Luis Alemany Madrid

Madrid

Updated Monday, January 22, 2024-17:33

  • Appointment of Ernest Urtasun, from Sumar, as head of the Ministry of Culture

  • Culture Urtasun promises the Generalitat to expand the MNAC and promote Catalan

Structure, contestation, inclusion, peripheries, privileges, colonialism, Gaza, diversity, exceptionality, laboratories, accessibility, redistribution, canceling liberalism, accessibility... The speech with which Minister

Ernest Urtasun

presented this afternoon before the

Culture Commission of the Congress of Deputies

could be a glossary of all the left-wing political discussion during the last decade and a half.

Urtasun made appointments with Marina Garcés, Katixa Agirre, Irene Solà, Sofía Castañón, Andrea Abreu, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics Amartya Sen and, finally, Jorge Semprún, who has already appeared named in one of his speeches.

It would be nice to talk to Urtasun about Federico Sánchez's books.

Those have been the ways.

Regarding content, Urtasun has announced the creation of a

General Directorate of Cultural Rights

that will develop a plan to enforce its cultural policies in the medium term (Urtasun spoke of "a decade").

The axes of this program will be the adoption of a "firm stance to combat any form of

censorship

", equality and equitable access to culture, the interconnection between educational policies and territorial structuring with a sense of redistribution,

the application of the 2030 Agenda

and the assessment of compliance with its criteria.

"It is therefore about developing concrete actions and specific measures that generate the best possible conditions so that cultural projects can be developed and so that citizens can enjoy a full cultural life, the exercise of which cannot be

restricted by any type of prior censorship.

"Urtasun explained.

A few words that have been accompanied by a complaint: "Cultural creation and production is undergoing a historical moment of change in which censorship and

political interference

are gaining ground in public cultural management. This Directorate will accompany any creator, author or collective whose activity has been erased or censored from public space".

To know more

Cinema.

The producers show their concern to Urtasun about the endless Cinema Law

  • Editor: LUIS MARTÍNEZ Madrid

The producers show their concern to Urtasun about the endless Cinema Law

Culture Ministry.

Ernest Urtasun calls to "raise the flag of culture against fear and intolerance"

  • Editor: LUIS ALEMANY Madrid

Ernest Urtasun calls to "raise the flag of culture against fear and intolerance"

The mention of this supervisory function suggests that the new leadership will dedicate itself to ideological, rather than executive, action, and this is how the opposition deputies who responded to Urtasun interpreted it.

Sol Cruz Guzmán, of the PP, asked the minister to "put ideology aside."

The VOX representative

has called him "minister of agitation and propaganda"

.

What will the new Minister of Culture work on then?

According to his speech, he will dedicate himself to extending and democratizing access to culture and cultural creation, above all.

Urtasun has spoken about rural areas, disadvantaged neighborhoods and guaranteeing the right to creation of women and LGTBI groups and

has insisted

on the Cultural Bonus

as a way to bring culture to young people.

He has also spoken, as he always does, of defending the diversity of Spain's languages.

In addition to promoting the production of culture in the co-official languages ​​of the State, Urtasun has referred to

the Asturian and Aragonese languages

​​and has announced that he will dedicate preferential treatment to their academies.

The minister also alluded to the development of

the Artist Statute

, a long-term project that Urtasun's predecessor,

Miquel Iceta

, presented in the last legislature but which is still unfinished.

The Government's direction, in this case, is to insist on French-style "cultural exceptionalism" that reinforces the rights of workers in cultural industries, traditionally exposed to temporality.

Urtasun has promised

to end the new cinema and heritage laws

, announcing tax improvements for cultural patronage;

He will apply environmental efficiency commitments to cultural policies, update the books of good practices of cultural institutions and extend critical discourse in

the 17 national museums

that depend on his ministry.

In other words: the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions of museums like the one in America will talk about colonialism, plunder and so on, according to state policy.

The Ministry will also favor “creation and reflection” laboratories as means of production.

The Tobacco Center was the case that Urtasun proposed as an example.

He has referred more or less superficially

to the renewed

INAEM .

On the other hand, the minister has extended his defense of culture as a tool for world peace.

All of this has a cost.

Urtasun explained that culture absorbs

0.7 of public investments

and that this percentage will grow to 1%.