The auditorium heard: “Death to intelligence! Long live death!” The phrase immortalized the pre-enlightened condition of General Millán Astray and the reactionary revolution led by Francisco Franco. It does not matter whether the phrase was actually uttered in 1936 at the University of Salamanca or is an apocryphal recreation by Professor Luis Portillo, as some historians maintain, because it sublimates the tableau vivant of that Spanish crossroads in the same way as “Eureka!” It summarizes Archimedes' discovery although he would surely never shout such a thing when he saw the water in the bathtub overflowing when he introduced his flesh into the warm water.
The scene of the mutilated José Millán Astray and the old professor Miguel de Unamuno, who replied before the auditorium another famous phrase, “you will win, but you will not convince”, had its historical echo at the Goya gala last Saturday, when Pedro Almodóvar, our hasty Unamuno, harshly replied to the vice president of Castilla y León, Juan García Gallardo, for his usual habit of denigrating cultural activities and expressions that are not of interest to him with the excuse that he receives subsidies, tax exemptions or any form of support public. García Gallardo's position on cultural content is well known, since the Ministry of Culture is under his protection and leaves no opportunity to make it known: he claims a culture "without ideology" and based on what he calls the "Spanish genius." , a syntagm that develops with a formula that we could summarize as one that “combines tradition and avant-garde” and that avoids “providing gender and green social engineering.” He used this expression at the time to accuse Seminci (Valladolid International Film Week) of having “deviated” from its legitimate objectives, which should be to screen films “with social interest” and “without ideology.” In the week before the Goya, and with the alibi of the tractor, García Gallardo treated the Spanish filmmakers as “gentlemen”, accusing them of wasting the subsidies received on films “that are of no interest to anyone”, hence the previous atmosphere. The gala was very heated and the actors and filmmakers arrived hungry for revenge.
On Sunday, after having received in situ and with an uncomfortable smile the saetas of Almodóvar, Pepe Sacristán, Javier Ambrossi and other figures of Spanish cinema, García Gallardo was full of explanations to clarify which films can be made, even if they require public financing, and which ones are not. Thus, for example, he sought the complicity of the great Goya winner, praising The Snow Society, while at the same time flattering Alejandro Amenábar for The Others. He was in favor of “independent cinema” which in his opinion has no ideology and mentioned the nationalist film by José Luis López Linares The First Globalization, because, in his opinion, “it has shown in an attractive way how the conquest really developed. from America". He explained it in an extensive thread on the social network formerly known as Twitter where he expressed himself with the ease with which anyone would comment on the question between vermouth and beer: “What happens is that there are people who call anything culture,” and he added : “There are films that cost a fortune and do not contribute anything: neither for entertainment nor for social value.” Vox fans had charged against Spanish cinema throughout the week and had done so by focusing their fire on the actor and director Eduardo Casanova, who brings together everything that the extreme right can get out of their boxes: he dresses extravagantly, he has a pen , is a queer icon, his films are strange and uncomfortable, they have received public aid, they have been through film festivals and have had low grosses.
But Vox's obsession with any sophisticated knowledge does not remain in culture, it also concerns science. In addition to his well-known climate denialism, the peculiar vice president of Castilla y León launched a campaign to prevent the slaughter of livestock suffering from tuberculosis and even traveled to Europe to pressure the community authorities to relax veterinary controls and requirements. of food security that weigh on the meat and livestock industries.
But it is not about occurrences, but about strategy: the neoreactionary movement was baptized “dark enlightenment” by Nick Land in his book of the same name – The Dark Illustration (and other essays on neoreaction) (Materia Oscura Editorial) – because its postulates are contrary to the positivist and progressive values of the Enlightenment and because it combats the postulates of both Marxist and liberal historiography, which it considers responsible for the decline of the West and for undermining the values of the nation, religion and family. So it is not a case of own or accidental ignorance but rather ideological and promulgated, in pursuit of the class society prior to the bourgeois revolutions. This anti-intellectual fury was summed up by the surrealist André Breton with a phrase that Millán Astray would subscribe to: “A philosopher whom I do not understand is a pig.”
