Pressure from Vox on the Huesca City Council condemned the Periferias festival and from its ashes two cultural initiatives have emerged: Spin and Extrarradios. Both have taken place in recent weeks, the first in the capital of Huesca and organized by the council that governs the PP and the second between the towns of Almudévar and Ayerbe with Luis Lles, ideologist of Periferias for 20 years, as soul father. After the first test edition, their respective promoters made a positive assessment and trusted that they would continue over time.
Far from engaging in a temporary battle to collect the inheritance of Periferias, they have developed on different dates. Spin took place between October 16 and 20 in Huesca and brought together 15,000 attendees, according to data from the town hall. All events were free. Extrarradios, with a nomenclature clearly reminiscent of the Periferias festival, took place in two stages and attracted 4,000 attendees: from October 25 to 27 in Almudévar with more than 1,300 spectators and this past festive long weekend in Ayerbe. In their case, the price of the tickets for each appointment was 20 euros and the whole, 35. Extrarradios has revolved its programming around the ideas of cultural censorship and the limits of artistic creation.
The two cultural events have been built with similar budgets. Spin cost 108,000 euros. The Huesca City Council has contributed 78,000 euros, the Huesca Provincial Council (DPH) 20,000 and the Government of Aragon, 10,000 euros. The Popular Party heads the three institutions. Extrarradios, with two more days of programming, started with ten thousand euros less (98,000) and the Ministry of Culture and Sports contributed almost half, 50,000 euros for a festival organized by two town councils, those of Almudévar and Ayerbe, in which The PSOE governs.
The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, defined Extrarradios, whose first motto has been dissidence, as “a great meeting for freedom” and to “combat censorship.” In a text that serves as a birth certificate, the festival is defined as a “response to the cancellation of the Periferias festival by the Huesca City Council, determined by a clearly political imposition.”
Periferias was launched in 2000 and in its 23 editions it followed avant-garde paths. The last one, which had the artistic expressions of the gypsy people as its theme, lasted ten days, had a budget of 130,000 euros and was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, the DPH and the Women’s Institute.
Cancellation motivated by Vox
Vox stated as a condition for approving the 2024 municipal budgets the suppression of a festival that the extreme right attacked, pointing out that it only served “to shower progressive culturetas with hundreds of thousands of euros.” Until then, it survived PP and PSOE town halls and gave performances by emerging and established stars who, in some cases, were performing for the first time in Spain: Matthew Herbert, Lee Scratch Perry, Jeff Mills, the Sun Ra Arkestra The Human League, Sugarhill Gang, Pan Sonic, Tony Allen or a budding Rosalía in 2017.
Lles referred to the first weekend of Extrarradios in Almudévar as “a success”: “We wanted to offer cultural rights to everyone so that anyone, regardless of their environment, could enjoy high-quality contemporary culture, and we have achieved it,” celebrated. In addition, he highlighted that “the response from the public was magnificent, both for the quality of the performances and the atmosphere created.” Moha Gerehou and her monologue ‘Infiltrated in Vox’, the North American trans artist Dorian Wood and Maria Rodés were other highlights of that first section of Extrarradios.
In Ayerbe, where the DANA victims were remembered with a minute of silence and some events were rescheduled, the presence of Christina Rosenvinge, Niño de Elche and Ignatius Farray rounded out a proposal that enhances the role of small population centers in the stimulation of cultural activities. Luis Lles recalls, to put the attendance data in context, that “Ayerbe has a thousand inhabitants and Almudévar, 2,000. The response has been as good or better than in a big city.”
Lorena Orduna, mayor of Huesca, described the first edition of Spin as “a resounding success” in terms of participation and added that “we are considering repeating it again next year.” To which he links the process of citizen participation promoted by the city council in cultural material to “verify the concerns that Huesca residents have regarding the culture of our city.” During this month the data will be cross-checked to analyze it and “act accordingly regarding next year’s general budgets with respect to culture.”
The objective of the Huesca City Council was to “invigorate and make a shift in cultural matters to serve all audiences, especially young people and families.” The show ‘Drakanthux’, by K de Calle, brought together more than 4,500 people, the same number as ‘The Cuckoo’s Labyrinth’, by the Itinerània company in the five screenings that took place over two and a half days. Among the musical proposals, those by Rapsusklei, Flores & McEwen and Joe Crepúsculo stood out.
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