The electoral advance takes the breath away from culture

2023-06-12 22:56:43

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has already announced that if he is elected president in the General Elections on July 23, he will eliminate the Ministry of Culture, as Mariano Rajoy did during the two legislatures with which he governed between 2011 and 2018. Miquel Iceta tried to repair that “ weight loss” with the hiring of 600 civil servants to execute the “most ambitious budgets in history”. The advancement of the elections announced a week ago by President Pedro Sánchez has also shaken the present and future of the cultural industries. The legislative plans that the Ministry of Miquel Iceta had planned to approve at some point in the next six months have been paralyzed. And depending on the results of 23J they could even be abandoned. It is not what the sector needs, which in the latest cultural employment data shows how since the end of last summer it has lost 20,000 jobs (from 710,000 to 690,000).

The brake on the Film Law due to the electoral advance, “a jug of cold water” for producers

Further

Iceta made it clear what his big bet was for the portfolio that he collected from the hands of José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes. As soon as he took over, he launched the inter-ministerial commission in July 2021 to approve the Artist Statute. Two years have passed and the advances have been significant, such as the first special unemployment benefit for the sector, which could help up to 70,000 self-employed workers, or the compatibility of the retirement pension with artistic activity.

“Many advances have been made and the Ministry of Culture has worked, but the most important thing has remained pending,” Alberto González Pulido, a lawyer and cultural manager who has represented the Union of Contemporary Artists at sector tables, explains to this newspaper. He shows his anger at the task that will not be carried out, the recognition measures for labor intermittency and Social Security for self-employed workers in culture. “We are very disappointed, because the self-employed are the vast majority of the sector. We cannot know the exact number because they do not sign up because they cannot meet the monthly payment. There are a large number in the underground economy. We needed them to make the benefit more flexible because it is useless for us to have a benefit for cessation of activity if we are not registered,” says Alberto González, who anticipates that the visual arts sector plans to start mobilizations.

Lack of sensitivity

This Monday the monitoring commission has held the last meeting before the cessation of activities due to the electoral advance. It will deal with benefits for cessation of activity but, as González says: “It is a tremendous disappointment.” The lawyer insists on pointing out the commitment of Culture and the “lack of sensitivity and ignorance of the Social Security sector”.

“But what has been really outrageous, and one of the biggest scourges in this entire two-year process, has been the Ministry of Finance. She hasn’t sat with us for a single day. The real problem is the Treasury”, assures the representative of the artists. It is the Ministry of María Jesús Montero who has the last word to resolve the last step of the Artist’s Statute: intermittence.

With measures tailored to their needs, it would allow cultural workers to contribute and not die trying. The reality of the artists is that they must pay 161 euros per month for the self-employed regime. “It is too high for us. And Social Security proposed a reduction to 125 euros per month. Ridiculous. And all this for those who do not exceed 6,000 euros per year in income. Oh really? How are you going to earn less than that amount and live? They propose this for cultural workers with another job, not for professionals or for those who want to be. But we have not been able to ask them even the most appropriate monthly amount”, says a disappointed Alberto González, very satisfied with the appointment of Manuel Segade as director of the Reina Sofía Museum. To prevent all this path from falling into oblivion with the possible disappearance of the Ministry of Culture if there is a change of government, he believes that the Artist Statute should be assumed as a matter of State.

Laws on the siding

It is not the only piece that is neutralized before the electoral panorama. The one that has hurt the most has been the expected reform of the Film Law and that now must wait for the formation of a new Government. Then it will be decided whether to continue processing or start the law from scratch, leaving months of negotiations and work in the gutter, as Javier Zurro has indicated. It was one of the legislative promises of the Ministry of Culture, to which Vox presented an amendment in its entirety and which ended with the leadership of Beatriz Navas at the head of the ICAA.

In August 2021, the Ministry of Culture began the prior consultation to set up the draft for the creation of the Spanish Office of Copyright and Related Rights. The intention of the new body was to “speed up and improve” the work related to this area, with its own budget and equipment, to face a reality that has overwhelmed the administrative structure. However, now the process, whose draft was approved by the Council of Ministers in December, remains in a dead end pending election night.

In January 2023, Miquel Iceta’s portfolio finalized a law to give autonomy to the Teatro Real, as this newspaper announced. The rule sought “greater efficiency in the management of resources” of the institution. Although legally it is a public institution, the creation of the standard would grant greater independence than it already enjoys. It was approved by the Council of Ministers and in May they agreed, in a second round, to send it to the Congress of Deputies to continue the urgent administrative processing. The advance stops, for the moment, the possibility that the Teatro Real has its law like the Prado Museum, the Reina Sofía Museum and the National Library of Spain.

In October 2022, Miquel Iceta reactivated the reform of the Historical Heritage Law, which stopped the departure of former minister José Guirao and that his replacement, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, did not carry out. Iceta, when replacing him, dismissed it because the wording of the reform confronted the Ministry with the autonomous communities. Thus he put in a drawer the necessary updating of a rule that the wording of 1985 continues to apply. Despite everything, the minister rescued the convoluted draft and ordered a review of “the theft of powers” that the communities complained about. Months later, at the beginning of 2023, the Minister’s team parked it again “due to lack of time”, the Ministry told this newspaper.

Also in April 2023, the Government gave the green light to the Artistic Education Bill, with the intention of regulating these studies for the first time in more than 30 years. It was a historical demand demanded by the sector (artist and student associations, teachers), which became involved in the elaboration of the text of a norm that would affect 140,000 students and 14,000 teachers. Among them was the recognition of audiovisual as higher education. At this time, as indicated by one of the sources consulted from the Ministry of Culture, “you can only study film in private schools, there is no public film school and this was solved by the Law by recognizing it as higher education.” 23J also puts this productive relationship between the Ministry of Culture and the Secretary of State for Education in a drawer.

Crisis in the Ministry

The final stretch of the legislature has been shortened by half a year and in the Ministry of Culture the pre-election pace had accelerated with a campaign of dismissals and resignations unprecedented up to now, in the Plaza del Rey building. The personnel problems exploded with the resignation of the general director of Fine Arts, Dolores Jiménez-Blanco. The real reasons have not been revealed, although the decision was caused by the conflict with the transfer of the Lady of Elche. In his place came Isaac Sastre de Diego, who has preferred to keep a low profile in the investigation and inventory of the thousands of works of art looted by Francoism, deposited in public museums.

The crisis of confidence that destabilizes the Ministry of Culture began with the hiring of María Navarro, daughter of the high-ranking PSC official and Miquel Iceta’s partner, Pere Navarro. The applicant was seventh in the merit tests, but she achieved the highest score in the 15-minute personal interview and became the Communications Coordinator for the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM).

In mid-February, Eduardo Fernández Palomares was dismissed by surprise as Undersecretary of Culture and Sports. In her place they placed María Pérez Sánchez-Lauhlé, who until now had played the role of second in command to Víctor Francos, Secretary General for Culture and Sports, who was also Iceta’s right-hand man and had no experience in the cultural field. Nor did Patricia Rafael, as head of the Minister’s Cabinet, come to the Ministry endorsed by a curriculum linked to cultural affairs. Francos is the muñidor who greases the Ministry’s policies and the General Directorate of Books, Cultural Industries and Cultural Heritage depend on him.

The chain of resignations continued in March with the departure of Amaya de Miguel as director of INAEM. Then came the turn of Adriana Moscoso, who left the Directorate of Cultural Industries, Intellectual Property and Cooperation in April, a position she reached in July 2018. Moscoso is one of the most knowledgeable professionals in the sector and left the Ministry to join sixth place on the list of Reyes Maroto, in the political race for mayor of Madrid. The sudden dismissal a few weeks ago of Severiano Hernández, Deputy Director General of State Archives for 15 years, has not been justified. The head of the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain (IPCE), Marta Hernández Azcutia, was also dismissed in June without public argument. The departure of Beatriz Navas, as general director of the ICAA, has already been referred to.

The cascade of executed dismissals and escapes in recent months has not been liked by the Ministry of Culture itself, as this newspaper has been able to verify with one of the people linked to the leadership of the Iceta team. “It is a situation that has a bad reading, it does not compensate at this point. And, in addition, it creates a very bad image ”, explain the sources.