The Community of Madrid maintains its offer of 3.2 million for Velintonia and asks Urtasun to provide financing

In the letter sent today, Mariano de Paco reminds Urtasun that eleven months ago, in February of last year, the Community of Madrid raised the need to address the institutional abandonment that has been affecting the poet’s house for decades. Home of the Nobel Prize winner until his death, Velintonia was the home of poetry after the Civil War: there the writer received poets from up to five different generations. But the house has been uninhabited for four decades, a victim of the disagreements of the heirs and without any government having been able to project a cultural center in the house. To put an end to this situation, De Paco proposed to Urtasun that the Ministry of Culture take the step of acquiring the home and the Community of Madrid undertakes to provide it with activity.

«My team and I came to this conclusion after verifying that the three-way talks, which began in January 2018, although important, had not solved the main problem of the house, which has been suffering, as you know, from obvious deterioration that has been going on for years. “It puts its integrity at risk,” says De Paco in his writing. Those contacts, the counselor recalls, resulted in the protection of the home with the figure of the Asset of Patrimonial Interest (BIP), but they did not agree to negotiate the purchase of the house, even though the process had been launched to begin the sale through a judicial auction. In January the first auction was held, without any administration bidding for it and it was left empty. It was then that De Paco proposed to Urtasun that he acquire it, but the minister did not respond… until this week, eleven months later.

“Given the regrettable silence of your department,” says the Madrid councilor in his letter today, with which he responds to Urtasun’s latest offer, “the Community of Madrid decided to take a step forward, initiate contacts with the heirs and agents involved, and make public a purchase offer for Velintonia, under the conditions set by the judicial auction that was in progress. This was in June. Mariano de Paco announced that he would make an offer for the house and, after the second auction was void, he exercised his right of preferential acquisition by depositing in a court 3,193,225 euros70 percent of the value of the good, which had been set as the minimum rate in the procedure. The Community of Madrid considered the acquisition done, but Amaya Aleixandre, the poet’s second niece and owner of 60 percent of the home, contested the offer. According to what she said in two media outlets, the Ministry of Culture had committed to her – not to the other heirs who carried out the auction – to make an offer of 3.2 million.

The court accepted Amaya Aleixandre’s appeal and did not validate the purchase by the Community of Madrid. There will, therefore, be a third auction. Taking advantage of this new situation, Urtasun finally approached De Paco to resume the dialogue and jointly acquire the home. The Community of Madrid refuses to return to 2018. It will present a new offer at the auction, for the same amount, and encourages the ministry to, in compliance with article 46 of the Constitution, “transfer funds to the Community of Madrid so that the Government regional can buy the property alone. However, De Paco adds in his communication, “the Community of Madrid will celebrate that the Ministry of Culture, as I already stated in my letter of February 2024, makes a specific offer for the aforementioned house, since this way citizens will be able to measure the real commitment of the central government to the culture of our country.