New episode in the cultural wars that have been sweeping Spain for months. In this case, the final result has not been censorship, despite Vox's request, both to the City Council and the Community of Madrid, for the removal of the poster from the Teatro de la Abadía of the play Altsasu "because it is close to the theses pro-ETA." A piece by María Goiricelaya and the Basque company The wandering drama that addresses the Alsasua case, the attack in a bar in the Navarrese town of two civil guards and their partners by eight young people that generated a bitter political struggle and accusations of terrorism.
Both the Community and the City Council, present on the board of La Abadía because they contribute to the budget of this private non-profit foundation, showed their respect for the programming decided by the center and today its artistic director, the playwright Juan Mayorga, member of The RAE, has presented the production that premieres this Thursday, ensuring that it has not received any pressure from the administrations and warning that "we all have to be vigilant against censorship, those of us who are here, but also all citizens."
"Because," he continued, "let us ask ourselves what the meaning of censorship is. Censorship not only harms those who are censored, but also impoverishes society. And it impoverishes it because it deprives it of the conversation that the creators propose." And he has read a fragment of an article titled Necessity for Satire that he himself published in 1999 about a great censored author, Mikhail Bulgakov, the author of The Master and Margarita. "Before the intellectual, censorship should be fought by the citizen. This, the citizen, is the most interested in critical intelligence not being responded to with censorship, but in turn with criticism. Because the autonomy of the citizen depends of the autonomy of a critical culture".
"The censorship exercised on Bulgakov, of course, had injured him. But, above all, it had impoverished that society that had been deprived of the conversation that that creator proposed. I think that Altsasu is a challenging show, in the best sense of the word, look for an intelligent interlocutor who can be critical and who can dissent. I believe that freedom is defended by exercising it rather than with speeches. And peace is defended by exercising it rather than by speeches. And I believe that this show is an act of freedom and peace in which we are all enriched".
And he concluded that "the Abbey does not have to assume the discourse, but it is very important that these creators have a space to propose this conversation. I am very optimistic and I believe that Spanish society is prepared to assume, to accept the proposals for conversation." that works like these do. And the opposite is to look at society with an infantilizing gaze, to think that citizens are like children who can hear or see certain things."
Goiricelaya in this sense has said that "when you try to censor an artistic work, you not only censor a new look, a different look at a specific topic, but you deprive the public, the viewer, of that new look and you also attack their capacity for discernment, to draw their own conclusions". And he recalled that Altsasu is "a documentary fiction inspired by one of the most media and controversial cases of recent times" and that it is a show that was born within a project called Cicatrizar "which aims to search for forgiveness, to undo wounds, to seek coexistence, to talk about the future and to move towards a democratic society. A fiction that literally uses the trial documents but also the imagination.
"The research process was long. We started in 2019 when Sanchis Sinisterra asked me what scar I see now in society that I would like to talk about. And it seemed to us that it was a topic that at that time was worth taking up. the tables for the debate and for the reflection that it could generate. The interpretation work for the actors has been a very special journey, it means giving a voice to all the people involved in this case and respecting the story of each of those people Egoitz Sánchez, one of the interpreters, has remarked that it has been "a challenge and a beautiful job to be able to address all these characters, to be able to delve into the particular pain of each one without judgment, entering there and exposing it."
