The situation of the Musical Association of Santa Cecilia is complex to the point that it is considering, for the first time, its performance in the Fiestas del Cristo de Tacoronte that begin next month because it has been three years without receiving the City Council subsidy that amounts to 40,000 euros per year.
This amount, signed through an agreement with the Consistory seven years ago, allows the musicians to defray the expenses and transfers and since the beginning of this mandate it is not received, with which the accumulated debt is 120,000 euros.
“As president I am forced to take measures and since last year I have addressed all the festival commissions in the municipality to inform them that for reasons of force majeure and much to our regret we cannot play at the festivals in the different neighborhoods”, Francisco Abreu argues.
The decision to stop was adopted unanimously by the musicians and also affects the Youth Band, the Polyphonic Choir and the Pulse and Pick Orchestra, a total of 250 people.
However, Abreu hopes that the situation will be reversed and that the mayor, José Daniel Díaz, keeps his word to take the pending debt to the next plenary session to be approved. This was promised at the band’s annual Assembly, held in June, on which occasion it also reported that the delay in collection is due to not having a fixed controller and working with a budget extended from 2019, as confirmed yesterday to this newspaper. In addition, he added that in the subsidy file that will be taken to the plenary session, those of the different groups and associations that are pending will be included.
“At no time have we stopped rehearsing, we are prepared, so if the mayor keeps his word we will play at the Fiestas del Cristo,” Abreu stresses. In addition, the Association undertakes to do so in the different acts and tributes organized by the City Council to justify the actions not carried out and to offer an extraordinary concert for the enjoyment of the public.
Abreu shows his discomfort because the Culture area has tried to contact other gangs “who have refused in solidarity with us.”
The Councilor for Culture, Sandra Izquierdo, also assures that all the bands integrated into the Federation “are in favor of first solving the problem with the Santa Cecilia Group and I would not like to see that the Christ of Tacoronte is on the street without it. The priority of the Government is to pay but we have a complicated situation in the City Council”, she declares.
Izquierdo, who “inherited” this problem when arriving at the Council in October 2021, hopes to find a solution shortly and that after two years of pandemic the parties go ahead “as the tacoronteros deserve, reunion and without problems that the muddy”.
