Ben Amics explodes against Cort: it accuses it of expelling the LGTBIQ+ collective from Pride after setting up a parallel festival

PalmaBen Amics has lashed out at Palma City Council, accusing it of intending to expel the LGTBIQ+ collective from Pride Day, after Cort announced it is organizing its own celebration. According to the association, which released a statement this Wednesday, this decision "breaks the social and political consensus" that until now guaranteed the balance between the demonstration and the Pride celebration.

Cort's spokesperson, Mercedes Celeste, announced this morning that the City Council's Governing Board has declared Pride Day a day of municipal interest and that a celebration will be held on June 27th in Plaça Major. Although the councilwoman stated that channels remain "open" for possible co-organizers, Ben Amics believes that this "unilateral" decision by the Consistory confirms the "pinkwashingstrategy" with which it intends to expel the collective from the organization of Pride.

The consensus that had been maintained until now with the administrations involved the explicit commitment not to alter the place or time of the celebration in order not to lose "the activist content and the defense of human rights". The actions of Palma City Council "consummate a strategy to appropriate the meaning and management of Pride" and to turn the collective's demand into "a tourist afternoon devoid of content", the association criticized. Ben Amics has demanded that Cort immediately rectify and that Mayor Jaime Martínez issue a public apology.

Cort has decided to organize the Pride celebration on its own after failing to reach any agreement with Ben Amics, which canceled the event and accused the City Council of a lack of planning. The association pointed out that this situation exemplifies the "clear setback" for the LGTBIQ+ collective in Mallorca and regretted that neither rights nor diversity are a priority for institutions at this time. Ben Amics stressed that the cancellation of Pride was "the final blow" to municipal equality policies after the suppression of the sexual and gender diversity workshops of PalmaEduca.