Compromís bets for cultural management as a measure against the depopulation suffered by Alcalà-Alcossebre

Maria Sorlí, representative of the group Compromís per Alcalà i Alcossebre has recorded on December the 19th, her vision on this new body of citizen participation that, at the request of Compromís, was approved by the Municipal Plenary on 30 September. Culture, Heritage, Identity and Local Development are concepts that, according to the head of Culture of this municipal group, Ana M. Martín, should prevail in any action that can be carried out from the Municipal Council of Culture.

The MCC is a body for citizen participation, normally made up of political representatives and also representatives of the municipality's cultural associations and cultural professionals. In the words of Martín herself, "it should be a body that does not depend on the government in power and which guarantees stable and sustainable cultural programming from which neighbours of all ages, nationalities and social conditions benefit directly. In short, a guarantor of a cultural policy defined from the electoral programme". It also informs us that this cultural policy should be based on the Agenda 21 for Culture, signed by the local governments and cities in 2004, and be based on the document 'Culture 21: Actions' signed by this same body in March 2015. And he says "This is nothing more than analysing where we are on a cultural level, thinking about where we want to be in a few years' time and defining how to get from where we are to where we want to be. We think that the MCC should demand that the Department of Culture works on the basis of Strategic Planning".

The spokesperson for the municipal group, Sorlí, presented a Motion for Economic Reconstruction and against Depopulation in April of this year, urging the Town Hall to create an Emergency Plan. In point number 5 of this Plan, it was proposed to create a cultural and educational agenda that was sufficiently attractive by offering quality leisure activities that would encourage young people to stay in the municipality. This motion by the Compromís group was translated into an institutional declaration dated 20 May 2020, i.e. a document signed by all the political groups, confirming their agreement. Thus, the councilor continued to present another motion proposing the creation of the Municipal Council of Culture as a participatory body promoting a Cultural Action Plan in the municipality of Alcalá de Xivert-Alcossebre. As we have already said, this motion was approved by the Plenary on 30th September, as well as Institutional Declaration. Continuing with the work, and even knowing that it is the government team who has the power to implement the already approved MCC, the municipal group led by Sorlí, has submitted by registration, dated Dec 19th, a proposal on its vision of what the work of this Council should consist of. In the registered document, it specifies that the MCC must demand a well-defined cultural policy from the Town Council that supports and strengthens the LOCAL CULTURAL SYSTEM, and then sets out what this policy should consist of, with some general objectives and some basic strategies. In this way, Compromís contributes ideas that it already put forward in its election programme.

The general objectives it sets out are five: to work on the basis of strategic planning (analysis, implementation and evaluation); to involve all cultural and social agents in the programming; to strengthen the activities of the associations and to introduce regular professional programming; to commit to creative and cultural tourism; and finally, to digitize the processes as a guarantee of sustainability.

All this with the aim of giving the relevance it deserves to all the historical, archaeological, architectural, natural and underwater heritage that the municipality has; both tangible and intangible. Therefore, as a first strategy they propose to elaborate their own census (completing the existing one) that will help to classify, describe and divulge this heritage. From this point on, it would be easier to propose concrete actions, based on the real needs of each cultural asset inventoried. The official cultural agenda, personnel to support the associations, a cultural marketing plan, together with other measures to be implemented, are those proposed in the document presented last Wednesday the 19th by Entry Registry, by María Sorlí. You can see the complete document, as well as the rest of the motions we refer to, on the Compromís website http://alcala.compromis.net/