Friday, December 22, 2023, 18:16
The last board of directors of the municipal company Orihuela Cultural ended in the most abrupt, unexpected and even, they say, “gross” way. Screams, resignations and even threats that the three formations that make up the opposition to the government team PP-Vox, PSOE, Ciudadanos and Cambiemos, have come out to denounce this Friday. Specifically, they claim that the Councilor for Culture, Gonzalo Montoya (Vox), tried to intimidate one of the three non-political advisors of the public company in charge of managing the city's museums. More than enough reason, said councilors Mar Ezcurra (Cs), Leticia Pertegal (Cambiemos) and Aynara Navarro (PSOE), to request the mayor, Pepe Vegara, to decree the immediate dismissal of Montoya.
The meeting of the board of directors, which was chaired by the Councilor for Education, Vicente Pina, in the absence of the mayor and president of the entity, had seven points for the day. Only the first was approved: “Approval of the minutes of the previous sessions.” It was reaching the second, “Approval of the programming for the first quarter of 2024 and advancement of the rest of 2024”, when the tension was chewed to extremes rarely seen.
According to opposition councilors, one of the non-political councilors refused to give his approval to the cultural programming. Something that was solved, supposedly, with Gonzalo Montoya's threat to him, warning him that, if he opposed, he would proceed to remove him as councilor of Orihuela Cultural. A decision that, in any case, responds exclusively to the mayor as president of the entity.
Within the board of directors of the municipal company are representatives of the local executive, the mayor of Culture, Gonzalo Montoya (Vox), the mayor of Education, Vicente Pina (PP) and the mayor-president himself, Pepe Vegara (PP). On behalf of the three opposition parties are the aforementioned councilors and there would be another third of appointed people who are not politicians. They are Aitor Larrabide, María Espinosa and Juan José Sánchez Balaguer. Director of the Miguel Hernández Cultural Foundation, municipal official and professor-doctor at the Miguel Hernández University, they are three recognized faces of the cultural sphere in the city.
Apparently, and always according to the opposition's version, one of the three would have refused to vote in favor of the second point, receiving an alleged reprimand from Montoya. “A Dantesque, inadmissible and embarrassing situation that cannot go unpunished,” said the Orange councilor and former Councilor for Culture, Mar Ezcurra.
Montoya denies that he threatened the director with dismissal, but rather that the way in which he opposed the management's proposal made him ugly.
According to the three opposition councilors, at the time of voting on the programming and upon verifying that he did not have the necessary votes for its approval, Montoya publicly addressed one of the councilors who abstained from voting in favor, telling him «I brought you to the board of directors to support us. If you do not vote in favor, I will revoke you. Something that the affected councilor himself made public so that it could be recorded in the minutes.
Given this fact, they say, another of the councilors wanted to resign at the same moment and even left the session. “We cannot consent to coercion, threats and bad manners towards a councilor for the mere fact of voting freely on a proposal that lacked important and relevant data,” denounced Mar Ezcurra.
“Given this harassment, coercion and intimidation of one of the councilors of the municipal society by not casting a vote in favor, the call had to be suspended,” explained, for her part, Cambiemos councilor Leticia Pertegal, who He has also assured that “we have criminal responsibility for our decisions within the board of directors and we will not tolerate anyone coercing us in this arrogant way.”
For her part, the socialist councilor, Aynara Navarro, has assured that “this is not the first time that we have witnessed these authoritarian and despotic attitudes on the part of the Councilor for Culture, both in the Plenary Session and in the various gatherings of which we have formed part. It is inadmissible and unjustifiable that Mr. Vegara maintains in the government team a councilor with a total lack of a code of ethics or conduct, which is why we demand that he cease.
“Destructive” attack
The councilor of Culture, Gonzalo Montoya, tells this newspaper that it is true that “some of the councilors did not like the programming. There was a lot of discussion, a lot of exchange of opinions and one of the councilors attacked the management proposal very strongly and I told him that we had not chosen him for that. But I am not referring to the meaning of his vote, but to the forms and the very destructive attack that he made.
He points out that the opposition, with its statements this Friday, “has taken everything out of context” and that they have taken advantage of a discussion to “get political gain.” “It has been said that I was going to fire someone, when they know that I cannot do that, nor can I threaten to do so,” he says, flatly denying the alleged coercion. “The advisor was only upset by his behavior because of the attack he made on the management's programming,” he insists.
Likewise, he describes as “very excessive” the request for his dismissal by the three groups that make up the opposition and censures “the personal disqualifications” that, he says, have been poured out on him. «It seems very sad to me. They know what happened and I never raised my voice or threatened anyone. But, unfortunately, this is usually politics », he laments.
Items not detailed
According to PSOE, Ciudadanos and Cambiemos, the proposal submitted by the mayor of Culture to the board of directors presented a multitude of inconcretions. Items of thousands of euros with concepts, they say, as open as “concert to be defined” in which the company that would be contracted was detailed, but not the artist that these companies would bring to Orihuela.
Montoya acknowledges that there was a “concert to be determined” game, but insists that it has already been said to correct it. “That's why it was decided to suspend and postpone the council, to correct it.”
Criticized programming
In these almost six months since the new PP-Vox government team arrived, Gonzalo Montoya's management of cultural programming has been especially criticized. From the opposition, they agree to point out its lack of diversity and great religious load, as well as recriminate controversial decisions such as the suspension of the Night of the Souls.
The PSOE also denounced a month ago that the salaries of Orihuela Cultural workers were in danger. With the items included in the 2018 budgets (those currently in force) exhausted, the government team had to take money from the treasury remnants to finance the payrolls of the managers and guardians of the Oriola museums.
Points not debated
Pending matters of great importance have remained on the table of the company's board of directors. The third point was to put out to tender the contract for service, technical assistance and ordinary maintenance of the stage and stage equipment and facilities, sound, lighting and electricity of the Teatro Circo.
The fourth point was to approve the rental rates of the Circo Theater, the fifth was to approve the work calendar of the staff and sixth was the tender for the financial audit service for the annual accounts of 2024, 2025 and 2026. Finally, there was an eighth point of requests and questions.
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