CITIZEN ROUTE OF CULTURAL AND HERITAGE NEGLECT

Valencia has opted on several occasions for the designation of European Capital of Culture under successive mandates from its Mayor, Rita Barbera. After the loss of this candidature, which was sustained by the simple showcase of the City of Arts and Sciences and the Palau de la Música, and after ignoring the achievements of the cultural policy of the previous local government and restructuring pending projects, the Popular Party (Partido Popular) started to shape the city according to the interests of ideological, financial, business and religious groups supporting its absolute majority.

Since then, after more than 18 years of impunity and with the complicity of the Valencian Parliament where the same party has ruled since 1995, the Mayor has obliterated the image of Valencia as a city open to the different cultures of the Mediterranean, socially advanced and a landmark in many cultural projects and heritage recovery. Instead, the populist leader has projected upon the growth of the city the two imaginary ideological references that characterize her: a well-known conservative dose of provincialism, institutional neo-franquism and retrograde mentality and a neo-liberal policy of juicy business and privatization at public expense, the looting of investment for large events, the adoption of a speculative planning and the destruction of the rich architectural and cultural heritage of the city.

The result of this evolution is the current Valencia, finally located in the center of the current information map thanks to the numerous cases of corruption and waste unrivaled in the Western European stage, In this “Citizen Route of Cultural and Heritage Neglect” you will be able to see an unacceptable privatization of leisure and culture (Las Arenas Municipal Complex, the BioParc Zoo, the Aquarium and now the rest of CACSA, etc…), a disproportionate budget cut that reduces the access to libraries and museums, the disgraceful transfer of public goods to related sectors (swaps to property developers, Catholic hierarchy and football clubs), mismanagement of public money and neglect, premeditated destruction of the cultural and architectural heritage of Valencia (Camí del Pouet in Campanar district, medieval farmstead in Benicalap district, popular modernist architecture in Cabanyal district, protected orchards of La Punta district, etc…).