It was Friday, August 2, and the President of the Principality was resuming his institutional responsibilities after a few days of rest. He did so by calling on the media to address various current regional and national issues. Although at that time the fiscal pact in Catalonia was capturing all the media attention, since the head of the Asturian Executive had not yet commented on it, nor had he done so on the latest controversy sparked by the Archbishop of Oviedo, Jesús Sanz Montes.
The archbishop had accused the new delegate of the Asturian government, Adriana Lastra, who had just taken office, of arriving “with slogans, setting the tone of her ideology”, while she had previously asked him to abandon the far-right discourse during his homily at the mass celebrated every September 8, Asturias’ feast day, in the Basilica of Covadonga.
The controversy had been brewing since mid-July and Barbón did not hesitate to respond. It was precisely during this appearance before the media that For the first time, the Asturian president opened the door to the absence of Covadonga on the Asturias Dayif his presence became, he said, an element of discord.
This has been said and done, Adrián Barbón confirmed it this Friday, also before the media and after the meeting of the Government Council.
I have so much respect for Santina that I don’t want my presence to be the perfect excuse to generate tension and stress.
“I have so much respect for Santina that I don’t want my presence to be the perfect excuse to generate tension and tension, it’s something that doesn’t suit me.” This is how the Asturian president explained bluntly that this year, and for the first time since taking office, he will not attend mass at the Basilica of Covadonga, on Asturias Day.
Barbón acknowledged that he was not “comfortable or satisfied” with what has been happening “for years on such an important day for Asturias.” The head of the Asturian executive thus referred, but without naming him, to the Archbishop of Oviedo and his controversial sermons in which Sanz Montes did not miss the opportunity to launch harsh criticism against each of the measures adopted by the left-wing government.
The President of the Principality highlighted the two speeches that he himself gave on the occasion of the commemoration of the Asturian festival “with which the vast majority of Asturian men and women feel identified” because “they never arouse any controversy”.
He acknowledges that he has not yet thought about whether other representatives of the Asturian government would attend the same event that he will not attend and that he has been pondering the decision he made public today since last year, when he himself had publicly wondered whether “someone” wanted him to stop attending this ecclesiastical celebration.
Adrián Barbón assures that he will continue to go to Covadonga, as he always has, because for him it is a sacred space in every sense of the word, from the point of view of faith and also of Asturianism.
The Archbishop of Oviedo will have already received the news, since the President confirmed to journalists that at the time he made his statements, they were being communicated to Sanz Montes. Let us therefore await the reaction of the prelate as well as the decision of the Government delegate, Adriana Lastra, whose presence is also awaiting confirmation.
Since Rafael Fernández, who institutionalized the presence of the head of the Asturian Executive in Covadonga on September 8, this is the first time that a president of the Principality has not attended the ecclesiastical celebration of the Asturias Festival.
