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Violation of intellectual property rights, labour, economic and social difficulties and, more recently, a decrease of artistic freedom are the main reasons of discomfort among Spanish artists and cultural professionals.
In order to improve this situation, at the national level, the Culture Plan 2020 of the State Secretariat for Culture, passed in 2017, introduces as specific strategies:
- to improve the application of legal criteria to adequately remunerate the economic value of authors’ rights;
- to develop the Statute of Artists and Cultural Professionals, in line with the proposals suggested by a Subcommittee of the Congress of Deputies;
- to promote international mobility of artists and cultural professionals through specific training on mobility, the offer of residences for Spanish and international artists and cultural managers, and the consolidation and extension of current training programmes (such as “Culturex”, “Iberex”, “Hispanex” and “Fulbright”).
Currently, the Statute of Artists and Cultural Professionals is under development and implementation. The Spanish Parliament created a Commission to adapt the labour, fiscal and intellectual property legislations to the specificities of the work of creators, artists and professionals of culture. The Commission was active during the period 2017-2018 and approved a report in June 2018. Among other things, this report made recommendations for the taxation of irregular incomes (typical for artists), for VAT reduction for artistic intermediate and final services, for training activities, social security measures and the right to receive income on copyrights.
In July 2018, the new Ministry of Culture and Sport announced its support of the report and declared that it would be applied gradually and with the commitment of other Ministries, such as the Ministry of Finance, Labour and Social Security and Equality, as well as with the support of labour unions and representative cultural associations. The Congress of Deputies unanimously approved the report in September and since then the government is slowly adopting the recommendations. For instance, a Royal Decree-Law was passed in December 2018 to modify the legislation on Income Tax, Corporate Tax, the Value Added Tax and Social Security Matters for performing arts and cinema professionals and firms (see chapters 4.1.3 and 4.1.4).
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