OPEN LETTER TO THE COMMERCE AND HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY OF MADRID IN THE FACE OF A FALSE COMPLAINT FOR PLAGIARISM AGAINST THE GENERAL DIRECTORATE OF COMMERCE AND HOSPITALITY OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF MADRID

2023/04/05

Dear presidents, presidents, managers and collaborators and collaborators, interested and interested:

I am writing to you in response to the news item published in the Público newspaper dated April 4 under the headline: “ A student denounces that the Almeida government has plagiarized his Final Degree Project: "I have felt unrecognized "” , echoing a defamatory post posted on the Instagram account @sngraphic138.

Before continuing, I will advance the conclusion, the aforementioned news echoes a defamation of the Madrid City Council made by who claims to be a design student who, after being "inspired" to do his Final Degree Project, presented in January 2023,, on the municipal website www.todoestaenmadrid.com , in operation since the beginning of 2021, intends to denounce the Madrid City Council for plagiarism to, at least, be noticed.

I explain it to you in detail.

The first news that in the Madrid City Council, specifically in the general direction of commerce and hospitality, we learned of the existence of who claims to be "Santi" (@sngraphic138) and of what according to himself has been his work end of degree (LOCVI and campaign), presented in January 2023, was his defamatory post on his Instagram account on April 3, denouncing that the Madrid City Council had plagiarized his TFG.

On the wall of the IG account of "Santi" @sngraphic138, as Público notes in his news, it can be verified without a doubt that the first publication of this student regarding his TFG, about which he affirms that he has presented in January 2023 and which has "developed" a business app, which it calls "locvi", which "curiously" has an extraordinary similarity (content, icons, structure, typography...) with the institutional website todoestaenmadrid .com, which has been around since early 2021, is dated February 14, 2023.

Well, it turns out that the day before that publication, on February 13 , the Madrid City Council had already launched the contract to print the posters for the institutional campaign "2023 year of commerce / Everything is in Madrid". Prior to this, at the beginning of the second half of January 2023, that is , almost a month before the first post about this student's TFG , the design of the campaign was already being prepared by the General Directorate of Hospitality Trade, with support of the management company for the design and management of the website and social networks of everything is in Madrid, which was definitively approved by the general direction of communication of the Madrid City Council on February 8, 2023. All of this is documented and dated.

In other words, almost 1 month before "Santi" made the first publication of his TFG on an Instagram account that at that time had just 400 followers, the Madrid City Council was already preparing the design and graphic adaptations of the "2023" campaign. year of the trade Everything is in Madrid, a design that was definitively approved 5 days before the date of that publication, beginning the hiring of the printing of the posters 1 day before the first public post of the TFG of "Santi".

In other words, on the dates on which the Madrid City Council General Directorate of Commerce and Hospitality designed, approved and sent to the printer the municipal campaign "2023 Year of Commerce / Everything is in Madrid" "Santi" ( @sngraphic138 ) had not made public anything about his TFG, his "locvi" or his graphic proposal, so no one other than him could have known about it. It is obvious to conclude that it is absolutely impossible for us to be faced with plagiarism of a work that, when the city council designed, approved and sent its campaign to print, was not public and that only the author could know.

On the contrary, when "Santi" @sngraphic138 made his TFG public on February 14, 2023 , (TFG that he claims to have started in September 2022), the website is all in Madrid had been running for 2 years, had more than 12,300 establishments adhered, it had more than 340,000 users, more than 3 million events had been registered in it and, always with messages similar to those of the 2023 campaign, numerous institutional campaigns had been carried out on it, with the hiring of the printing of the posters of the last one of them.

Far from being a plagiarism of any other campaign or work, the design in January 2023 of the campaign "2023 year of commerce / everything is in Madrid" , carried out by the General Directorate of Commerce and Hospitality and the company awarded the contract for the design and management of the web, app and networks of everything is in Madrid, it is own, original, consistent and coherent with the image of the web and app that it promotes , in operation since 2021 . In response to this concordance and coherence, a typographic campaign was designed using: the same typography of the web (Google fonts Barlow free font family), the original identifying icons of the categories that appear on the web and app, the claim “Buy where you live ” ( used for the first time by the Madrid city council in December 2020 in the municipal Christmas campaign to support trade) , the messages and calls to action "Enter and discover everything around you" and "Scan this QR and access the municipal guide of all establishments in the city. And if you have one of them, sign up for free at todoestaenmadrid.com so that everyone knows you ”, practically identical to those used in the campaigns of everything is in Madrid in 2021 and 2022 , the QR of the web, the sub-brand Everything is in Madrid, registered in the OEPM by the City Council and a frame with the name of the 21 districts of the city.

Consequently, in this general direction of commerce and hospitality of the Madrid City Council we have accredited and documented that the complaint of plagiarism launched in the Instagram account @ sngraphic138, of which Público echoes, is without any doubt a defamation.

Concepcion Diaz de VIllegas Solans

General Director of Commerce and Hospitality of the Madrid City Council