At Menta y Chocolate, the official Seminci cake was expected to sell 800 to 900 times during the campaign. The estimate came from a bakery on Valladolid’s central Calle del Puente Colgante. The festival has also become a way to introduce customers to other products.
That commercial push reaches beyond food. FECOSVA, the federation representing local businesses, backed a shop-window project in the Zona Comercial Calderón, near the Teatro Calderón. The festival drew 103,000 spectators and 2,200 audiovisual industry workers in its 2025 edition. That gave Valladolid businesses a large audience for their offer. Seminci has been held in Valladolid since 1956, and industry coverage has described it as a meeting point for Spain’s film sector, with more than 200 distributors and exhibitors attending. In an interview, a Seminci representative identified as M.V. cited about 102,000 spectators in 2025, up from 77,000 in 2022.
Fifteen students from the Escuela Superior de Diseño ESI took part in the display campaign. The second-year design students created hand-drawn illustrations connecting cinema themes with participating shops’ products. Their teacher, Carlos de Miguel, guided them as art director. He said the aim was to reflect Seminci’s auteur-cinema spirit. The project also gave students contact with working businesses and potential clients.
One design drew on a handwritten verse by Lorca and his signature. The student David used the poet’s connection to the Generación del 27 to shape a shop’s festival display, while linking it to the recent release of ‘La bola negra’.
The festival’s nine-day run also gave Valladolid’s news kiosks a practical role: distributing the programme free of charge. During a ten-minute visit by a Televisión Española team based in Castilla y León, several passers-by collected copies to choose events that suited their interests.
Restaurants joined the effort by feeding festivalgoers and promoting local ingredients. Restaurante Ángela, which has worked with Seminci since 1975, offered a €30 menu designed for industry professionals but open to any customer.
The menu included rape empiñonado and an entrecot. A vegetable timbale used nearby produce, with asparagus from Tudela de Duero and leeks from Laguna de Duero. Co-owner and chef Jesús Alejos said members of the festival jury held long dinners there while debating films, particularly on Thursday and Friday nights.
Pastry makers have supplied a festival dessert for more than 20 years. The official cake changed annually until 2023, when one recipe replaced the rotating selection. It combines Genoese sponge and cheese mousse, with pistachio crunch beneath a jelly layer, all formed into an ingot.
At Menta y Chocolate, José Antonio Villegas showed how the cake is made. The bakery estimated sales of 800 to 900 ingots during the campaign. Customers who came in for the Seminci dessert often left with a box of other pastries or buñuelos.
