The first bill was presented July 20, 2006, to the Congress of the Nation by a group of legislators led by Francisco “The Beard” Gutiérrez, the historical leader of the Metalworkers’ Union in Quilmes, the first union to promote factory recovery, at the end of the 80s.1 Gutiérrez was accompanied by a group mostly made up of kirchnerista deputies and a few who belonged to smaller blocs.2 In contrast to Kravetz’s bill, which was presented in the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires supported by the debts that the former owners had to the GCBA for taxes, this one addressed the Nation-State for the first time to remind it that “the Hotel Bauen was created in 1978 during the genocidal dictatorship, with a mortgage from the extinct National Bank of Development (BANADE), which the Iurcovich family did not pay,” concluding that “therefore, the BAUEN is (…) property of the State.” This argument would be repeated in the following bills, which, when the first ones were not dealt with and lost parliamentary standing, were presented by different deputies, over and over. It is, as we have already said, the central argument to consider a hotel like the BAUEN expropriatable. In spite of all this, these bills were not much different from the City bill, which also would have expropriated the property, facilities, furniture, and intangibles (like brands and patents) in favor of the workers. In addition to the origin of the debts run up by the former owners, which would serve to compensate them for the expropriation, (and which, in one case, refer to the ABL and other taxes, while in the other case, is about the loan from the BANADE by which the hotel was built), one substantial change is the reference to the applicable authorities. It was the Secretary of Production, Tourism, and Sustainable Development of the GCBA in one case, and the Ministry of Public Works and Utilities of the Nation, on the other.
- Francisco “Barba” Gutiérrez had been elected as Deputy by the Polo Social, a short-lived force headed by Father Farinello. Historical leader of the UOM Quilmes, that began his union activism in the ’70s and was persecuted by the dictatorship, opposed to the then national leadership of the UOM, was one of the drivers of the business recovery by the workers in the southern zone of the Buenos Aires suburbs. Later was mayor of Quilmes by the Front for Victory, a position he left with the triumph of the macrista Martiniano Molina in October of 2015.↩
- The project of Francisco “Barba” Gutiérrez also carried the signature of the legislators and Kirchner legislators Susana Canela, Laura Sesma, Jorge Coscia, Juliana Di Tullio, Araceli Méndez de Ferreyra, Edgardo De Petri, Diana Conti and Mercedes It marked Del Pont, as well as also that of Eduardo Macaluse and Santiago Ferrigno.↩