The Valencia City Council has decided to accelerate the procedures to remove the sculpture in tribute to the 15-M movement and assures that it will be removed before the celebration of October 9. The council has confirmed that its removal will take place “in the coming days” and that the piece will not be replaced by any other, since the Department of Culture has considered that it does not fit with the furniture of the Ciutat Vella Plan and that it will be It must “unite the image of the street furniture in harmony with the Town Hall”, a monument recognized as an Asset of Cultural Interest.
The removal of the piece will be carried out under the contract for conservation, repair and renewal of the pavements and pavements of the streets and roads of Valencia, dependent on the Delegation of Works Management and Infrastructure Maintenance.
The withdrawal was part of the electoral program of the now mayor María José Catalá as a candidate for mayor, who at the time reiterated that the local government had installed it “without going through a plenary session or any commission” and accused the then mayor Joan Ribó of acting “only for some citizens.”
Instead, Catalá proposed in the last electoral campaign to pay tribute to Valencian pyrotechnicians, with the placement of a monolith or sculpture in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, considered by professionals as “the Cathedral of Gunpowder.”
Raised in May 2021, the monolith was located in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento de València when ten years of the social movement were completed. At the time, the first mayor, Joan Ribó, assured that “València would not be as we know it today if it were not for the involvement and determined action of the citizen movements that, on many occasions, have had this square as a space meeting and vindication center.”
In addition to the monolith, there was also an exhibition, Dreaming a lot and sleeping little: the 15M in Valencia, also located in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento in which, through 34 images taken by 16 photojournalists, the causes that promoted this movement, its development, were discussed. and consequences.
