Just days before the start of the Festival, the news broke in La Vanguardia: the City Council was withdrawing the financial support it had provided until then, forcing the cancellation of press invitations and the loss of budget allocations for parallel activities. Miquel Porter Moix, then head of the Generalitat’s Department of Cinematography, organized a meeting between the Festival and the City Council to ease tensions and smooth things over. Deeply shaken, Sitges secured its future thanks to the Generalitat’s commitment to step in. The Festival’s official naming was now in Catalan. On the artistic side, the standout was the Italian horror cycle, which brought back classics by Mario Bava and Elio Petri, as well as lesser-known works by Massimo Pupillo and Romano Ferrara.