The organizer of the Pride party in Cort ridicules the LGTBI+ movement in his columns
The Palma City Council has not yet made public the award of Saturday's event, in charge of AgenciaCom
Palma"Today I want to talk to you about pride. And not about that pride that LGTBI plus and more plus collectives claim to be able to live in freedom without anyone caring about their sex life". This is one of the fragments from the column that Antoni Martorell published on June 20, when his company AgenciaCom had already submitted a bid to the Palma City Council to organize the LGTBIQ+ Pride party.
It is not the only time that Martorell has referred to the collective in his articles. In another from September 2024, which refers to transsexuality and fluid gender and is written in a more analytical tone, the CEO of AgenciaCom points out that he is "a little lost with sex". Martorell speaks of a complicated "equation" for "lifelong cisgenders" compared to trans people. "It is not long before parity turns towards a matter of gender and not sex, where what we have between our legs would matter less and what we are and think would matter more. It is not easy, especially when we talk about fluid gender", he laments regarding equality between men and women.
"Hila la té més grossa" is the headline used in July 2023 for another column about the placement of the LGTBI+ flag on Cort's facade. "We already have Ben Amics and the opposition parties indignant, criticizing that the popular mayor is trapped by Vox," he said about the small flag that was placed with Jaime Martínez as mayor of Palma.
On the other hand, Martorell referred to inclusive language in another of his texts (from July 2021), which he considers makes us "more assholes": "This, this, this language, languaje, languago inclusive, inclusive, inclusive that they have invented, invented, invented does not, does, does make us better, better, better but simply more assholes, assholes, assholes. All, all, alle this, this, this is very strange, strange, strange. My corrector, corrector, corrector has crashed, crashed, crashed. And it is very difficult", he wrote.
Ben Amics' complaint
Beyond Martorell's opinions, Ben Amics has announced that it will sue the Palma City Council for the awarding of Pride to AgenciaCom. On Monday, the festival's poster and the artists who will participate were released, an organization that was finalized just one week after the deadline for applying for this minor contract closed (June 15 at 00:00), the amount of which is 18,089.50 euros. In the section on the object of the contract, it is stated that it includes "technical artistic production, logistics, as well as the creation and dissemination of the festival's poster". By artistic production, Cort understands "the creation and selection of artistic elements such as artists, scenography, special effects, etc.". That is, if the contract had been awarded on June 16, this section had already been formalized by the 22nd. L'ARA Balears has requested access to the award from the Palma City Council, but the document has not been provided to us and Cort has only confirmed that AgenciaCom is the awarded company.
Curiously, AgenciaCom's logo appears on the festival's poster as a sponsoring or collaborating entity, along with other companies such as MKT Comline, Taste Mallorca, and Barra Lliure, with which Martorell is also associated. This is how Ben Amics has made it known in a document that it has registered with Cort and which is addressed to the City Council, the Citizen Defender, General Intervention, the Contracting Service, and the competent contracting authority.
As Ben Amics explains, hours after the entity reported that "the programming and the managing company of the tourist promotion had not yet been published", "an Instagram account emerged to begin disseminating the event on June 27". The entity considers that work has been done on the festival "without its award having been formalized" and recalls that AgenciaCom "has no experience or track record in LGTBI+ matters or in the organization of related activities". Furthermore, it recalls that "Antoni Martorell was indicted in the Voltor case in 2013" and that "he was in charge of the PP's electoral campaign for 2019". "We do not understand how a person who confuses sex and gender can be the maximum responsible for the organization of Palma City Council's Pride," criticizes the entity.