Government says it will change name of Centro Cultural Kirchner

President Javier Milei’s government has announced it will change the name of the Centro Cultural Kirchner (Kirchner Cultural Centre, CCK) in Buenos Aires.

News of the intention to change the centre’s name was confirmed Tuesday by Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni, who said the Milei administration is yet to “define” a new title for the centre.

"It has finally been decided to change the name of the Centro Cultural Néstor Kirchner, so it will cease to be called as such and will be given a new name," said Adorni at the beginning of his daily press conference.

The controversial spokesperson immediately began referring to it as the “ex-CCK” as he took questions.

The name change is sure to generate a new clash with Peronist and Kirchnerite politicians, specifically former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whose government chose the moniker to honour her late husband, fellow ex-president Néstor Kirchner.

Initially opened nearly a century ago, the Retiro building was for decades home to the Buenos Aires Central Post Office.

In 2005, Néstor Kirchner led efforts to turn the then-abandoned building into a massive cultural centre. At great expense, the site was refurbished, reformed and eventually re-opened a decade later in 2015 as the Centro Cultural Kirchner, in honour of the late former president, who had died five years earlier.

Designed in a beaux-arts style, the CCK is home to a stunning concert hall known as "the blue whale," that seats almost 2,000 people. It also has venues for music, art installations, live theatre performances and regularly hosts exhibitions.

Former president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) tried to change the building’s during his time in office, but eventually didn’t follow through with the plan.

President Milei suggested on the campaign trail last year that he would seek to change the building’s name if he won the presidential election.

Last December, Valeria Ambrossio, the director of the CCK, criticised Milei’s proposal.

"Changing the name is ridiculous. I don't think it's a smart thing to do. It is something that was born in a certain way, it has a name and an identity to preserve," she said in a radio interview with Urbana Play.

– TIMES/NA