Alarms have gone off in the sector. Plays by Virginia Woolf and Alberto Conejero canceled in towns in Madrid and Castilla y León for talking about Republican teachers who were shot or characters who change their sex. Disney Pixar children’s films withdrawn in a town in Cantabria for a brief greeting kiss between two women. And the cultural world has said enough to the decisions of some of the new local governments of Vox and PP, which they consider vetoes, ideological censorship, and in a concerted effort this afternoon they have overwhelmingly flooded social networks with their messages, turning into trending topic the hashtag
Faced with the cultural war unleashed by Vox, which has achieved numerous Councils for Culture after the elections, the text from the world of culture that appears on the networks, in the four official languages ??of the State, is simple and intends, they say, to react “to this incredible situation that the Performing Arts and Music are going through in which cancellations of shows and musical performances are taking place throughout the State, motivated solely by partisan and political criteria”: “Professionals from the world of culture We want to denounce the return of censorship that is violating freedom of expression, a socially and democratically consolidated right in our Constitution. We demand the protection of our fundamental rights because without culture there is no democracy”.
The author and director María Velasco sums up that “art does not matter. It is life that matters. But, it is already known, that art imitates life and life imitates art. Life as a whole (and its diversity ) is going to be jibarized”. And the supporters are innumerable and not only cover the entire spectrum of the profession but also of political leaders, from the Minister Miquel Iceta to the Vice President Yolanda Díaz, the Minister of Catalan Culture, Natàlia Garriga, or the new mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni , which ensures that it is committed “to Barcelona leading the defense of freedom of expression and creativity”.
Among the institutions and companies that have signed the Centro Dramático Nacional, the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico, the Gran Teatro del Liceo, the Kamikaze Theater, the Grec festival, Temporada Alta, Teatre Lliure, the Academia de las Artes Sécénicas de España, the Romea Theatre, the Goya, the Poliorama, the National Theater of Catalonia, the Ramon Llull Institute, the Teatro del Barrio, the SGAE Foundation, Sala Cuarta Pared, Sala Beckett, the Red Española de Teatros, Los Premios Max, Bitò Productions, Sala Mirador, Escena Poblenou festival, Teatro Pradillo, La Calòrica, La Brutal, Actua Cultura, Dagoll Dagom or the Mostra d’Igualada. And also the state employer of the theaters, Faeteda.
Film and theater directors such as Montxo Armendáriz, Marta Pazos and Pablo Messiez, playwrights such as Guillem Clua, Josep Maria Miró, Marta Buchaca, Joan Yago and Marc Artigau have joined in a process that is open. The writers Lucía Lijtmaer, Llucia Ramis and Maruja Torres. The Union of Actors and Actresses, Josep Maria Pou, Alba Flores, Miguel Rellán, Pepón Nieto, Fiorella Faltoyano, Unax Ugalde, Silvia Marsó, Hugo Silva, Secun de la Rosa, Marta Marco, Llum Barrera, Rubén Ochandiano, Albert Triola, Júlia Truyol, the Association of Professional Actors and Directors of Catalonia.
Although perhaps the most forceful voice against the situation open after the municipal elections has come from a former head of Culture of the Popular Party, José María Lassalle, who has declared in Cadena Ser about the decisions made by Vox that “they do not have any kind of intellectual respect, that you do not allow us to see a work by Virginia Woolf or Lope de Vega and you frame it in a reactionary, conservative context, it is not like that, it is that you are an idiot”. The former Secretary of State has stressed that “if Lope is not together with Calderón within the imaginary of the extreme right, which is praising the old Spanish glories, you are an idiot.”
The playwright Alberto Conejero, director of the Oroño Festival of the Community of Madrid and whose work The sea: vision of some children who have never seen it, performed together with his partner Xavier Bobés, has been canceled in Briviesca, a town near the place in which the republican teacher Antoni Benaiges, of whom the work speaks, was shot, has issued a statement stressing that “it is time to face together the disturbing situation of our country, demanding that all administrations safeguard freedom of expression and access to culture, and respect for companies and spectators”.
