Vox leaves the Miguel Hernández Foundation without help from the Orihuela City Council

The Orihuela City Council appears with its logo in the compilation book of the works submitted to the last Miguel Hernández International Poetry Prize, but the truth is that it did little or nothing for it to continue its journey. The award, among whose promoters was the last Franco mayor of Orihuela, Pedro Cartagena Bueno, has not had municipal support for the first time since then. Now under the reins of the Miguel Hernández Cultural Foundation (founded in 1994), it received nominal aid from the City Council amounting to 6,000 euros. This appears in the current municipal budgets (those of 2018), however, the PP-Vox government team and more specifically the Councilor for Culture, Gonzalo Montoya (Vox), has not approved the call for said subsidy in the Government Board, leaving without that financial aid from the municipality to the cultural entity. An injection that, on the contrary and paradoxically, the Foundation has had no problem obtaining from the Culture area of ​​the Alicante Provincial Council (in the hands of the PP) and from the Department of Culture of the Generalitat (in the hands of Vox).

The president of the Miguel Hernández Cultural Foundation, Aitor Larrabide, acknowledges to THE TRUTH that he saw it coming. He says that in September, before the deadline for justifying the aid expired, he sent all the documentation in case the City Council ventured to approve it 'in extremis'. Since then, he says, nothing has happened and there has been no contact with the Department of Culture, nor with Councilor Montoya.

Not even, he says, Montoya has appeared at any of the events and meetings organized by the Foundation in charge, together with the City Council, of managing the Miguel Hernández House-Museum (the one that receives the most visits per year in the entire city). , as well as the publication and dissemination of books and studies on the life, work and legacy of the Oriolano poet. «The closest thing to any event related to Miguel Hernández was the concert that the Lux Aeterna association gave in the cloister of the Episcopal Palace (current Museum of Sacred Art) to present its album in which it covers several of Miguel's poems and because the piano was his grandfather”.

Calm, but “sad”

Larrabide is still calm because, he says, this money “does not compromise the Foundation's accounts in any way” and at the same time he admits he is “sad because the City Council of Miguel Hernández's hometown turns its back on him for political reasons.” expresses.

In this sense, he highlights that throughout the time he has been in charge of the cultural institution and that of his predecessor, Juan José Sánchez Balaguer, the participation and collaboration of the City Council with the Foundation has been impeccable and uninterrupted and that It was not until the entry of Vox into the municipal executive that things went wrong. “Neither when the PP governed with an absolute majority, nor with the tripartite between PSOE-Los Verdes-CLR, nor later with the PP and the PSOE led by Cs, had the Foundation no longer had the support of the City Council.”

Ecclesiastical drift

The president of the Foundation, like the opposition to the PP-Vox government team, has observed since the arrival of councilor Gonzalo Montoya to the Department of Culture a drift in cultural programming towards the exclusive promotion of the city's enormous sacred heritage. In this sense, before his entry into politics, the mayor of Vox has been publicly known in the city, precisely because of his involvement in Holy Week and, especially, in the festivals and brotherhood of the local patron saint, the Virgin of Monserrate.

Larrabide assures that his criticism does not mean that he is against valuing that part of the city's cultural and tourist offer, but that this cannot be detrimental to the figure of the 'poet of the people' who, in his own way to see, “he is the main ambassador of the city to the world and an example of improvement through determination, effort, culture and education that is in the soul and essence of the entire region.”

PP assistance

Larrabide, even so, breaks a spear in favor of the popular part of the municipal government. He assures that the mayor, Pepe Vegara – in the past known for being a great disseminator and defender of Hernández's work – has shown him by telephone his support for the Foundation and has expressed that money will not be a problem for the Foundation. this year in which the councilor plans to carry out the first budgets in six years. “Both the mayor and the Councilor for Education, Vicente Pina, have always been willing to collaborate and have attended various events and presentations,” he acknowledges.

The president of the Foundation even says that the directors of other house-museums in Spain have expressed their concern and solidarity, as well as the Association of Friends of Miguel Hernández, based in Madrid and of which Larrabide is also a part, is leaving. to address a letter expressing their protest against the decision.

Renewed Board of Trustees

The Foundation renewed its board of trustees positions on December 14. Its governing body includes representatives of institutions such as the Generalitat itself, the Provincial Council, the town councils of Orihuela, Cox and Redován, but also the Fernando de Loaces Public Library and the universities of Murcia, Alicante and the Miguel Hernández de Elche. A staff that was completed by renowned writers, teachers and the previous president of the Foundation.

Regarding the budgets, the Foundation itself stated that “the total amount is the same as that of previous years, and the statutory contributions from institutions are maintained. The Generalitat Valenciana maintains, from 2022, its contribution of 65,000 euros, and the Alicante Provincial Council with 12,000 euros. The Orihuela City Council with the maintenance of the building known as the Hernandianos Studies Center. The rest of the income comes from carryovers from previous years.

«Ideological agenda»

The entry of Vox into the area of ​​Culture was one of the two issues most criticized by the opposition to Pepe Vegara's access to the mayor's office after the elections last May. At the investiture plenary session, in fact, it was the first criticism that both from Cambiemos and from the PSOE disfigured the first mayor just 24 hours after signing his government pact with those of Manuel Mestre. According to both formations, the drift in the management of the municipal area of ​​Culture of the City Council responds to an “ideological agenda” of the extreme right aimed at praising the ecclesiastical and making invisible the legacy of Miguel Hernández for his political commitment to communism during the Civil War and its condition of retaliation by the Franco dictatorship.

When the council appointments were made official last July, the mayor, Pepe Vegara, in response to questions from LA VERDAD, wanted to dispel doubts about the treatment that Miguel Hernández would receive from his government and defended councilor Gonzalo Montoya. «I understand that Gonzalo Montoya is a person sufficiently prepared and qualified to defend the area of ​​Culture in its entire spectrum and defend everything that has to do with Orihuela as it has to be defended by the Councilor for Culture. I am sure that he will not disappoint and will measure up,” were his exact words.

Vox statement

Vox wanted to respond to the Larrabide demonstrations with a statement. They assure that they express “our total support for the figure of Miguel Hernández, our universal poet.” They explain that the non-allocation of the 6,000 euros of the subsidy in 2023 “must be interpreted simply as a problem of competition from other subsidies from other administrations for the same expense. For this reason and to avoid possible future incompatibilities, it has been decided by the Department of Culture to rigorously study the conditions of the aforementioned subsidy, postponing to 2024 the subsidy for this year 2023, which will be added to the corresponding one for this year.

In this sense, they show as proof of their commitment to the figure of the poet “that in the upcoming 2024 budgets a single budget item has been created for the House-Museum. It did not seem relevant enough, nor worthy of our most famous Oriolano, that the operation and maintenance of his House Museum was contemplated in the budget in dispersed items. “It is the first time that the City Council has adopted this decision,” he emphasizes.

Second great controversy

In another vein, this is not the only major controversy in which the current Councilor for Culture is involved. The Vox councilor was already accused two weeks ago by the opposition of allegedly coercing and threatening the councilor of the municipal company Orihuela Cultura Juan José Sánchez Balaguer after taking a stand against the programming of the Teatro Circo for 2024.

Both Sánchez Balaguer, former president of the Miguel Hernández Cultural Foundation, and Aitor Larrabide are directors of the public company in charge of managing the city's museums. Furthermore, at the proposal of the PP-Vox government team. Sánchez Balaguer, in fact, was very harsh with Montoya's management in a letter addressed to this newspaper in which he explained his version of what happened beyond what was expressed by PSOE, Cs and Cambiemos.

Prize of 8,000 euros

For its part, the Miguel Hernández International Poetry Prize is on its way to a new edition. In the previous one, the Canarian writer Pedro Flores won the award for his collection of poems Tocar by Ear, which was also awarded coinciding with the 81st anniversary of the death of the Oriolano poet. The prize is worth 8,000 euros.

The mayor of Orihuela: “Anyone who knows me knows that I have carried the figure of Miguel Hernández wherever I have gone”

The mayor of Orihuela, Pepe Vegara, who this Thursday was receiving the Three Wise Men at the Vega Baja Hospital, has come out in defense of the Foundation. «It is one of the main ones in the cultural management of Orihuela. Miguel Hernández is a fundamental character in the development of the daily cultural life and I would dare say even the socioeconomic life of Orihuela. The defense of the figure of Miguel Hernández, the Oriolano councilor has defended, “is something that has been part of my life since I was a teenager. Anyone who knows me and my career knows the number of performances I have done carrying the figure of Miguel Hernández wherever I have gone, in Spain and outside of Spain. I can't even count the number of Miguel Hernández shows that I have put on, the number of his poems that I have read and even the defense of Miguel Hernández that I have done, I repeat, throughout my life.

In this sense, Vegara dispelled doubts and stated that the Foundation “will have the financial endowment that it has had every year. If this year there has been any type of error, it will be corrected and the amount that the Foundation receives each year will be quickly restored because, I repeat, the Miguel Hernández Foundation and this person who is speaking to you have defended the poet for many years.

A defense that, he exemplified, in his position against Elche letting the legacy of Miguel Hernández's family escape, which ended up in a museum in Quesada (Jaén) and in the hands of the Jaén Provincial Council. «Even when Elche put together what he put together, I was one of those who came out then to criticize him. I wrote it in an article in LA VERTURA and they called me anything but handsome.