The culture spokesperson for the Partido Popular at the Junta General del Principado de Asturias, José Luis Costillas, has given the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias (OSPA) of a lack of transparency in the call for a temporary applicant pool. On 23 August 2026, he demanded the full publication of the relevant selection criteria, the assessment procedure and the composition of the selection panel.
Costillas bases his criticism on the lack of clarity over key elements of the selection process. In his view, it must be clearly disclosed how applications are assessed, what the scoring system is, who sits on the panel and what timetable applies. Only then can a fair and verifiable process be guaranteed. The politician spoke of a “lack of transparency” and called for the relevant information to be made available to everyone interested.
The OSPA is a public orchestra of the Principado de Asturias and is attached to the Department of Culture (Consejería de Cultura). In the regional administration, recruitment processes are regularly publicised through the Principado de Asturias transparency portal and the Boletín Oficial del Principado de Asturias (BOPA). Costillas measures the current call against these standards. He gave no specific figures for applications or details about the process to date.
The dispute touches on fundamental questions of good administrative practice in the cultural sector: transparent criteria published in advance provide legal certainty for applicants and make it easier to scrutinise public selection processes externally. If key information is provided late or incompletely, it becomes harder to verify decisions and the risk of formal objections increases. At regional political level, the Partido Popular’s intervention could revive debate about governance and compliance in publicly funded cultural institutions.
Costillas had already called for a reorganisation of the public cultural sector in Asturias in February 2026. His latest intervention follows the same line and targets a process at the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias which, in the opposition’s view, needs to be documented more clearly. It was not yet clear whether or when the OSPA or the relevant Consejería de Cultura would respond to the demands. What is clear is that providing precise assessment criteria and procedural details would make the process easier to understand and give potential applicants greater certainty in their planning.
Editor: Mira Cadena (Article created with AI assistance).