“If we accept that the erotic and the sexual is something that cannot be seen, that it is wrong, we return to a logic of shame, of guilt, with respect to sexuality. And that is not the way to live a free, consenting and full sexuality.” This is what the Unides Podem councilor in Palma, Lucía Muñoz, has spoken about, following the criticism leveled against the poster presented for the ‘Santa Punxada’, a protest party that, with the support of the purple party, will take place on the 19th. January as an alternative to the official program of the patron saint festivities of the Balearic capital. The illustration, the work of the Balearic artist Lluïsa Febrer, shows Sant Sebastià – patron saint of Palma – with a sobrassada as a penis, accompanied by a female version of the martyr and both surrounded by ‘dimonis’, one of the essential symbols of popular festivals from Mallorca.
With the motto Sant SebastiàQ+, the celebration aims to vindicate the rights of the LGTBIQ+ community with music, art, inclusion and visibility. However, the poster announcing the party has raised dust among the most conservative sectors of the island. The last to charge against the artistic proposal has been Vox, which has criticized that “the pathetic attempt to seek notoriety by a group that only has one councilor in the Palma City Council cannot be an excuse to offend the religious feelings of the most of the people of Palma.”
Given the controversy generated, the artistic director and programmer of the event, Víctor Conejo, has forcefully defended the initiative “for its graphic language”: “It is a very narrative poster in which there are many elements. I was very interested in having Lluïsa Febrer”, known for her multidisciplinary career as a painter, muralist and polisher. In 2016, the Association of Visual Artists of the Balearic Islands (Aavib) denounced the throwing of eggs against ‘El mirador’, a sequence of 16 drawings in which Febrer showed the process of the gestation of an embryo in the womb of a woman until the moment of giving birth.
In statements to elDiario.es, the cultural journalist has also expressed himself ironically surprised by the reactions unleashed against the ‘Santa Punxada’ poster: “Ah, there are nudes? as?”. And he adds: “It reminds me of when Rubens was commissioned to draw cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory and they told him: ‘Hey, there are nudes in the drawings.’ Let’s see, like it’s Rubens.”
“What I don’t understand is that there is controversy over graphic elements that simply have no desire to shock, attack, violate, or offend. There is only one iconographic language,” he stressed.
For her part, Podem councilor in Palma City Council, Lucía Muñoz, alludes to the political reflection behind the concept of the Sant Sebastià festivities and explains to this medium what the objective of their alternative celebration is: “We what What we want is to make visible the most vindictive part of the figure of Sant Sebastià, which is a part of its history that is often omitted or hidden. He is the patron saint of Palma and we have never talked about the fact that the LGTBI community has long adopted the image of Sant Sebastià, a person who was martyred for defending his way of living and seeing the world. [fue un tribuno romano ejecutado por su fe en el cristianismo]. “He is an icon and his figure has been related to eroticism since the Renaissance.”
The coordinator of Podem Balears also remembers the incident that happened to Fray Bartolomeo when he painted an altarpiece in the church of San Marco in Florence with the naked figure – except for the purity cloth – of Saint Sebastian with an expression of ecstasy, tied to a tree and his body pierced by several arrows. “The temple’s confessionals began to fill with women who told the priest that they had sinned by seeing him like that and, in the end, they had to cover the painting,” says the councilor.
Already in the 19th century, Oscar Wilde, “one of the most important figures of the LGTBI community” – Muñoz points out – and key in the “erotization” of San Sebastián, dedicated a sonnet to him after seeing the martyrdom to which he was subjected, represented by Guido Reni at the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa. Likewise, after the playwright was tried and imprisoned for sodomy, upon leaving prison he adopted Sebastian Melmoth as a pseudonym in honor of the saint as well as in homage to one of the books that most captivated him, Melmoth, the wanderer (1820), masterpiece of Charles Maturin.
“This is the fundamental factor that people do not know. That San Sebastián is the patron saint of the gay community. And if the patron saint of this city is San Sebastián, that component and that essence that has never been there has to be there. That is the claim. We have to remember it and make it clear, put it on the front line,” emphasizes the Podem councilor.
Specifically, the ‘Santa Punxada’, which will be held in Plaza Santa Eulària in Palma, will feature DJs, with local DJs such as Papa Topo, Fabián Roelandt and Coneja Mansa, who will musically animate the evening.
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