Xàbia’s band loses out on some of the available regional funding
Some funding was not received due to the Department of Culture “being a single person department”.
Tuesday 1st June 2021 – XÀBIA AL DÍA with Mike Smith
The plenary session of Xàbia Council held on Monday approved the institutional declaration which urges the Government to amend a Royal Decree in which it declared that the music bands of the Comunidad Valenciana are Intangible Heritage of Humanity. However, during the Any Other Business section of the meeting, the ‘Centre Artístic Musical de Xàbia (CAM)’ was the centre of debate after losing on a number of grants as well as a number of proposals from the opposition bench.
As reported by XAD last week, the town’s music band has benefited from funding from the Alicante Provincial Council but it transpires that it only receives one line of aid. According to the PP spokeswoman, Rosa Cardona, the band was not able to claim further funding from the provincial government but that was not down to any fault with the musicians themselves.
Councillor Quico Moragues (Culture) confirmed that further aid was not requested “because it is a single-person department” and claimed that “because there was no time to do the project, it would be done for next year”.
In this regard, XAD has discovered that learned about the opening of the application period and, with the help of specialized advice from the Comunidad Valenciana Federation of Musicial Societies, presented various reports and technical documentation to the town council so that they could take advantage of the available funding in line with the required terms and conditions. Applications were submitted by other municipalities but that of Xàbia was apparently not accepted.
From the band’s perspective, they have pointed out that having accessed this line of aid would have made it possible to compensate for the deficit that they have been suffering due to the lack of events over the last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The councillor for culture responded by saying that the band has collected 67% of the annual contract that it has with Xàbia Council, some 24,000 euros.
However, a member of the band, Juan Cardona, is also the spokesmen for Compromís, who requested that spaces be enabled for the band and other cultural associations to rehearse, calling for municipal land to be ceded to the associations and that a building be constructed, a powerful investment but which could be funded by grants, in this case from the Ministry of Culture. He insisted that the current El Surco building is small but could be renovated if necessary.
Enrique Escrivà, spokesman for Ciudadanos, went a step further by committing to cede the future Central Cinema to CAM once the building has been renovated, which would allow it to launch a school of music, a proposal that has been on the table for several years but can’t be fulfilled due to the lack of space.
Although this proposal received no response from the local government, but Moragues did refer to the idea from Compromís, stating that it was unfeasible to add a new floor to the El Surco building and therefore the only option was to construct a new building. (It is worth remembering that, four years ago, the then-candidate for Compromís Vicent Colomer pledged in his electoral interview to add one or two floors to El Surco.
The Compromís motion rejecting the soft tolls approved
In addition, the plenary session unanimously approved the motion presented by Compromís to reject the central government’s proposal to implement soft tolls on highways and dual carriageways from 2023.
