The organizing committee of the San Remo Music Awards Cuba Festival has confirmed that the event will take place as planned, from April 5th through the 10th, despite the ongoing media campaign by Cuba enemies, aiming to sabotage the event.

During a press conference Wednesday at Havana’s Hotel Nacional de Cuba, the event’s artistic director Cuban musician Jorge Luis Robaina said that the event aims to celebrate and further consolidate cultural ties between Cuba and Italy.

Robaina, leader of the band Karamba further stressed that the Cuban people deserve to enjoy this type of musical shows.

He stressed that the organizers won’t judge some foreign artists, who have declined their participation after being the target of what he called ‘a fierce, intense harassment campaign on social media.’

The San Remo Music Awards Cuba Festival is being organized by Cuba’s record and musical editions Company EGREM and its artistic representation agency Musicuba, in coordination with the Cuban Ministry of Culture, the Cuban embassy in Rome, the Italian embassy in Havana and other cultural institutions from the two nations.

The main activity is the singing contest with the participation of 16 contestants representing nine Cuban provinces --all of them young talents selected out of 800 candidates, who participated in a national contest held to this aim end.

Other highlights of the upcoming edition of the San Remo Music Awards Festival –the first to be held in an Ibero-American nation—include fashion shows, cuisine shows and meetings of Italian and Cuban businesspeople linked to the music industry.