The Prosecutor’s Office of the Valencian Community has filed the complaint for the donation of the former director of the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) Nuria Enguita to the Todolí Citrus Foundation of some unproductive land, a complaint that caused her resignation.
As reported this Wednesday by the Foundation in a statement, the Prosecutor’s Office “has taken just two days to file the complaint presented by the vice president of the Valencian Government and Minister of Culture, Vicente Barrera -Vox-, for the donation of two properties rustic to the Todolí Citrus Foundation” by Enguita.
Enguita resigned on February 21 as director of the IVAM due to the presentation of this complaint and “the continued attacks” against her based, she said then, “on falsified information” and considering that she did not have the support of the Valencian Government. The art critic Vicente Todolí, president of the Todolí Citrus Foundation, was one of the members of the tribunal that appointed Enguita as director of the IVAM in 2020. Enguita was named the new artistic director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon on March 14.
According to the Foundation’s statement, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has informed the Foundation that the investigation proceedings “were archived on March 8, 2024 because, in what was narrated in them, there did not appear sufficient signs of criminal nature.”
Vicente Todolí has ??stated in said statement that the “rapid outcome” of this matter “reveals the lack of responsible behavior of the department of the Vice Presidency of the Valencian Government in giving legal, and obviously political and also media, action to an alleged irregularity whose false terms were easily verifiable”.
“It is worth qualifying the relevance in this sense that, at no time, did Mrs. Enguita donate to me two plots of land, dry and abandoned in the mountainous area of ??the Vall de la Gallinera, but rather she did so to the Todolí Citrus Foundation , of which I am president without any remuneration, quite the opposite, since I cover its deficit with my own money as can be seen in the annual accounts that, as an entity of interest, are deposited at the headquarters of the protectorate of the Valencian foundations”, he added.
According to Todolí, “in the course of this serious incident, not only has a crisis been caused in the management of the IVAM, a museum managed by the Ministry of Culture itself, but serious damage has also been inflicted on my professional reputation and goodwill.” name, as well as the work of a non-profit foundation dedicated to safeguarding the environment and the ancient Valencian agricultural culture.
Todolí has ??demanded public explanations and that responsibilities be assumed, and has recalled that on February 27 he asked Vice President Vicente Barrera in writing that, “the data that they have provided to the Prosecutor’s Office being false and the consequences being so serious” for him, that he proceed to “rectify said written complaint and clarify to the Prosecutor’s Office the errors committed and the lack of verification of the statements made in an article, prior to the presentation of said complaint.”
The president of the Todolí Citrus Foundation has assured that he has not received a response to said letter, nor has he been informed through the Department of Culture of the file of his complaint, “or that he has been notified ex officio, and that he should foreseeably be aware of it.” .
Asked about it in the corridors of Les Corts, Barrera limited himself to describing the filing of the complaint as “great news” today: “I am very happy for Mrs. Enguita, for whom I have enormous professional consideration and affection. personal”, added the first vice president of the Valencian Government, on whose department the IVAM depends.
