Santiago Abascal has presented himself this Monday as the maximum defender of Culture in Spain and, in an act designed for the leader of Vox to describe his cultural program for the next 23-J -something that in the end he has not done, prolonging the unknown about his real content – has promised to uphold it at the highest level. For this, he has guaranteed that, in a hypothetical right-wing government, he will have the rank of Ministry. A proposal that clashes with that of his natural partner, the PP, after Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s promise to eliminate him if he became president of the Government, as Mariano Rajoy already did in his two legislatures.
The bombastic defense of Culture carried out by Abascal, however, has barely been detailed in a roadmap as simple as the motto that he himself has proposed for the aforementioned Ministry and which would focus on “protecting and exalting the things of Spain”. in contrast to the current “kidnapping suffered by ideological interests.”
At the foot of ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew’, a typically Counter-Reformation altarpiece by the Flemish painter Pedro Pablo Rubens located at the Antwerp Foundation in Madrid, Abascal has rejected the accusations of “censorship” and “cancellation” made by the rest of parties, including the PP.
After the veto, among others, of the play Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, which they planned to perform on November 25 in the municipality of Valdemorillo, a Madrid municipality where Vox governs together with the popular ones, the spokesman for the latter, Borja Semper has described as “hits” those who “censor”. However, Abascal has raised his tone to affirm that he will not accept “accusations from those who have made Culture a modus vivendi and a game of self-projection. “With us the curtain will never fall”, he has pointed out as a master of ceremonies of his own work not yet presented and oblivious to the trickle of cancellations orchestrated from administrations governed by leaders of his party.
Accompanied by Vox candidates and supporters related to the world of culture, such as writers and Senate candidates Zoe Valdés and Enrique García-Maiquez; the filmmaker Álvaro Sáenz de Heredia, who left the Film Academy in 2004; or the bullfighter Vicente Barrera, vice president of the Valencian Community, the leader of Vox began his speech by criticizing the recent modifications of some works such as those by, he has listed, the comedians Monty Python or the writers Roal Dhal, Agatha Christie or J.K. Rowling. “Censorship, coercion and fear return. And once again we have something to say, we are not going to be accomplices of censorship or coercion or fear”, he asserted, once again moving away from the accusations of censorship after the vetoes by party leaders.
Abascal has related culture to freedom and has accused “wokism” of canceling artistic expressions to create a society to suit them. “Let’s get away from that abject way of approaching culture,” he has asked, asking what does it matter which side of the palace the poet Francisco de Quevedo chose or the reasons that led the Machado brothers to be in the trenches of opposite sides.
He has also spoken about the Spanish language, literature, music, dance and has also claimed bullfighting, which he has asked to be able to speak “for or against”, but “in freedom”. Personally, he has argued that bullfights should be “on the agenda of anyone who intends to defend culture.” And, aware of the blisters that he can cause, he has paraphrased Federico García Lorca, recalling when the poet from Granada defined bullfighting as “the only place where one goes with the security of seeing death surrounded by the most dazzling beauty”.
Nor has Abascal forgotten Spanish cinema and has proposed its promotion to “rescue it”, he has said, “from whoever wants to control it”, with measures to alleviate the tax burden for the creation of audiovisual content and also direct aid. Although he has already warned that “abandon all hope” those who have become “professionals of the subsidy”, who use “everyone’s money” to “plunder”.
With this speech, Abascal has stressed that Vox has not reached Spanish politics to “continue or respect the kidnapping of culture by false elites who have proposed to design a society according to their whims and interests.”
