CARTAGENA. He Central Cinema of Cartagena has become one of the star projects for the artistic and cultural revitalization not only of the city, but also for the promotion of a still degraded area. The one they have come to call Culture Square It is an idea of the city, which not only contemplates the recovery of the Central Cinema and the expansion to other artistic uses but also the recovery of the lake square with buildings of the importance of MURAM and the Palacio de Aguirre.
It is, therefore, the Central one of the icons of that new future imagined by the rulers of Cartagena. But it is not a bed of roses that this project has had, anchored in oblivion for over twenty years and that now, when the path is glimpsed, it runs into a complex rehabilitation process in terms of substance and form.
At the end of last year, the winning preliminary project of the ideas competition for the restoration of the Central Cinema was finally announced. The architect Pedro Garcia Pitarch, proposes resources such as the installation of a large horizontal roof in the building that facilitates public access, together with the incorporation of old spaces, which are modified and transformed for different activities, both individual and collective, in such a way that it allows to offer a common framework for cinema, theater, social gathering, cultural exchange and dialogue.
Another proposal of his project is the emptying of structural elements of the annexed housing building, in order to maintain the facade and generate a void that, once built, will take the form of an open and diaphanous space on the ground floor.
But your proposal has been found with aspects that contravene the Special Plan for the Management and Protection of the Historic Center of Cartagena, as denounced in the last plenary session of the City Council the councilor Maria Dolores Ruiz, of MC Cartagena.
The mayor warned in December that the winning blueprint “is unfeasible” why destroy the third floor of the Central Cinema amphitheater, being eliminated and disappearing completely. As well part of the protected ceiling of the room to introduce a stage boxay all of the rooms that the catalog card requires to protect and conserve on the ground floor in the building on Calle San Roque.
The Deputy Mayor of Cartagena, Noelia Arroyo, responded at that time that those in charge of watching over and enforcing the rules are precisely those who have chosen this winning blueprint.
In addition, he stressed that the project is going to be carried out in direct dialogue with cultural groups and with the institutions that set the standards and enforce them. And that’s what made with haste the municipal government, once warned of the possible irregularities of the winning idea: contacted these groups to ask them to present their proposals, since there are protected elements that the winner had deleted and, therefore, touch recapitulate and retouch.
“In the proposal, the amphitheaters are maintained, the volume of the entire scenic space is maintained, those elements that are cataloged are rehabilitated and all the protected elements of the Annex building are protected and preserved. In any case, this is just the result of an ideas contest. The project has yet to be prepared and must go through the entire authorization procedure to get the municipal license for a building of these characteristics “, municipal sources explain to Murcia Plaza.
Will this miscalculation therefore mean a new stoppage for the launch of the Central Cinema, that closed its doors 21 years ago? and on the other hand, Does the winning draft violate the principles of equal treatment, non-discrimination, transparency, proportionality and integrity established in Law 9/2017 of November 8 on Public Sector Contracts, with respect to those preliminary projects presented that did respect the degree of protection of both buildings, as denounced by María Dolores Ruiz?
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