The European Alliance of Academies, to which the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid (CBM) belongs, announced this Monday the creation of a project partially financed by the European Union to respond “to the growing pressures on artistic freedom and cultural autonomy throughout Europe.” The four-year plan includes a total budget of 1,761,000 euros—60% contributed by Europe—of which the Madrid institution will receive nearly 320,000 for the development of a digital map that documents threats to artistic freedom throughout Europe. The announcement coincides with the still heated controversy over the large reduction in the Community of Madrid’s subsidy to the Círculo, which went from 250,000 euros annually in previous years to only 12,500 by 2026. It is also subject to financing “only suitable proposals” for the Executive.
The rest of the European project, which focuses on only 10 of the 72 institutions that make up the alliance, includes mobility programs for artists censored in their countries, workshops, training and international conferences. “This represents a legitimization of this network of European cultural institutions born in 2020 to protect the freedom of artistic creation on our continent. The fact that it has received European funding of this magnitude shows the prestige and value it has,” says Valerio Rocco, director of the Circle.
It is the same network — with institutions such as the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, the oldest in Europe; the Paris Academy of Fine Arts; the Royal Academy of Arts (London) and L’Accademia Nazionale del Disegno (Rome)—which came out in defense of the Círculo two weeks ago with a letter sent to the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso in which it asked it to reconsider “the drastic cut in funding” to “counteract any publicly expressed suspicion that there are ideological or political motives behind it, and thus be able to affirm that artistic freedom in the Community of Madrid is not currently in danger.” The map that the CBM will make will include, the director confirms, the Community of Madrid as a case study. “There is no clearer way to define what a restriction on the freedom of artistic creation is than this,” he says.
The new project, says Christiane Lötsch, coordinator of the Alliance and project manager at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, was not created with any country in mind in particular, but rather in “the financial budget cuts that are used politically in many European countries” and to “develop a common strategy to deal with these new political conditions.” He also believes, like the director of the CBM, that the approval of this budget is “a political action by the European Union to demonstrate that creative freedom is important to them.” And he hopes that “this European attention contributes to the support” they have shown to the Madrid center. “When we found out about the reduction in funding,” recalls Lötsch, “we were furious. The regional government does not understand that this is also a cut to its cultural and artistic panorama.”
Since 1983, when the public-private consortium that manages the Círculo de Bellas Artes (CBA) was created, the Community of Madrid granted a nominative subsidy, that is, aid that the center managed independently. In the last seven years it had been 250,000 euros. In 2025, it dropped to 100,000, and in addition, the Ministry headed by Mariano de Paco decided that it would only finance specific activities. In 2026, the CAM’s aid to the CBA is limited, for the moment, to 12,500 euros for the reading of Don Quixote. “With this model,” Paco justified to EL PAÍS, “discretion is eliminated. It allows us to collaborate at any time and this is already giving great results,” giving as an example projects with the national museums of the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen, and the Ateneo. “In some of these cases, the final contribution has been greater than what was initially given with a nominative subsidy,” he noted, also emphasizing that they remain open to funding CBA initiatives throughout this year.
The money that the Madrid Circle will receive from the European project, although it cannot be used for the implementation of its own activities, will help, as Rocco explains, to pay staff salaries: “It contains staff costs and helps us a lot in economic terms, it is very good for us at this time when this budget cut has caused us a certain problem in our annual balance.” It will add to a budget of more than seven million euros by 2026, of which only 7% comes from private entities. The rest comes from visitors, rental of spaces, private sponsors for specific projects and membership fees.