Spain's main right-wing party, the PP, has vetoed a play in Catalan about eating disorders, scheduled to be performed in the Balearic Islands capital of Palma. This is what the Mallorcan actor Ann Perelló, creator and protagonist of the work, Nua (radiografia d'un trastorn) - "Naked (X-ray of a disorder)" - which has been touring all over the Catalan-speaking lands for months - has denounced. According to Perelló, it was last Friday when she was informed that three performances of the work scheduled in the Mar i Terra municipal theatre would not take place because the stage proposal "is not in the line of shows that will be scheduled" after the recent change of government in the Palma city council, when the People's Party took power from a Socialist-led council. The news arrives on the same day that the future president of the Balearic Islands, Marga Prohens, has promised to "insulate" school classrooms from "any temptation of ideological indoctrination" (referring to the Catalan language).
"This is really making my hair stand on end", said the actor in a tweet, wondering what is "the line that will be programmed" by the new PP leaders. "But above all I wonder if they know that the eating disorders, the pain that is associated with these disorders and in general, mental health, does not have anything to do with parties or politics", she questioned. The answer is clear: "No", they don't know. "I am quite sorry that this happened to me," she concluded. Thus, Perelló sent a message of support to people who may experience similar censorship situations in the future and recalled that in November the 2023-2024 Nua tour will begin - "thanks to the tireless work of Sala Flyhard", a small theatre in the Barcelona neighbourhood of Sants.
The PP's response
That Naked does not follow "in the line of shows" of the new city government is the only argument that Perelló has received from the new council team, which has been in the hands of the PP for two weeks. It is still unknown what this "line" is. Maybe the PP has no interest in talking about eating disorders, maybe it has no interest in programming in the Catalan language. "The thing that is most severe is that in Nua there are moments in Spanish," the actress joked ironically.
Hours after Perelló's complaint, Palma city council issued a statement in Spanish explaining that the veto "is exclusively a budgetary issue" - without reference to the "line of shows that will be scheduled". "The new Music and Performing Arts team has encountered a situation in which the entire budget for this year is committed and the amount available is not sufficient to be able to attend to all the reservations that have been formalized," says the council. Along these lines, the new general director of Music and Performing Arts, Rafel Brunet, affirms that the "Nua booking was not cancelled for ideological reasons". "It is a great work and this is ibvious, as it has obtained various recognitions and awards. We are planning to perform a series on social theatre in the first quarter of 2024 with the updated budget", he added, without clarifying whether this cycle will feature the work of the Mallorcan actress or not.
"The play NUA only had a booking for the space, there was no formalized contract", says the new Palma council, in a tweet.
Censorship, the PP's line of action
For their part, the green-sovereignist party Més per Palma criticized the decision of the PP and labelled it as "censorship". "Once again, the 'Backward Government' puts its morals ahead of the interests of the public and shows a lack of reliability and respect to the cultural sector," councillor Miquel Àngel Contreras denounced.
It seems that censorship will be a key line of action for PP-led governments in this legislature. Because the veto of Naked is not the first by the new right-wing governments, after Vox succeeded in suspending a theatrical adaptation of Orlando (by Virginia Woolf) - a play which denounces the submission of women to men - in a performance scheduled for the Madrid town of Valdemorillo. To add insult to injury, the PP and Vox also banned the movie Lightyear in a Cantabrian municipality because it features a kiss between two women.
Below, the graph of the electoral change in the municipal government in Palma, capital of Mallorca, with the Socialist (PSIB) mayor losing to the PP, in line with the swing to the right experienced in most parts of the Spanish state on May 28th.