That time had already been warmed by the reverend preacher Antoni Maria Claret, not only in his books, but also with his severe and terrifying warnings: "Young people who are dancing, you are jumping to hell." I remember that the writer and editor friend Esther Tusquets had hung that poster at home: the admonition was illustrated with the figure of a girl bound by a demon, armed with horns and a tail, in the process of marking out some dance steps.
In the mid-19th century, the polka was one of the dances that enraged the meapilas. In one of the ecclesial magazines its prohibition was demanded, as well as that of the kankan (so they wrote it then), because they were imported from a Paris where only women of bad note danced it.
The Catholic Magazine had gone so far as to consider the polka as a fashionable dance deserving of this furious condemnation: "An invention of Hell to demoralize and corrupt the earth." Caramba!
Proof of that persecutory environment was the one starring a French dancer who revolutionized the Eden Concert, through a demonstration of how sensual her unique interpretation of the cancan was. She was denounced and the governor fined her by assuring that the exaggerated rise of her skirt had allowed her to ostensibly display her leggings. She, honoring her impudence and her panache, argued in her defense that it was not true: "I never wear shoes when I dance in public." And boy was it true. same.
All this was nothing before what was to come: tango. The Archbishop of Paris forbade it, Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered the arrest of the officers caught in the middle of the ball. Pius X condemned it. The boys of the Swiss Guard then implored the intercession of the highly influential Cardinal Merry del Val, Secretary of State; to convince him, one of them had the idea of hugging a chair and drawing a good series of steps. He did not succeed in his endeavor. A Roman prince had the audacity to do the same before the Supreme Pontiff, but with his sister. He also ended up with a failure. Despite so much puritanism, Barcelona deserved to be distinguished as the third homeland of tango thanks to the trio Irusta, Fugazot, Demare, but above all the irresistible genius of Gardel. Let's dance it!
