The mayor of Burriana (Castellón), Jorge Monferrer (PP), has guaranteed that the City Council will not censor or remove "any book" from the municipal library after the Councilor for Culture, Jesús Albiol (Vox), ordered the immediate removal all books with sexual content and LGTBI themes and request their transfer to a new special area for adults created for this purpose.
The first mayor, in a statement, has assured that he "does not share" the statements made by the councilor of Vox, the party with which he governs in coalition, and has defended that the municipal government that he heads "will always comply with the law, it has a clear roadmap and a vision of the future for the municipality".
"The City Council is going to govern for everyone, without distinction and any type of exclusion," says Monferrer: "No one is going to be discriminated against because of their way of thinking or their way of feeling."
The first mayor emphasizes that "books are not going to be censored or removed from the shelves because they are still and will continue to be exactly the same contents in the municipal library." "We are focused on the daily problems of the neighbors and on the meeting points of the parties that make up the government team for the benefit of Borriana," he argued.
Last Wednesday, Compromís denounced the LGTBI-themed "censorship" of the children's area of the Burriana municipal library. As explained in a statement, "to protect minors is the reason why the Vox censorship councilor in Burriana has decided to remove books on family and sexual diversity from the children's area of the Library, arguing that he does so by law. ".
The spokesman for Compromís, Vicent Granel, assured that this order was taken "without any technical report and with the only unilateral decision of a councilor who only wants his ideas to be known, and to hide the others." Granel recalled that in the July plenary session they already warned that the new councilor had ordered not to acquire more LGTBI-themed books, "and this is further proof of the hatred that arouses a diverse society that he wants to push aside."
For its part, Vox confirmed in a statement that the Councilor for Culture, Jesús Albiol, had ordered, through an order, that all books with sexual content be immediately removed from the children's and youth area of the Borriana Municipal Library and requested their transfer. to a new special area for adults that has been created for this purpose.
"It is our duty to protect minors, the most vulnerable, and keep them away from books with content that we could classify as pornographic and that are not appropriate for their age," said Albiol.
The Councilor for Culture was also involved in controversy last July after stating that he was going to cancel the council's subscription to several magazines in Catalan. "The Burriana City Council will not continue promoting Catalan separatism with the money of the people of Burriana. We are not second-class Catalans, we are first-class Valencians and Spaniards," he said on X (formerly Twitter).
Days later, the mayor, Jorge Monferrer, denied that the City Council had removed from the library magazines in Valencian to which he subscribed this year and also that the subscription to 'El Temps', 'Enderrock', 'Camacuc' had been cancelled. , 'Cavall Fort' and 'Revista Llengua Nacional', which are valid this year. Likewise, he pointed out that there will continue to be publications in Valencian available to citizens in the library.
