Vox will attend the Goya Awards for the first time

    MADRID/VALLADOLID, 8 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS)

Representatives of Vox will attend for the first time at a Goya Awards gala, which will take place on February 10 at the Valladolid Fair, and where politicians from other parties such as PP and Sumar will also attend, as confirmed to Europa Press by sources from the different parties.

Specifically, the Vox politicians who will attend belong to both the Junta de Castilla y León and the Valladolid City Council, invited as representatives of the regional government where the awards are held. Thus, the vice president of the Board, Juan García-Gallardo, and the president of the Cortes, Carlos Pollán, will be at the gala.

Also the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Sports, Gonzalo Santonja and the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development, Gerardo Dueñas. As for the City Council, Vox will be represented by the Deputy Mayor and Councilor for Education and Culture, Irene Carvajal, the Councilor for Public Health and Citizen Security, Alberto Cuadrado, as well as the Councilor for Commerce, Markets and Consumption, Victor Martín.

The Goya Awards organization invited Vox for the first time to attend its annual gala in 2020, although on that occasion the leader of the group, Santiago Abascal, declined to attend.

A year earlier, in 2019, Vox complained that the Spanish Film Academy did not invite them to the gala and from its Twitter account the party published a message dedicated to the organization, questioning its public financing.

"We wanted to recommend that they make a film about the glorious history of Spain, Blas de Lezo, for example... because the Spaniards would return to the cinema and they would stop asking for subsidies," they wrote. In addition, there was more criticism from different leaders in successive editions of the awards, where they were also invited and did not attend.

The Film Academy has already explained that the invitations are sent to the leaders of the main parliamentary formations and that in February 2019 Vox had not yet entered Congress. The then president of the Academy, Mariano Barroso, pointed out, in this sense, that other parties such as Compromís, ERC or Bildu had not been invited either.

The presence of authorities and politicians at the Spanish film awards gala has been common for years. In fact, next February 10 will be Ernest Urtasun's debut at this event as head of Culture. The minister will be accompanied by the second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz.

On the part of the PP, the president of the Junta de Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, will attend on the one hand, while on the national level the spokesperson and vice-secretary of Culture of the PP, Borja Sémper, will be present.

At the moment, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has not officially confirmed whether he will attend an appointment in which he has already been present on other occasions. However, this past Wednesday Sánchez met with representatives of the sector to analyze "the great moment" of Spanish cinema and wish "a lot of luck" before the Goya.

Throughout past editions, the red carpet of this event has welcomed leaders of the main parties, such as Sánchez himself or the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo -last year-. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was the first president of the Government to attend the gala in 2005.

As for the Royal House, the last presence of any of its members was in the year 2000, when the then Prince of Asturias, Felipe VI, attended a gala in which 'happy birthday' was sung to him, with Pedro Almodóvar encouraging the rest of the attendees.