The surprising call for general elections on July 23 has put an end to dozens of laws that were pending in Congress and the Senate. Some have been longed for decades, such as the reform of the patronage incentives law, which, after being approved with a huge consensus in Congress, was just today presented to the Senate to be approved or amended. The Cinema law promoted by Miquel Iceta, which was still being processed in Congress and whose decay has meant “a bucket of cold water” for independent producers, has also fallen.
What will indeed be there is a new director of the Reina Sofia Museum. Although there was some doubt, the ongoing selection process, in which Iceta will have to choose from the final three candidates proposed by the center’s board of trustees, and then raise its proposal to the Council of Ministers, continues. From the museum they remember that Councils of Ministers continue to be held. And that the ministers do not take office until after the elections. And even in this case, they say, they can cease and appoint. “Everything follows its course and, if there are no surprises, next week there will be news”, they remark.
On the other hand, there is sadness among those affected by the fall of the reform of the tax regime law for non-profit entities and tax incentives for patronage, a rule that was about to be definitively approved in the Senate. Maite Esteve, from the Catalunya Cultura Foundation, which has fought for the reform, points out that “a great step forward was being taken, barriers were being broken that had not been demolished for 21 years, recognition was being made, progress was being made with the micro-patronageâ€. A step forward, he underlines, “which came from a total political consensus, 90% of the parliamentary party, and now everything is lost, we will return to square one after the elections, we will depend on the sensitivity of the new Government” . “I want to believe that the work done will not be lost, the awareness achieved, what we talked about. But we are sad, it has been a joint work of the whole sector, a collective success, and now there is frustration. But we will not fail because Spain deserves a patronage law worthy of an EU country and because the beneficiaries are entities that support the welfare state by doing what the state does not do, foundations, associations, that need support”.
Jordi Oliva, president of PROA, the Federation of Audiovisual Producers, describes the future Cinema law that promoted Culture as a “bucket of cold water”. “We have been asking for it for a long time, there have been many months of negotiation, now the big concern is to know what will happen after the elections, it may be that the preliminary project is recovered or that everything goes to waste because the new government decide it’s not worth it. Today we have an outdated Cinema law, from 2007”. Among other things, he explains, “the new law was to be called Cinema and Audiovisual Culture, and it incorporated help lines for series, measures that favored the presence of women and the cinemas of the empty Spain that they were positive. We are concerned that this will be left behind and independent producers are also concerned that a text may be included that goes against us, as already happened with the general law on Audiovisual Communication. The new law has a definition that is not optimal, but it is the most appropriate, and we will see if the new law will defend it or not.”
