Just a few days before the Festival was due to kick off, the news broke in La Vanguardia newspaper: the City Council was withdrawing the financial support it had provided up to this point, forcing the cancellation of media invitations and the loss of budget allocations earmarked for parallel activities. Miquel Porter Moix, then head of the Film Department of the Generalitat, the Catalonian autonomous government, organized a meeting between the Festival and the City Council to try to defuse tensions and smooth things over. Deeply affected, Sitges secured its continuity thanks to the Generalitat's commitment to intervene. The Festival's official name was now in Catalan. Artistically speaking, the big highlight was the Italian horror film series, which allowed audiences to rediscover classics by Mario Bava and Elio Petri, as well as lesser-known works by Massimo Pupillo and Romano Ferrara.