In mid-2024, the Council of Culture launched a project to analyse the specific treatment of culture within the regulations in force at the local, Catalan and state levels, as well as to formulate recommendations to improve the legal framework and how to implement them. This report is the result of the work carried out since then.

The specific treatment of culture can be justified by aspects such as the public value of culture (preservation and advocacy of heritage, protection and promotion of cultural diversity, recognition of cultural rights, etc.) or the unique nature of its forms of organisation and management (short-term or “intermittent” contracts, decisions based on artistic quality criteria, etc.). Although this specificity has been recognised in some cases through specific laws or regulations, or by incorporating specific provisions into the general legal framework, several problems are also detected, stemming from the fact that some recognised exceptions are not effective for various reasons. Thus, a set of problems or “dysfunctions” is identified between the current regulatory framework and the specificities of culture. As the report shows, the regulatory framework and its application are not independent factors but interact with several others, including public cultural policies and the level of knowledge of the regulatory frameworks and the specificities of culture among all cultural stakeholders.

This report was carried out between June 2024 and April 2025. It involved an analysis of the applicable legal framework, the creation of a pilot or “contrast” group to examine the premises and observations resulting from the analysis, interviews with around twenty cultural agents from Barcelona and Catalonia, three thematic working groups and the analysis of all gathered elements, with the aim of reflecting them properly in this final report.

Download the final report.