The inauguration of the new VINSEUM, Museu de les Cultures del Vi, in Vilafranca del Penedès is about to die. A new appeal presented in the Court of Public Sector Contracts against the bidding for the audiovisual project "makes it impossible" to set the opening date according to the director of the center, Xavier Fornos.
It is the second process that is underway to choose the company that has to do the audiovisual montage. The first one was stopped in November 2022 due to a formal challenge and the City Council and the VINSEUM decided to call a new tender to delay the reopening of the equipment as little as possible.
However, the last resort puts the inauguration on hold while waiting for it to be resolved or for the new government to agree on an alternative.
The initial forecast was that the new museum would open its doors in 2020, but the works did not stop encountering problems that systematically forced them to recalculate the terms. The appearance of a 14th-century necropolis with a hundred skeletons, the remains of a 17th- and 19th-century winery, and various difficulties with construction companies caused a schedule also affected by the covid pandemic to be delayed several times.
Once this compendium of impediments was overcome and with the building already finished, it was planned that the facility could be inaugurated in the spring of this 2023. However, at the end of 2022, a Temporary Business Union (UTE) challenged the tender for the audiovisual assembly, valued in about 400,000. The process was automatically stopped waiting for the Public Sector Contracts Tribunal to say if it agreed with the appellants or if it allowed the tender to go ahead.
Faced with the uncertainty of the months that the court's pronouncement could take, the City Council and VINSEUM agreed to review the entire process and call a new contest. The reopening date was rescheduled with the expectation that it could be a reality by the end of 2023 at the earliest, given that the assembly of the audiovisual project requires about 8 months of work.
However, the second bidding process has again been controversial. As Fornos has detailed, the company that was in third position presented allegations asking to recalculate the merits. When they reviewed the scores, the final result placed the third company in first position, while the initially winning company was in third place. The latter, dissatisfied with the changes, has presented a special appeal a few weeks ago in the Court of Public Sector Contracts and the tender has been stopped.
Fornos regrets that it is "impossible" to know when this challenge will be resolved "because the court is collapsed." Until there is no response, management cannot calculate when you will be able to open the new VINSEUM. “But it will be in 2024 yes or yes”, asserts Fornos, who explains that the general museography is almost finished. In addition, he stresses that "the opening of the new facility cannot be delayed any longer because of the audiovisual contest."
In this sense, it is now up to the new government to decide how to deal with this moment of impasse. The new local executive that emerged from the investiture plenary session on Saturday, June 10, 2023, foreseeably made up only of the PSC, will have to assess whether to wait for the court's ruling, whether to call a third contest or whether to seek an alternative formula that allows the situation to be resolved. through small projects.
The new VINSEUM building is a project that began to take shape more than 20 years ago. In addition, the works did not start until 2018, promoted by a European grant. The space multiplies by six the 500 m2 that the equipment had up to now and it is planned to exhibit between 2,000 and 3,000 pieces.
The management aspires to attract twice as many annual visitors, reaching 70,000 and thus positioning itself among the 'top 10' of Catalan museums. The goal is for the Generalitat to declare it a Museum of National Interest, like the Maricel and Cau Ferrat Museums in Sitges, the Víctor Balaguer Museum in Vilanova or the Pau Casals del Vendrell Museum.
