The Collective of Critics of Girona loses the management of the Truffaut Cinema

GironaThe hitchcockian thriller of Cinema Truffaut has come to an end. After weeks of extensions and uncertainty, the Girona City Council announced this Friday that it has finally awarded the public tender to the company Rambla de l’Art - Cambrils, which had achieved a higher score, for economic reasons, than the current project of the Col·lectiu de Crítics de Girona. Therefore, Truffaut will cease to be managed by the non-profit association that created the project and has managed it exemplarily for the last 25 years. In the next fifteen business days, the critics will leave their positions and close the cinema, awaiting the arrival of the new managers.

The final decision was made after this Friday's government board meeting, in which Mayor Lluc Salellas and Guanyem Girona (3 votes) voted in favor of revoking the tender result, while the representatives of Junts and Esquerra (4 votes) opted to confirm the award to the Tarragona-based company, owned by exhibitor Toni Badimon. The division of votes has created a significant government crisis, which may have political consequences in the coming weeks.

"Today was a day to start saving the historic project of the Col·lectiu de Crítics de Girona. We voted against this award because we have been working for weeks and justifying through reports that there is a general interest so that, as provided for by law, the contract is not awarded," explained the mayor, Lluc Salellas, who lamented: "Unfortunately, we did not obtain the necessary political majority to move forward with this proposal."

Once the result of the public tender was made public, decided by a difference of only 4,000 euros in favor of the Cambrils company, the City Council asked the Col·lectiu de Crítics to accept a few months' extension while all political and legal options were explored so that the municipal cinema could continue under the same management.

The result of the April competition was met with great surprise and concern by many cinema users and cinephiles in general, and provoked an avalanche of support for the project led by the Critics' Collective, which was experiencing its peak audience numbers. Organizations such as the Catalan Federation of Cineclubs and the Catalan Association of Film Critics and Writers (ACCEC) sided with the Critics' Collective, and the Catalan Film Academy promoted a letter of support for Cinema Truffaut, signed by, among others, filmmakers like Carla Simón, Jonás Trueba, Isaki Lacuesta, Neus Ballús, and Carlos Marques-Marcet, actors Àlex Brendemühl, Enric Auquer, and Carlos Cuevas, producers Tono Folguera and Isona Passola, and festivals L'Alternativa and D'A. "It is fundamental to understand that facilities like Truffaut cannot depend solely on economic criteria – the letter states –. Privatizing them or subjecting them to the logic of profit puts at risk everything that has been built over decades. Culture is not a luxury, it is a common good, it is a right. And it needs protected spaces to grow and reach everyone".

All these voices, added to those of authorized people from the cultural world who have presented a formal written statement to the City Council endorsing the work of the Collective, were intended to legally justify the mayor's decision of "asset of public interest" to revoke the competition. However, in the end, the councilors from Junts and Esquerra backed down, and the motion did not prosper.