Letter of support for Pablo de Soto’s work as director of LABoral

The signatories of this letter, as well as the artistic and social community associated with LABoral Centro de Arte, wish to express our support for the dismissed director, Pablo de Soto, and our rejection of the unjust decision taken by the Board of Trustees.

Pablo de Soto has shown, through his career and especially during his time at LABoral, a total commitment to creation, art and culture in Asturias. His innovative vision and his ability to promote local, national and international talent have led to initiatives that have enriched our community in many ways, understanding creation in an open way, as a body of knowledge that must be adapted to our present, which faces great challenges.

Under Pablo de Soto’s leadership, not only have all the numbers and metrics of the centre grown exponentially, but its programming has once again become a benchmark, involving and rebuilding relationships with the artistic and social community.

There is something wrong with the Board of Trustees when they have facilitated five dismissals in just over ten years and yet, at times when the Centre enjoys greater prestige and community engagement, solutions that would benefit the Centre are overlooked and leadership is once again cut off.

We do not want a self-absorbed and elitist centre. We want a centre that speaks of folkloric agitation, technology and democracy, feminisms, art and climate emergency. It is essential that culture and cultural centres are an agora for public debate.

We cannot allow this censorship. We cannot allow the Centre to be beheaded now that it is flourishing. The trustees must reconsider their decision.