The deputy and general secretary of Foro Asturias, Adrián Pumares, has assured this Monday that the announcement made last Saturday by the Councilor for Celebrations of the Gijón City Council —Sara Álvarez Rouco, from Vox— to veto artists who use Asturian as language is “a wild proposal, which does not comply with the law”, and he has been convinced that it will not be carried out. “Forum continues in the place where it has always been, in the commitment with the Asturian culture and with the lingua”, Pumares said after stressing that Carmen Moriyón, elected mayor of Gijón (from Foro) with the support of the two Vox mayors, demonstrated this in her two previous terms, between 211 and 2019.
“Those of us who are public officials, those of us who have different institutional and government positions, before making any statements, what we must do is comply with the law”, the general secretary of Foro Asturias told journalists in the corridors of the Asturian Parliament , which this Monday has been constituted and the legislature has begun. The mayor’s team of advisers later sent a brief statement: “We want to send a message of calm and we guarantee strict compliance with the law, within which discrimination based on the form of expression is not contemplated.” Asturian is not a co-official language, although an autonomous law guarantees its use, protection and promotion.
The controversy arose when last weekend, in a radio interview on Onda Cero, the new councilor for Festejos, Sara Álvarez Rouco, announced that one of her main objectives will be to eliminate “all left-wing ideological bias in festive events” in Gijón , the most populated city in Asturias (270,000 inhabitants). As an example, the Vox mayor stated that in Gijón, from now on, shows by those artists who use the Asturian language in their performances will not be programmed. Álvarez also announced that in her department they will stop using the Asturian place name, xixon. “We have a very rich Spanish language. And if it is Gijón, it is Gijón ”, he said.
Given this position, criticism multiplied on social networks. The Asturian artist Rodrigo Cuevas advocated, in a message written in Asturian, that “what you have to do is use more and more Asturian”. “They’re going to have a cup and a half,” he added. The master piper Xuacu Amieva also does not understand an announcement that initially sounded to him, he says, “as a joke.” “I have dedicated my whole life to recovering a part of Asturian culture such as the linguawhich is one of the pegoyos [pilares] of any culture,” he said.
Also the president of the Principality, the socialist Adrian Barbon, has shown his indignation: “They are involution. And a threat to coexistence. What are left-wing ideological biases in festive events? And the threat to artists who use Asturian is inadmissible. Of shame. Luckily the PP in Asturias he listened to us, leaving them out of the General Meeting Table”, he stated.
Adrián Pumares himself, who has already expressed his discomfort at the agreement reached in Gijón between his party and Vox, was harassed by the ultra party for his defense of the Asturian language: in 2021 Vox went so far as to put up billboards with his face of the deputy on several roads in Asturias, with a red X covering Pumares’s mouth and the motto: “The progressives want to impose a language that is not theirs on a million Asturians.”
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The socialist Juan Cofiño, new president of the Asturian Parliament
On the other hand, the socialist Juan Manuel Cofiño, until last Friday vice president of the Asturian Government, has been elected this Monday by an absolute majority (23 of the 45 seats at stake) as the new president of the General Board of the Principality in the plenary session of constitution of the Autonomous Chamber. Cofiño is supported by 19 votes from the socialist group and three from Izquierda Unida, as well as that of the only parliamentarian from Foro Asturias, while the deputy for Podemos, Covadonga Tomé, has opted to abstain. The deputies of PP and Vox have voted blank.
The PSOE also occupies the first vice-presidency of the Chamber; the PP will have the second vice-presidency and a secretariat, and the IU the other secretariat, after the Socialists have given them the position.
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