Alonso Acevedo, spokesperson for CC in Puerto de la Cruz, assures that the Municipal Archive facilities suffer from a “state of abandonment”, which “puts historical documents for our city in danger.” For this reason, he criticizes the local government’s rejection of a nationalist initiative that tried to “safeguard the history and collective memory contained in the Municipal Historical Archive.”
CC proposed adapting the facilities or searching for a new location, digitizing the documentation of historical relevance to guarantee and facilitate access to it, as well as signing a collaboration agreement with the Cabildo to be a provisional depository, with the commitment to keep a copy of the documentation in Puerto de la Cruz, the period of receipt and return of temporarily transferred documentation.
Acevedo defends that the proposal aimed to “immediately launch” the adaptation of the units and implement technical and technological improvements. “This government and this mayor, who talks so much about culture and who created a Portuense Identity department, the only thing he understands is music festivals and contracts of almost 15,000 euros with which little by little they are emptying the municipal coffers.”
The municipal government defends the measures it implemented to improve the Municipal Archive and blames the previous management of CC and PP that “it left the area dedicated to its safeguarding without personnel, putting the continuity of the service at serious risk, a danger that the Mayor’s Office avoided four years ago by quickly assigning personnel to the area on a provisional basis.”
In the last plenary session, the Councilor for Sociocultural Services, Jesús Reverón, made a chronology of what happened in the last decade that explains the current situation of the Archive, “for which there is a clear and public commitment since the 2019-2023 mandate, with the Mayor, Marco Gonzalez“, at the head of the area, to bring this incalculable legacy up to date and at the service of the citizens of Porto.”
He explained that a graduate in Fine Arts carries out research and cataloging work and announced, with barely a month and a half in office, that, based on technical criteria, in this mandate they are working with other administrations on the possible provisional transfer “to some institutional unit “that safeguards and guards said content with all guarantees, a process that requires following rigorous protocols due to the importance of the material consigned.” The councilor gave as an example the library that forms the legacy of José Agustín Álvarez Rixo, which guards the University of La Laguna.
