The Penedès regions can add another merit to the land of good cavas, wines and castles: “Where carnivals are censored”. The Penedès thus opens up a tourist niche, tailored for prudes, fools or nostalgic for Francoism, orphans of pilgrimages behind the veneer of the Valley of the Fallen.
Various town councils in Penedès have censored songs that the comparsas had been rehearsing for months for the rúas due to “bad taste or sexism”.
And, in the late-Franco way, they have had the Sicilian detail not to prohibit them but to "discourage" them, which is equivalent to treating the ignorant troupes who choose badly and need, like the Iranians, a power that watches over morality and good taste. And if they keep the songs? Goodbye subsidies 2023 and goodbye parade 2024.
Among the censored ones are SloMo by Chanel, third in the Eurovision Song Contest, or Suavemente bailada en medio mundo. Do you aspire for the comparsas to dance to the rhythm of La santa espina or of the sandunguero María Cristina wants to govern me?
Who do these councilors think they are to impose blacklists? We are talking about a carnival parade – of course, where there is a subsidy, there is no transgression – and not about an end-of-year party in a posh or ultra-Catholic private boarding school...
I already understand that the councilors so proud of this Orwellian and regional uprising dislike certain letters in their streets. We are two now. What is unheard of is to arrogate the elitist monopoly of good taste and prohibit the people –today citizens– this or that song, this or that scene, this or that sinful dance...
If such censorship were exercised by a conservative municipality or applied to the Sitges carnival –a close reference to what a carnival and mega LGTBI is–, the authorities themselves would cry out to heaven. Long live Tartuffism!
And for that matter, couldn't they lounge around just enough and notify the comparsas a month in advance – not a few days? Thus, by the way, we would know if they have the courage to stand up to the diktat of the Subsidy and Carnival Moral Boards (not to be confused with the JONS).
