The Alpedrete City Council, in the Community of Madrid, has decided to rectify and reinstate the names of Plaza Paco Rabal and the Asunción Balaguer House of Culture, after changing their names, a couple of weeks ago, to Plaza de España and ‘The Quarry’.
This was decided by the Alpedrete Government team, made up of PP and Vox, after an emergency meeting that was held yesterday afternoon.
As explained by the Consistory in a statement, “the will of the neighbors had been reflected, to name a road space in the municipality with Plaza de España, as well as Las Canteras for some municipal space.”
”It is evident that we have not been able to explain the intention of this change, which, at no time, was intended to undermine or despise the cultural legacy of two people loved, not only by the residents of Alpedrete, but by the country as a whole, and to comply with another wish. existing in the municipality,” the Consistory has stated.
Likewise, from Alpedrete they have reiterated their “respect and affection” for Paco Rabal and Asunción Balaguer, so in the next Government Meeting the name of the square and the cultural center will be restored.
These events have taken place after the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, assured yesterday that she is “totally against” the decision of the popular mayor of the municipality of Alpedrete to withdraw the names of Paco Rabal and Asunción Balaguer from the municipality.
“From the Community of Madrid and the PP of Madrid we are totally against the decision,” Ayuso wrote on the social network .
The national spokesperson for the PP, Borja Sémper, has spoken along the same lines through the social network, who has agreed with the Madrid president’s request for rectification: “Completely right (…) This decision is nonsense. We trust in an urgent rectification by the city council,” Sémper has published.
Last Thursday, the Más Madrid and PSOE groups in the Madrid Assembly criticized in the regional Parliament the decision adopted on April 26 in the Alpedrete City Hall, where PP and Vox govern, to remove the plaques honoring Asunción Balaguer and Paco Rabal of the House of Culture and the square to which they gave their name, respectively.
Furthermore, on April 26, dozens of residents of Alpedrete gathered in the center of the town to express their indignation at the municipal government’s decision and demand that the name change of the square be reversed.
“It has taken them two and a half weeks to reverse course,” said Benito Rabal, who pointed out that he found out “from the press” about the Alpedrete City Council’s rectification.
“Reason has triumphed, thanks to the popular mobilization, the opposition parties, the media and the fact that the heavyweights of the PP have exerted strength because they saw what was coming to them,” added the son of Paco Rabal and Asunción Balaguer.
Paco Rabal was born in Águilas (Murcia) and Asunción Balaguer in Manresa (Barcelona), but the couple settled in Alpedrete in the early 1980s in the company of their children, where they lived until their deaths in 2001 and 2019, respectively. .
