Another ghost runs through some Spanish territories: the ghost of censorship. In recent days, town halls where PP and Vox have consolidated government pacts, and others where only Vox or PP manage the helm, have removed works or films from cultural programming alleging strange arguments, when in truth what prompts the removal of these pieces is a stigmatization of free culturediverse, tolerant, happily unequal.
The last case is that of the withdrawal of the Briviesca (Burgos) billboard, where PP and Vox share power, from the piece The sea: vision of children who have never seen itco-written by Xavier Bobés and Alberto Conejero (National Prize for Dramatic Literature and director of the Madrid Autumn Festival). The work is a tribute to a rural school teacher who promises to take his students to Barcelona to see the sea, but it is shot in the Civil War for his Republican allegiance unable to complete the trip. The piece premiered in February 2022 at the National Theater of Catalonia and then came the Teatro de La Abadía in Madrid, led by Juan Mayorga (Princess of Asturias Award winner). Until now it has carried out more than fifty performances throughout Spain and on July 15 it was scheduled to be represented in Briviesca.
In a statement, Bobés explains that “everything was confirmed and agreed until the change of administration” took place in the elections on March 28. Alberto Conejero, co-author of the work, is in Athens, attending the Greek Agora of Performance, within the Athens Epidauros Festival, where he develops part of his work for the Autumn Festival. From there he confirms to EL MUNDO that the work has been “censored” and in a subsequent statement he maintains that “it is time to face together the disturbing situation of our countrydemanding that all administrations safeguard freedom of expression and access to culture, and respect for companies and spectators”.
The withdrawal of The sea… in Briviesca is added to the cancellation of the performances that the Defondo Theater company had planned in Valdemorillo (Madrid), where the Councilor for Culture and Tourism, Victoria Gil (Vox), alleges budgetary problems for the staging of a work already agreed , adaptation of the novel Orlandoby Virginia Woolf and published in 1928. A text that bravely reflects on homosexuality, female sexuality and the role of the free woman in society through five centuries.
The grotesque grows when the coalition between PP and Vox of the municipality of Santa Cruz de Bezana (Cantabria) suspends the screening of the children’s film Lightyearfrom the saga of Toy Storybecause in it appears two women kissing. Fourteen countries in the Middle East and Asia censored the film for the same reason.. This happens in the week in which a Vox councilor in the Mérida City Council asked to remove the flag of the LGTBI collective from the facade of the consistory, arguing that “if we continue to break the law, the next thing we are going to see is the flag of pedophiles “.