The cultural industry loses patience with the government and calls for concrete measures such as in France and Germany

• Direct: everything about the coronavirus
• Quarantine. One extra month if cinemas, museums or theaters
• Scenarios. 30,000 canceled functions
• Europe.Editors ask for help

Many cultural professionals have reacted with disappointment to yesterday's public appearance by the Minister of Culture and Sports, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes . Some of them had spoken to Uribes during Monday and Tuesday, had raised their needs for help to overcome the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus and hoped that the Government announced yesterday, at the minister's press conference, the concrete measures that can already develop. There was no announcement, no progress : no direct aid, no new administrative facilities or plans to promote culture. Uribes praised the good attitude of everyone, said he listens to the sector and that aid will come, he still does not know when.

"The minister said that life goes first and then the cinema. Yes, of course. But I would have liked to hear him say that he is fighting for the survival of the culture system in Spain. This is what the Minister of Culture of France and I don't understand why there are things that are possible in France and not here, "says Jesús Cimarro, theatrical businessman and president of the Academy of Performing Arts.

"I understand that the Ministry of Culture cannot do it all, that there are limited resources and many needs, but he has to lead the fight before the Treasury to get a specific game that will help us to continue working and create jobs. We have all told him so We are going to back him up in that fight , but the Ministry has to step forward. "

The great desire of the cultural industry in Spain is a direct aid fund that allows companies in the sector to survive and restart their activity after the disaster this spring. "There are 100,000 million euros that Europe has already set aside to rescue the economies that have suffered the most. The first thing is to save lives, of course, but the portion that culture needs is not very large," explains Cimarro. France, Germany and Italy have had funds like this since March . Uribes said yesterday that this game will come but did not say when or what amount it will have.

That decision is probably not in the hands of Uribes, who will report to the Ministry of Finance and the Presidency of the Government. But what could the Ministry of Culture have already done , four weeks after the Spaniards locked ourselves at home?

"There are several countries that have decreed books as basic necessities . That means that, when the quarantine measures begin to rise, probably gradually, bookstores will be one of the first businesses that can open again," they explain. sources from the Association of Publishers' Guilds. "There is another very valuable measure that we have seen in France, which is the commitment of all the administrations to pay all the cultural expenses to which they had committed themselves before the crisis . That is: if a city council had contracted a literary festival in May and it has canceled it, France agrees that it will pay all the fees. In Spain we are seeing the opposite: the municipalities withdraw items reserved for culture and allocate them to other purposes, "they explain. His colleagues from the European Federation of Publishers sent a letter on Monday to all EU culture ministers in which, among other relief measures, they demand that administrations increase their budgets dedicated to the purchase of books for public libraries .

"I am envious of what happens in France and in Germany, it seems that there is a conviction that culture is part of social cohesion. On the other hand, it seems that in Spain there exists this phobia to invest a small part of the public budget in sustaining the fabric of culture. It is not to increase capital or fatten up what we are trying to do, it is only to sustain it, to have some guarantee that it will be here on the way back from the running of the bulls, "explains gallery owner Manuel Fernández-Braso, representative of the Artmadrid association. His colleague Idoia Fernández, president of the Consortium of Spanish Galleries of Contemporary Art, spoke these days with Minister Uribes. "We value the attitude of listening very positively, but we need concrete measures." The galleries, says Fernández, urgently need capital, "because ours will not consist of opening in May and starting to sell paintings that same day . Many projects have been frustrated." While that money arrives, they demand that the current commitment to dedicate 1.5% of investments in public works to culture include a minimum percentage dedicated to contemporary art.

Jesús Cimarro returns to speak on behalf of companies and professionals in the performing arts. "We need two measures, in addition to direct aid: first, the extension of the ertes, because theaters and concert halls will have a month of quarantine for more when the activity resumes. Second, that the VAT on tickets and of caches in public theaters drop from 21 to 10% . It is not a measure aimed at paying less: it is a measure aimed at creating more activity and creating employment. What the State stops collecting in VAT will be recovered as personal income tax and contributions of Social Security. In Germany, VAT is 7%, in France it is between 2.1 and 5.5% . In Argentina it is 0% ".

Lastly, Mariano Barroso speaks on behalf of the film and television sector: "I am not going to criticize the Government. We all support those who are on the front lines of this crisis. But we have to remember that we are an important productive sector, that there are tens of thousands of families who live from this work with the particularity that the jobs are intermittent. What do we already ask the minister? That there be a clear recognition of this itinerancy of the workers [so that they can access subsidies from unemployment], that there are ways of tax exemption and, above all, that it make public television channels turn to national and European production. That they do not buy production from outside the EU ".

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• France
• Germany
• Spain
• Social Security
• José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes
• Italy
• Personal income tax
• Europe
• Argentina
• Unemployment
• theater
• culture
• music
• movie theater

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