Borja Sémper holds two posts at once in the Partido Popular: he is national spokesperson and Deputy Secretary for Culture and Sport. The overlap raises a question that the organisation chart does not answer: whether the party has chosen a person in charge of its cultural policy or the person whose job is to represent it.
Sémper has a relationship with culture that no one disputes. The Congress file presents him as the author of several books and a contributor to radio programmes. In January 2024, he told Minister Ernest Urtasun that 'not all culture is left-wing'. His public trajectory is political, institutional and communicative. He also has parliamentary activity in the field: he has been Second Vice-Chair of the Culture Committee of the Congress since December 2023 and, since July 2026, rapporteur for the Cinema and Audiovisual Culture Bill. In the official profiles consulted, however, there is no record of him having directed a museum, a theatre, a library, a festival or another cultural institution, nor of him having administered a specific budget for the area.
The party's own file reflects the weight of his other function. The six most recent news items linked on 7 October 2026, published between 16 September and 6 October, dealt with Ceuta, housing and confrontation with the Government and its partners. None was dedicated to culture. It is a dated snapshot of the public activity that the PP associated with its spokesperson at that time, not a complete measure of the internal work he might be developing.
The party of management
The absence of visible sectoral experience draws attention because the PP makes management one of its credentials. On 11 March 2022, during his candidacy to preside over the party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo committed, according to the PP's own statement, to turning it into 'the guarantee of management, stability and majority that the country needs'.
If management experience is used as a test of competence, it is worth asking what specific experience or knowledge supported the appointment of the person coordinating the cultural policy of the party aspiring to govern Spain. This question does not presuppose that only those who have directed an institution can oversee culture. It asks for consistency between the criteria the party proclaims and those it applies within its own structure.
There is a plausible explanation: that the PP chose Sémper primarily as an interlocutor. To engage with a sector that perceives the party as distant, to sit down with filmmakers, publishers and other professionals, and to compete with the left for symbolic ground. This would be a legitimate assignment, provided it were openly described as such and the party explained what technical team, diagnosis and consultation process underpin the programme.
The hundred-day law
Sémper outlined the PP's cultural programme in an interview on 22 September. For the first one hundred days of a Feijóo government, he announced a patronage law, which he described as the most important measure, and an audit of state museums. He added a new cinema law that would incorporate box-office success as a criterion for grants, without ceasing to support experimental cinema, lower-budget productions and emerging creators. He also proposed reforming the heritage law to strengthen the security of museums.
The interviewer recalled that patronage had already been a prominent measure during the government of Mariano Rajoy. Since then, the regulation has changed. Royal Decree-Law 6/2023 reformed Law 49/2002 and increased tax incentives from 1 January 2024. In personal income tax, the first 250 euros of donations are tax-deductible at 80%; the excess, generally, at 40%, a percentage that can reach 45% when recurrence conditions are met. In corporate tax, the general deduction rose to 40% and can reach 50% in certain cases.
A new law may be justified. However, anyone presenting it as a priority must explain what problem in the current regulation they intend to resolve, what instruments they would change, what the fiscal cost would be and who would benefit. In the interview, Sémper defended the need to incorporate private funding without giving up public funding, but he has not yet detailed those specifics.
The audit of state museums also requires precision. According to the published explanation, it would examine personnel, exhibition quality, the security of the pieces and new formulas for funding and autonomy. It remains to be seen who would carry it out, with what indicators, which institutions would be included and what consequences it would have for their staff, budgets and governance models.
Experience does not explain everything
A lack of prior sectoral experience does not, in itself, determine the quality of management. Urtasun had also not directed a cultural institution before assuming the Ministry of Culture in November 2023. His previous trajectory was diplomatic, political and European. Since holding an executive position, his work may be evaluated by the policies developed, the decisions adopted, the resources allocated and his relationship with the sector. A CV explains where a public official comes from and leaves open what they will do.
Sémper's case is different. He has not yet held an executive position in a public administration from which to implement this cultural programme, manage its resources and be held accountable for its results. Within the PP, he holds both the post of Deputy Secretary for Culture and Sport and that of national spokesperson. This coincidence does not prove that culture is, for the party, a communication tool for the party, but it justifies asking why both functions fall to the same person and what competence, team or sectoral knowledge supported the choice.
A politician does not need to have directed a museum to oversee culture. The issue arises when the party that makes management a test of competence presents as its cultural lead a politician whose proven public experience in this field is authorial, parliamentary, political and communicative, without proven experience in directing cultural institutions or managing budgets in the area. If the criterion was different, it is for the PP to explain it.
From the spokesperson's office to the town halls
My reading is that Sémper's case matters beyond his CV. Combining culture and the spokesperson role brings cultural policy closer to the place from which a party manages its public discourse. This proximity creates the risk that culture is valued more for the image it produces, the conversation it opens or the identity it represents than for the solidity of its institutions, the conditions of those who work in them or the cultural rights of the citizenry.
That risk is especially relevant in local governments, where culture often coexists with tourism, festivities, city promotion and institutional communication. Coexistence is not a problem in itself: a festival can attract visitors and an institution must explain its work. The problem appears when those effects take the place of cultural policy. Then it may happen that programming is measured by attendance and inauguration photographs; that projects depend on the electoral calendar; that money favours the visible over the archive, research, mediation or conservation; and that professionals go from being interlocutors to content providers. A full agenda can coexist with weak institutions, insufficient staff and precarious contracting.
Town halls and provincial councils support theatres, museums, libraries, archives, cultural centres and festivals. They decide who directs them, through what procedure, with what autonomy and for how long; they set fees, contract services and distribute resources. That is why the criterion that the national leadership presents as sufficient for taking charge of culture matters. If the ability to communicate takes the place of sectoral knowledge, technical teams and institutional management, that same hierarchy may be reproduced wherever the party governs. Those decisions will contribute to determining what cultural fabric can be sustained in a few years' time.
Pending questions
Specific questions can be put to Sémper before he governs:
- Who is drafting the cultural programme and with which professionals and organisations in the sector has it been vetted?
- What diagnosis justifies an audit of state museums, who would carry it out and what use would be made of its results?
- How would box office receipts be incorporated as a criterion without harming experimental cinema, lower-budget productions and emerging creators?
- What a new patronage law would change with respect to the reform in force since 2024, what its cost would be and who would be its main beneficiaries.
- What budgetary, administrative and human resources would the announced measures require?
Consistency will require verification, particularly where the PP already holds office. The audit that Sémper proposes for state museums offers a criterion applicable to the autonomous communities, provincial councils and town halls governed by his party: who directs their cultural institutions, through what procedure, with what resources, what autonomy they retain and how their results are evaluated. Those routine decisions may already be examined, and they will reveal more than any announced law.
The PP has made management a credential and has combined two distinct functions in Sémper: coordinating its cultural policy and speaking daily on behalf of the party. The issue goes beyond that appointment, as it affects the model that the national leadership legitimises and which may be replicated in the administrations where it governs. As long as it does not explain what diagnosis, what team, what resources and what sectoral knowledge underpin its programme, the question posed by its organisational chart will remain open: whether it sought a person in charge of culture or a spokesperson's culture.
About the open conversation
This text separates data from my interpretation. It does not judge Sémper's capacity to manage, because he has not yet held an executive position in a public administration from which to apply this programme and answer for its results. It examines the consistency between the management criterion proclaimed by the PP, the public career of its person in charge of culture and the measures he has announced. If you work in cultural policy or in the management of institutions and wish to discuss this reading, this notebook remains open: write to me.
Sources
Pablo R. Roces, «Borja Sémper avanza el programa del PP para Cultura: “En los primeros 100 días de Gobierno aprobaremos una Ley de Mecenazgo y una auditoría de los museos estatales”», El Mundo, 22 de septiembre de 2026.
Partido Popular, «Borja Sémper Pascual», perfil oficial, consultado el 7 de octubre de 2026.