The fulminating dismissal of the director of Labor Art and Industrial Creation, in Gijón, has uncovered the Pandora’s box of an entity that opened its doors in 2007 and whose artistic direction has already passed five people, throughout these years.
The dismissal of the Gijon architect, Pablo de Soto, took place at the extraordinary meeting of the Board of Trustees of the La Labor Foundation, held on Monday in extraordinary session and composed of the Minister of Culture, Vanessa Gutiérrez, its president; the General Director of Heritage, Pablo León, as vice president; and three vowels representing the Government of Asturias, the City of Gijón and the Port Authority of Gijón, respectively.
All of them voted in favor of the dismissal of the manager, based on the content of a report prepared by the General Services Inspection, where the suitability of some of the decisions taken by the then Director is questioned and alleged irregularities are evident in the Management and collection of invoices, or the imputation to the budget of the Center for Expenses outside your staff.
Pablo de Soto was appointed director of Labor Art and Industrial Creation in March 2022, after overcoming a selection process in which he had to compete with more than seventy aspiring people, for the next five years.
Now, without even having turned three at the head of the center, it has been dismissed by alleged “loss of confidence”, as recognized by the Board of Trustees in a press release, officially, in which there was no reference to the Report published in the Transparency Portal of the Principality, but which had been the alleged trigger for the vote of its cessation.
What did not make public the Principality was the report of allegations that Pablo de Soto presented on January 24, three days after the first meeting was held at which his cessation was going to be debated, despite the fact that he did not know, he explains, he explains, he explains, because the agenda that passed to the firm (served as secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Labor Foundation) did not include that point, which was added afterwards.
This is a 22 -page report, to which Eldiario.es Asturias has had access, in which 26 documentary tests such as letters, mails or testimonies of workers are also provided, in which the until now director of the Art Center He denies or explains, point by point, each of the imputations made against his person by the general inspection.
The allegations document presented, for example, the reason why he did not respond to the report at the time of receiving it, on November 13, 2024, when he was on paternal leave, nor when joining, on December 3, then He had to face the elaboration of the 2025 action plan; Exhibition preparation Digital machines: technology, industry, societythat he himself chattered and opened last Friday; or the writing of the SSTELELL application for the Horizon Europe call.
A total of 46 pages that document the “bad work climate” in the center, where seven people work and there are two clearly differentiated groups, and that comes to respond to another initial report prepared mostly “according to the considerations provided by the boss of the General Services of Labor Arte Center ”, from which some workers say they have received pressures, according to documentation provided to the Board of Trustees by De Soto,” to position themselves against the director. ”
The allegations presented by the dismissed director also include clarifications about what the inspection report addresses as irregularities in expenses or invoices management. This refers to two payments made to a card, which in total totaling 65.65 euros, “generated by own and relevant positions to the position”, which were subsequently remedied “to avoid any suspicion,” he details.
In the case of other expenses mentioned in the Report, De Soto points out in his allegations that are linked to the activity of the web developer, in charge of the design and development of the new labor website.
Finally, and in relation to the elaboration of the project for the European candidacy utopia is not an island, which labor presents the European Pavilion Award, devised and held in collaboration with the commissioner who, in this case is his wife, and the organization for the organization for The one who works, and “shaved” in the inspection report, Pablo de Soto defends that the fact of having developed this project through a collaboration saved the center between 6,000 and 9,000 euros, which is what the technical assists cost For this type of work.
He also added, “this collaboration was explained to the Director General of Heritage, Pablo León, Vía Mail and Telephone, in November 2023, and to the Board of Trustees, at the meeting of December 26 of that same year,” defending in this way that He acted “with total transparency.”
The best workplace figures art
The figures that Pablo de Soto’s address has put on the table, both from the quantitative point of view (number of people visitors) and qualitative (valuation system put underway to know the experiences of its visitors), they are the best registered by the center since its opening in 2007.
Of the 24,735 visitors of 2021, at 50,674 of 2023 and the 62,636 (86,636 telling the activities carried out outside the center) of the past 2024. All this has allowed the work center of art and industrial production to be the equipment of those characteristics that greater increase in the number of visitors registered during the year 2024, standing at 23.8 percent.
The accounts, audited annually by Fidelitas, show a growth in both income and treasury, having closed 2022 with 152,714.62 euros and exercise 2024 with 398,281.05 euros. Regarding the accounts of 2023, according to Audit Report of TA3G ETL Global, the Art Center presents a positive surplus of 127,941.38 euros at the end of that year.
A cessation with these data could remember, although saving the distances by the political sign of the regional government, which was produced by the last 2023 in the Valencian Community, with the dismissal of José Luis Pérez Pont as manager of the Museus Consortium of the Community.
Adace support
From the Association of Contemporary Art Directors of Spain (Adace) have manifested their rejection of the cessation of Pablo de Soto, ensuring that “again we attend the beaters of a professional adducing vagas conjectures and relying on a rarely rare work climate, the result of a usual conception of institutions as small plots of power” .
According to Adace, this dismissal, which occurs in a “fulminant and unidirectional” way without allowing the affected to respond properly, produces a manifest helplessness and vulnerability.
Likewise, the management proposal of Pablo de Soto, emphasize, It has been a renewal of institutional practices that have supposed an improvement both in the influx of public, and in the renewal of commitment to the citizenship of Asturias.
Support for the director’s work that was also transferred by several workers to the Board of Trustees, through the sending of several letters in which they recorded their recognition to the work done by De Soto.
The latter, collecting legal advice, does not rule out launching the pertinent actions against this dismissal that he considers “unfair and unjustified.”
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