on marketing and greenwashing, they must stop financing the destruction of our planet. Maybe that’s even a better way to attract customers.