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Joan Francès leaves the management of the Badalona Museum after being dismissed by the City Council
Francès leaves the position after less than a year and a half at the head of the museum and questions the reasons for the municipal decision. The council justifies the dismissal by a strategic restructuring, while the archaeologist points to possible political motives and defends the projects that the museum had underway.
The Badalona Museum is facing an unexpected change in its management. The Badalona City Council has dismissed archaeologist and cultural manager Joan Francès, who had taken up the position less than a year and a half ago after obtaining it through a public merit competition. The decision, approved two weeks ago, had not been publicized until now and was announced coinciding with Francès' return from his vacation.
As the former director himself explained to El Punt Avui, he collected his belongings from the office and said goodbye to the museum team without knowing the real reasons for his dismissal. "I don't know the reasons why they fired me, but I do know that they are not the ones they told the press," he declared.
The city council has justified the dismissal as the beginning of a "new stage" linked to a restructuring of the facility's future objectives. The city council assures that this new orientation aims to strengthen the museum's strategic planning, improve coordination with municipal bodies, monitor management objectives more thoroughly, reorganize internal services and adapt the organization to new institutional priorities.
Francès, however, considers this explanation paradoxical, since the museum had just been awarded the contract to write its new strategic plan. In addition, the team was working on several highly relevant projects, including a four-year research project on the Iberian settlement of Turó d'en Boscà, approved by the Generalitat, for which he was to assume the main research. At the same time, the executive project for the expansion of the museum was also being prepared, pending the resolution of the call for proposals for the 2% Cultural program of the Ministry of Culture.
The former director maintains that the dismissal could be for political reasons. Francès also regrets that a city with the historical weight of Badalona continues to lack a permanent museum space dedicated to explaining its history in a monographic way, a demand he had defended during his time at the head of the museum.
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