The plenary session of Calp's municipal council has decided, with the votes of the government team (PP and Ciudadanos), to request the initiation of the procedure to change the name of the municipality of Calp to Calpe/Calp. The initiative, based on a proposal by the Ciudadanos group, was supported with Compromís y Defendamos Calpe voting against and the PSOE abstaining.
This is to restore the double name of the city that was in force in 2008, when the government team of Bloc, PSD and PP agreed to request the change of the city's name to the exclusive form Calp, and which was subsequently approved by the regional government by decree of 28 August 2009.
The Ciudadanos spokesman, Juan Manuel del Pino, said that this proposal "is to draw attention to the recognition that both forms of naming our municipality are valid, because both are used and because both the name Calpe and Calp have their historical roots". He added that in no way was the intention to change the name of Calp to that of Calpe, but rather to respect the two official languages of the Valencian community and that the double name "only enriches our city".
Paco Quiles, spokesperson for Defendamos Calpe, explained that there is currently no problem with the use of the names Calp or Calpe among the population and accused the government team of creating a conflict with this issue. "It seems to be a strategy to create two sides, that there is a conflict between them. What is happening is that there is no exclusion, there is no conflict, no one is blaming anyone for saying Calpe," he said, defending the fact that at an institutional level Calp continues to be used because it is a term that has been used historically and "that anyone can say Calpe when they speak Spanish.
For his part, Carlos Ortín, of Compromís, pointed out that the Ciudadanos Group's proposal lacked scientific consistency and recalled that the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua had decided at the time, based on reports from philologists and historians, that Calp was the only official place name for the municipality. "When in most places society is trying to protect and restore historical heritage, citizens are raising a motion without scientific or legal consistency, so we citizens of Calp are losing a very old intangible heritage that may date back to the sixth century BC," he concluded.
Socialist spokesman Santos Pastor, like the spokesman for Defendamos Calpe, recalled that 12 years ago the PP had voted to change the name of the town in Calp. "We don't know what happened to the right in Cap, first voting for the name change and now 12 years later trying to change the name of the municipality again." He also criticised the fact that the proposal mentioned Calp as a predominantly Spanish-speaking municipality and that the Institut d'Estudis Calpins was not included at any point, despite being a municipal institution.
PP spokesperson Paco Avargues said that in these 12 years "the rights in Cap have changed; we are not the same, the right has evolved" and stressed that at no time what is intended to remove any heritage.
The mayor, Ana Sala, said that "if the PSOE were in agreement with their party of 2008, they would vote for the proposal now because they voted against it then. "The left in Calpe should also be asked for the same coherence as the right," she said.
She explained that her party would support the Ciudadanos proposal to return to the municipality the name "that should never have been changed". She recalled that the decision caused a great deal of controversy in 2008 and that, in his opinion, it was an "arbitrary act" by the mayor at the time.
"We are campaigning for the name change application to be instructed to make the town name bilingual again; then the council will decide if we are at least fulfilling a will and a demand of many people who felt insulted when in 2008 it was almost dictatorially decided to change the name without asking anyone," she said.