The PSC-Girona pel Canvi has lashed out at the municipal government's management of the Girona Crea 2025 aid call after the City Council had to partially redo the procedure due to an appeal and a legal report that detected irregularities in the guarantees.
The opposition's criticism focuses on a paradox that places the conflict at the heart of municipal cultural policy. Aid intended to provide stability to the cultural sector has ended up, in the words of Ferran Rafa, generating doubts and uncertainty among potential beneficiaries.
The City Council redid the call after an appeal and a legal report
The socialist group maintains that resuming the procedure was necessary but considers it insufficient. In their opinion, the correction comes after the legal route forced the council to review a call that had already drawn complaints from the sector for lack of transparency and impartiality.
Ferran Rafa, councilor of the PSC-Girona pel Canvi, places the main reproach to the municipal government there. The councilor understands that the local executive did not react when the first objections appeared and only made a move when the appeal and the legal report called into question the guarantees of the process.
"The City Council sets a bad precedent and the doubts will not disappear by decree. Girona's cultural sector, which already has enough difficulties to get by, should have a source of security in the city council's aid and not a nest of uncertainty" - Ferran Rafa, councilor of the PSC-Girona pel Canvi
For the socialists, the problem is not limited to a technical adjustment of the call. The group interprets that the need to redo part of the procedure sets a political precedent in the relationship between the Girona City Council and the city's cultural sector.
Ferran Rafa links the conflict to the Truffaut competition
The PSC links what happened with Girona Crea 2025 to other recent decisions by the municipal government in cultural matters, including the Truffaut competition. Ferran Rafa maintains that in these files, economic criteria have been imposed above the general interest or the innovation capacity of the projects.
Within this framework, the councilor questions the way of managing cultural initiatives linked to Girona when the procedure is reduced to an administrative logic. The criticism points to the political direction of the area and not just to the specific procedure now corrected.
"Without political leadership, episodes like the one with the scholarships or the Truffaut competition occur. Wanting to manage the granting of a project identified with Girona in a strictly administrative way through intangibles that have capital importance in the field of culture is the beginning of a bad end" - Ferran Rafa, councilor of PSC-Girona pel Canvi
The municipal group has announced that it will scrutinize each phase of the new processing. The requirement set by PSC-Girona pel Canvi for the redone procedure involves maintaining transparency, seriousness, guarantees, and impartiality from the call to the resolution.
Ferran Rafa closed that warning with a sentence addressed to the municipal government regarding the new processing of Girona Crea 2025. "If the errors return, we will say it again."