The spokesman for United We Can (UP) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife has announced that it will request the constitution of a municipal investigation commission to clarify the administrative files to create a Rodin museum in the cityproject paralyzed after the resignation of the Parisian museum to continue.
Trujillo has reported that he will defend this proposal at the plenary session of the City Council next Friday, after “numerous voices from the culture sector” questioned “the cultural value of this initiative and the credibility of the economic forecasts on which it was based, with a public expense of 16 million euros in copies of sculptures”.
The reason that led to projecting that museum is still unknown and “the reasons why the government group (CC-PP) was untrue when it stated that various possible cultural projects had been analysed,” the UP spokesman said.
“We know that information was hidden from the public and the opposition during the processing of the file and it is obvious that there are no guarantees that the same will not be done again in the future,” he says.
The mayor wants it to be clarified why the economic impact study was tendered among companies chosen by the municipal government that “had managers linked to each other.”
Nor has “the questionable appraisal of Rodin’s works been clarified, which was assumed without further ado, as if there were no obvious objections to make.”
In addition, according to Trujillo, “no measure has been adopted so that in the future, with this type of issue, the level of demand from our local Administration is greater.”
Ramón Trujillo considers it positive that Santa Cruz de Tenerife has gotten rid of the “expensive waste that they wanted to implement”, but it remains to “analyze what has happened and draw conclusions so that they do not act in the same way again”.
The councilor quotes the expert Elena Vozmediano, who pointed to “the link between the winner of the project feasibility report and the other two companies that participated in the tender.”
That winner was present at meetings about the project “together with the director of an important consulting firm who had not been hired by the City Council for the project and who had a history of influencing Ciudadanos, the party from which the motion of no confidence was promoted.” in 2020 which meant the return of José Manuel Bermúdez to the mayor’s office and the CC-PP government”, the UP spokesperson abounds.
It also indicates that in April 2022 the appraisal of the sculptural works was awarded for 12,600 euros plus IGIC to the General Canary Islands Foundation of the University of La Laguna, “appraisal that was prepared by an expert in Rodin’s work, Jérome Le Blay, and by a judicial expert, professor at the ULL and art consultant, Nuria Segovia Martín”.
“Le Blay cannot be considered an independent appraiser due to his close relationship with the Rodin Museum in Paris and the appraisal was signed in June 2022 on behalf of CoteArt, a company of his that had declared bankruptcy in July 2021 and which since October it was in the process of judicial liquidation ”, denounces Trujillo.
The councilor points out that Unidas Podemos asked a specialized company for an estimate to find out how much the resin reproduction of Rodin’s work “The Thinker” would cost, with dimensions of 189x98x145 centimeters, and it was valued at 18,200 euros, while the City Council was going to pay 110.00 euros to the Rodin Museum.
