Ortuño admits that “it was not right” to give rise to a private use of the Casa del Niño de Cartagena

The Minister of the Presidency, Tourism, Culture and Sports, Marcos Ortuño, censured this Wednesday the management of the director general of the Institute of Cultural Industries and the Arts of the Region of Murcia, Manuel Cebrián, by urging an initiative to put a pavilion of the Casa del Niño de Cartagena that could have fallen to a private foundation of which he was a member. “It doesn’t seem right to me,” said the counselor during a presentation in Cartagena. “But there is a legal report from Community technicians that concludes that there are no illegalities,” he indicated, concluding that this rules out any disciplinary or internal purging measure in his department.

“That report also means that the initial proposal, which I do not consider successful, declines. Next, at the request of the Cartagena City Council, we have decided to open a consultation process with associations and entities to agree on the best possible use of the property, “explained Ortuño. The wing of the Casa del Niño subject to this scrutiny is the one that was restored in 2020 and that faces Tolosa Latour street.

The Municipal Plenary of Cartagena unanimously approved, on September 1, to support this consultation procedure. In the initiative, the City Council reserves the last word to recommend the use that it considers most appropriate.

50,000 visitors

The more than 30 events hosted by Cartagena as the European City of Sport have attracted 50,000 visitors so far this year, according to data provided by the mayor, Noelia Arroyo, during the event attended by Ortuño. The event marks the launch of the Water Games, which will add 10,000 more attendees, shared with the other three coastal municipalities of the Mar Menor.

The mayors of San Pedro del Pintar, Visitación Martínez, and San Javier, José Miguel Luengo, attended the event in the port of Cartagena. Los Alcázares also hosts competitions included in the program, in which ten Spanish championships of various disciplines are scheduled to be held.

The calendar of events will take place between Thursday, September 22, and October 2. It includes competitive power boating, rowing, canoeing, water skiing and swimming competitions. The president of the Spanish Federation of Motonautics, José Miguel Martínez, highlighted the importance of this concentration of events in ten days. He added that “it will be an opportunity to demonstrate that these disciplines are perfectly compatible with the care of the natural spaces in which they take place, especially the Mar Menor.”