This afternoon, the EDP Foundation and the Puente Viesgo Town Council have presented the new edition of the Public Art program, an initiative promoting the transformation of public spaces in rural areas through sustainable urban planning, which this year will be held in the Cantabrian town. Specifically, a restoration of the Bustillo Ceballos Casona-Palacio, in Vargas, will be carried out to turn it into a new arts and culture center that revitalizes the municipality socially and economically. 

The presentation ceremony, held in the Cantabria Cave Art Center, was attended by the Mayor of Puente Viesgo, Oscar Villegas; the director general of Culture and Historical Heritage of the Government of Cantabria, Juan Antonio González Fuentes; and the director of the EDP Foundation, Vanda Martins. The meeting, open for the whole community, also included the participation of the team responsible for the project, which detailed the stages and the implantation process that will be followed in this third edition.

Public Art not only aims to provide better facilities, but also to create a unifying context in them, to foster the participation of the local community and to solve the real needs of its inhabitants. For this reason, over the course of these first months, a process of listening to the neighbours will be carried out in order to know the areas of improvement and strong points of the environment and to be able to carry out an action that generates value this way. 

After this process of citizen participation, the call for ideas will be opened to find those proposals that best solve the challenge posed. In this sense, Public Art also tries to be an opportunity for young talent. For this reason, the call is aimed at students or recent graduates of art, design or architecture degrees, allowing them to apply their knowledge and creativity in a tangible project that they can translate into reality.

In order to evaluate the applications, the program has an expert jury made up of personalities from the areas of urban planning, architecture, art and the museum sector. Sonia Puente, architect and urban planner expert in urban regeneration and sustainable architecture, will be in charge of coordinating the jury, which will consist on Fátima Sánchez, executive director of the Botín Center; Teresa Táboas, architect and member of the Council of the International Union of Architects; Jose María Ezquiaga, expert architect in land management and European Prize for Urban Planning; Jaime Sordo, president of the Association of Private Collectors 9915 and owner of the Los Bragales Collection; and Roberto Ontañón, director of the Prehistory and Archaeology Museum of Cantabria.

In this way, Public Art promotes collaboration between public and private entities for the implementation of transformative projects that enhance rural environments and contribute to their socio-economic development. In addition, it does so by involving the local community, offering them the opportunity to define the needs of the project, and allowing young students to develop their full talents in the creation of an innovative, sustainable and efficient space.

Bueño Artistic Center (CAB)

In 2020 the EDP Foundation, in cooperation with the Ribera de Arriba Town Council, launched the first edition of the Public Art program to set a multifunctional cultural space in motion in the town. Out of the thirty-tree proposals received, with nearly sixty participants from twenty Spanish universities, the Bueño Artistic Center (CAB, by its initials in Spanish) won thanks to its innovation and creativity. In 2022, the construction works for the new space began and, in September 2023, after inviting the Portuguese Embassy in Spain and the Lisbon Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology to join the project in the ideation of the center’s artistic program, it was inaugurated. Since then, international artists such as the fado singer Carminho or the visual artist João Pimenta Gomes have performed in the new space.