They say Mariano de Paco is friendly, cheerful, and a joker. And that, from time to time, this brashness gets him into trouble. Three years ago, Isabel Díaz Ayuso put the Ministry of Culture in his hands to revolutionize the Madrid art scene, but what he has achieved in this time is to confront the main cultural institutions, leave the Spanish Ballet in the hands of a novice, a friend of the president, and surprise everyone by appointing six artistic directors for the Teatros del Canal. In the background, a ghost always lurks: that of the supposed dominance of the arts by the left.
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De Paco does not shy away from the cultural battle, and that is what led him this Thursday to make statements that have annoyed many. Out of the blue, with nothing to do with education management, he said in the Madrid Assembly that the heat in classrooms that students and their parents are complaining about these days can become a “source of inspiration,” and cited Vicente Medina, a poet and playwright from Murcia, as an example. The comment didn’t amuse anyone, not even those in his own party.
In Ayuso’s circle, they say that if the entire intervention of the minister is reviewed, one can conclude that there was no intention to offend with his words, but they admit that he lacked political experience and got himself into an unnecessary mess. The veterans remembered Jesús Sánchez Martos, a Minister of Health, also from the PP, who in 2017 recommended making paper airplanes to combat high temperatures. That cost the author some grief. De Paco’s comment will also be hard to forget.
De Paco’s audacity didn’t stop there, and after saying that he took his daughter to school in shorts, he told the opposition that, in reality, their problem with the issue of heat in schools is that they are “on the side of countries where freedom of dress does not exist and that could not be done.” The Más Madrid and PSOE deputies were astonished, not knowing how to respond to a comment disconnected from reality.
In his own party, he began to be questioned in February, when Ayuso abruptly dismissed the Minister of Education, Emilio Viciana. Something that EL PAÍS had previously reported was exposed: that a guru and playwright named Antonio Castillo Algarra, godfather to Viciana and several young PP deputies, had amassed enormous power in the shadows, from where he directed a significant part of Ayuso’s government’s education and culture policies.
He did so protected by the president, even against the opinion of her main advisor, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez. But also by De Paco, who allowed him to interfere in the birth of the Spanish Ballet of the Community of Madrid to the point that the appointed director, the prestigious Jesús Carmona, left fed up with the situation. Afterwards, the Ballet’s direction was collegial, led by Castillo Algarra and two other people.
The Minister of Culture has applied this same model to the Teatros del Canal, which has earned him criticism from the sector. Works by Castillo Algarra, written, directed, and starring him, are premiered at the Canal itself. In some performances, at the end, he has invited the audience to a collective prayer. Alongside him, they have embraced the discourse of the need to promote Hispanicity and bury the Spanish Black Legend.
De Paco’s feeling, according to those who have dealt with him, is that culture is in the hands of the left and that this must change. He has withdrawn the direct nominative subsidies granted to the Círculo de Bellas Artes, the Museo del Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza, and the Reina Sofía, institutions of international prestige. He argues that these amounts they received must be justified by the presentation of specific projects that must be approved by his Ministry. With some institutions, he wages a direct battle. In an interview with Antonio Lucas, in El Mundo, he attacked the management of the Círculo thus: “They have turned it into a climate refuge and a plant nursery.”
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Some criticize his eagerness for prominence. At a press conference at the Teatros del Canal, a cultural journalist wanted to ask Ruperto Merino, the general director, some questions, which De Paco, who was at the podium with some papers at the time, did not take well. “To Ruperto? I am Ruperto’s boss. Ask me,” he replied with a grim face.
His loyalty to the president, however, is absolute. He traveled with her to Mexico almost a month ago, a visit where everything went wrong. The president returned abruptly after her invitation to a film festival was withdrawn due to her offensive statements against that country. It was a failed trip by Ayuso that has received criticism from her own admirers, even some of her party colleagues. De Paco does not see it that way; he maintains the heroic, and utterly unbelievable with all the evidence at hand, narrative that the president was censored and mistreated in that country, and that she returned to Spain due to security problems.
It’s not surprising knowing what he thinks of her. This is how he once described her: “Boss, master of ceremonies who directs with firmness, judgment, and demandingness. She adds energy, tenacity, and an absolutely proverbial capacity for resistance. It’s as if the president had a superpower.”
Meanwhile, children and teenagers in Madrid are roasting in their schools and high schools. So are teachers, administrative staff, and cleaning staff. Everyone spends days at over 30 degrees in educational centers built decades ago that do not receive sufficient budget to undertake the improvements that would prevent the scorching. Families are distressed and have been asking for a solution for years. This was the one offered on Thursday by the Minister of Culture: “The heat, perhaps, is a source of inspiration.” He said it in the Assembly, after several weeks marked by protests from parents, teachers, and unions over a problem that gets worse every year and to which the Community of Madrid reacts with irony. “When it’s hot, it’s hot,” said the Minister of Education, Mercedes Zazalejos, the day before De Paco.
De Paco’s years as minister are also marked by a budget cut in the area he leads: from 321.7 million in 2024 to 302.6 in 2025 and 300.1 this year. This decrease coexists with a progressive increase in the money that Culture allocates each year to bullfighting and everything surrounding it. Like the 40 million invested to restore the Las Ventas bullring or three million in direct aid for fighting bulls during the pandemic.
De Paco has called the left “uncultured,” in part, because of their stance on bullfighting. And, specifically, the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, with whom he maintains an open political confrontation on this issue. De Paco has questioned Urtasun’s management, accusing him of acting “arbitrarily,” “sectarianly,” and of attacking artists and culture. His own management is questioned by others. Now he has been hit by an avalanche for mocking the temperatures in schools. De Paco was not inspired; perhaps because there was air conditioning in the Assembly.
