The Juan Belmonte Institute (IJB) held yesterday in the LBK99 space (Madrid) the third of its ‘Conversations in the Catacomb’, a series of bimonthly conferences that aim to put “uncomfortable issues based on prejudice and devastated by the spiral of silence.
Entitled ‘The bulls from the right’, the gathering was presented by the director of the IJB Chapu Apaolaza, and included the interventions of Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, deputy for Barcelona of the Popular Group in the Congress of Deputies, and Albert Boadella, actor and playwright.
The event, which was intended to be a reply to the previous conference on ‘Bullfighting from the left’, reflected on the role of bullfighting in a society that turns its back on death, on the role of said cultural expression in the construction of concept of nation and its historical and current link with conservative and liberal postulates.
Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo began her speech denouncing the good nature of a society that lives behind death and the challenges and difficulties of life: «Bullfighting is part of a plural space but the politicization that has occurred has more to do with with the hatred of Spanish and with a reactionary vision of the left that seeks to prohibit everything that does not fit with its puerile and almost Disney vision of the world». In this sense, he recalled that “the right to offend and to be offended is part of a plural and tolerant society.”
Relating these concepts to bullfighting, Albert Boadella stated that «it is a miracle that bulls are still in force. Now art is accepted as a form of consumption. In this society there is a feeling of innocence towards art».
Secondly, the speakers spoke about the political exploitation of the Bullfighting Festival in Catalonia by the secessionists and the refuge that this cultural expression represented for all those who did not share their thesis.
In this sense, Cayetana affirmed that “bullfighting goes beyond the purely identity” and confessed that “as a deputy for Barcelona, I would like the bulls to return to Catalonia and for the choice of language to be implemented in Catalan classrooms. It would be a sign of recovery of that free and democratic society that recognizes its plurality».
The act concluded with the reading by Albert Boadella of “the 10 commandments in defense of bullfighting” and with a plea to express the opinion of each one in order to combat the spiral of silence: “I want to encourage everyone to this fun game that is freedom. You have to say what you think, otherwise the other always wins.
