The Parliament ratified today the appointment of the Arts Council members nominated by José Montilla, the Generalitat’s President. The Council is an unprecedented organism in Spain inspired by the Arts Councils established years ago in European countries like England. Its function is to aid in the definition of arts policy and to offer, with independence, a cultural administration of assistance to creativity not dependent on the Government’s guidelines. In the end, we are dealing with an attempt to “degovernalize” the cultural realm.
The voting concluded with 68 votes in favour, which came out from the parties that make up Catalonia’s government, and with the opposition groups’ abstention (64 votes): Convergència i Unió, Partido Popular and Ciutadans. There was not a single vote against. Therefore, the members of the Arts Council are the philosopher Xavier Antic, the architect and designer Juli Capella, the writer Jordi Coca, the translator Manuel Forcano, the gallery owner Chantal Grande, the lawyer Francesco Guardans I Cambió, the actress Sílvia Munt, the cultural administrator Marta Oliveras, the art critic Pilar Parcerisas, the filmmaker Rosa Vergés and the intellectual and ex-director of the Generalitat’s Cultural Promotion Department, Xavier Bru de Sala, who will be most likely the new Council’s President.
All the candidates, with the exception of Silvia Munt, followed the voting process from the guests’ tribune. The members will take up their posts next Monday at Parliament. Although the opposition groups decided to abstain, they have cooperated in highlighting the suitability and professional profile of the elected members. The CiU’s deputy, Carme Vidal, in charge of explaining the vote of its parliamentary group, even gave them a standing ovation when the results were known.
Vidal affirmed they approve of each candidate, but abstain because they think Catalonia’s government did not follow a correct procedure. She criticized Montilla’s meeting last Saturday with the 11 members of the Council, days before being ratified by the Parliament. The nationalist deputy also expressed the music sector’s complaints, manifested through associations like Unió de Musics de Catalunya, who do not feel represented by the new organisation, since there is not a musical expert among its members.
In spite of this, the Arts Council Law makes clear that its composition must not respond to artistic sector or discipline quotas. Besides, the possible voids will be filled with the experts’ commissions that will be constituted for each area, including music, and that will advise the new organisation. On her behalf, Marina Llansana, from Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, asked the members to be ambitious and not to limit itself only to Catalonia’s cultural frontiers, but to also ‘listen to all Catalan speaking territories’.