The children of Paco Rabal and Asunción Balaguer were the first to report that the City Council of the Madrid town of Alpedrete, governed by PP and VOX, had decided to remove the names of the artists from a square and a cultural center. However, the world of culture , as well as the neighbors did not take long to join the indignation. Now, Génova and Ayuso have also asked the popular mayor, Juan Rodríguez Fernández Alfaro, to reverse.

Specifically, they have been the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the spokesperson for the popular parties, Borja Sémper, who with separate publications on the social network X have shown their indignation at Fernández Alfaro’s decision. Ayuso has spoken on behalf of the “Community of Madrid and PP of Madrid” who assures They have “asked for rectification in the face of such a mistake.” “No censorship, no erasure, no ideological sectarianism. Culture has to be free and plural,” stated the regional president.

For his part, Sémper has taken advantage of a publication on the same social network by journalist Fernando Neira, in which the professional asked the national leader of the popular parties, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the president of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, and the popular member himself to “talk to your mayor” and thus save him “this international embarrassment to such a noble and beautiful municipality.”

After giving him “absolutely right” because “Paco Rabal and Asunción Balaguer represent the best of our performing arts; the common heritage of all Spaniards and our culture”, Sémper has labeled “absurdity” the decision made by the Alpedrete town hall. A nonsense that he hopes would have “an urgent rectification.”

The withdrawal of the name of the actors’ marriage caused the municipal opposition to show its rejection on the same day the news became known since the decision had been made behind the backs of the entire town. While the PSOE councilor in the City Council, Carlos Carmena Cano, considered that “it is an issue (…) that cannot be done unilaterally”Carlos García, councilor of Podemos-IU and former mayor of the municipality, criticized that “it seems (…) that you want to dishonor the person.”

At the same time, and after criticism within municipal politics, the popular mayor of Alpedrete defended that the decision did not correspond to political reasons, while ensuring that it is not a question of “be more or less loved than others.” In fact, he even clarified to laSexta that “the assembly hall of that cultural center will be renamed ‘Paco Rabal and Asunción Balaguer Assembly Hall’.”

But this supposed renaming is not enough for the couple’s daughter, Teresa Rabal, who last Thursday in Más Vale Tarde called the decision of the municipal government in the hands of PP and Vox “a real outrage.” And in the words of Teresa

Rabal, this resolution “makes no sense (…) and a very great cultural offense.”

In that same conversation, the daughter of the couple who was the first to go to live in Alpedrete in 1973 related that she had had a meeting with the mayor of the town in the same office. During this meeting, Rabal says that Fernández Alfaro offered him “the same explanation that he had given publicly”, however, when he left the town hall building the name of her father was no longer in the square: “I got angry because he totally deceived me,” he explained to this network’s program.

Teresa’s brother, Benito Rabal, also spoke on the issue, on which he assessed before the laSexta microphones that “Vox, backed by the PP, is doing what the Nazis always do, which is to end memory and attack the culture”. An assessment that led the artists’ son to emphasize that his “parents had a progressive ideology and were members of the Communist Party”. In his eyes, this is the reason why the City Council withdraws the name of Paco Rabal and Asunción Balaguer.

Such was the indignation that last Saturday neighbors, faces of culture and family members gathered in the town to demand that the City Council keep the name of the couple on the municipal street map. Some of the cultural figures in Spain who showed their indignation at this meeting were Pepe Viyuela or Jorge Sanzas well as the president of the Film Academy, Fernando Martínez-Leite.