She wore a reproduction inspired by the 19th century for the fruit offering: skirt and jacket in silk and cotton, brownish greens and purples, an embroidered white cambric handkerchief, silver almond earrings and a comb. For the offering of flowers, she changed her outfit, decided to go to the previous century, the glorious 18th century, and wore an outfit in turquoise tones that paid tribute to a masterpiece of traditional clothing, to the rich cultural history of Aragon.
All of these data were extracted from certain official accounts with which some Zaragoza institutions have decided to tell in detail, with less admiration than obedience, every step the mayor of Zaragoza, Natalia Chueca, takes, every exhalation she emits, every smile that shines. And all this concern to narrate in detail the details of a traditional dress reflects a neuralgic point about the discussion of what is called a cultural model: the legitimacy of what should be questioned and what should not.
And the much-mentioned tradition appears, that political, constructed and artificial story that succeeds precisely in hiding its three founding characteristics to make us believe that it is, precisely, the opposite: something that was always like this. Eternal. Or perhaps it is a specific way of understanding tradition, as something very close to the religious, indisputable and ahistorical, perfect and perpetual omnipresence like the idea of any god. That way it is decided (in which a group of people decide) what should be questioned and what should not. For example: centuries-old clothing or a sound laboratory, endless lines to worship a statue or the associative fabric of a neighborhood through a cultural center, a festival that consists of photographing flowers or a unique center in Spain that he fused contemporary art with technology, accepting without question that bullfighting is culture or discussing his flirtation with torture.
Starting from the artificial story of the need to recover the origins of such an authentic and glorious Spain, the current management of the City Council of the Aragonese capital has drawn an ellipsis towards a sordid present, almost a Ballardian dystopia, in which companies manage and decide everything, where everything costs money and the associative and community fabric is annulled. A strategy seasoned with kilometers of colored lights.
The chiaroscuro
Talking about a cultural model can be a bit tricky because the very idea of a model, that exemplary issue, would clash with the idea of culture. Or at least, a disruptive, innovative culture that proposes new ways of thinking. Let him dialogue critically and not in a complacent, so silly way, with tradition. Perhaps it is preferable to talk about a plan, a strategy and even a script, why not, something malleable, sketched and adapted according to the circumstances, in permanent dialogue with the changes of the moment. Because society evolves and any cultural policy has the obligation to be permeable to changes, to be attentive to them. But these are fine details, nuances that are unimportant in the face of the drowning that the management of Natalia Chueca and her predecessor Jorge Azcón represents to the cultural spaces of the city. It is impossible to plan anything without a budget and, of course, in the face of dismantling. An example: the Hybrid Knowledge festival, with all its tables confirmed and everything budgeted in Etopia, had to be suspended because the city council immediately ordered the emptying of any cultural activity that took place there. And the building would soon become what it is today, an empty shell that is rented to the highest bidder.
That is what defines, if it exists as such, the cultural plan of Natalia Chueca’s management: the shell, the endless surface. And if it shines, so much the better. A perfect Christmas, the time in which the culture of the world seems to stop, when Western civilization all agrees to not think about anything and gives way for the illusion to reach each of our neighborhoods, for the sparkles to flash. at night so we can follow the colored trails. So: 1.3 million euros invested in stars, six-meter-high trees, thousands and thousands of LEDs in every corner of the city and a row of lights of almost 4 kilometers that goes from the Arrabal to the Parque Grande, a fairly long distance, certainly, but not as long as there is on the entire map of the Zaragoza evictedperformed by the group of DJs and podcasters Sororitrap Sound Antisystem.
In this digital cartography you can view and tour most of the cultural spaces that were closed or canceled or dismantled by the city council during this administration and the previous one. For example: the Intercultural Mediation Program of the Historic Center (Amediar), the CSO Loira, Etopia or the Luis Buñuel Community Social Center, in which Natalia Chueca was recently present to give it a new life as a five-star senior center. She herself was the one who said that about the five stars. He also said that the building had to be cleaned and that it became in the hands of a few and became the property of everyone and that it was difficult for them to “remove all the garbage that was inside, accumulated from we don’t know what.” That type of redeeming and cleansing idea has the mayor in mind.
The Sororitrap map is in progressof course, because the closures do not stop. For example, the Las Armas Center is already scheduled for early January 2025, and what is not closed points to alleged irregularities, such as the activities for the 30th anniversary of the Zaragoza Auditorium (and the future of its management) or the attempt to privatize the hall, box office and stage service of the Teatro del Mercado, for which a rejection campaign on Change.org.
The great chiaroscuro of Zaragoza: lights that shine and lights that go out in the same cartography. And a switch that few people use.
The screen
Everyone knows that the current mayor worked as Marketing Director before devoting herself to politics, a vocation that she seems to have never abandoned. The only difference or, rather, the addition is that before she did marketing for a company and now she does it for herself and for so many companies. But not everyone knows that he receives sporadic guests (they may be booksellers, pastry chefs or Christmas light makers) in the town hall offices under a specific protocol: the guests spend a considerable amount of time waiting at the meeting table, long enough to generate some expectation, and there is a tall and enormous door that suddenly opens spectacularly and from which the figure of the mayor emerges, her determined steps, her smile.
The companies, their figure. The entrepreneurs and her, their great monitor. Very recently, in what used to be Ethiopia and today seems to be a convention center bustling with business activities, one of those events sponsored by the European Union took place in which the member countries send their most unknown representatives to put the face, to take photos and laugh cocktails to make numbers: 120 of them, 70 countries and the mayor of the city appointed as Commissioner for Industry and Competitiveness of the Shadow Commission of Eurocities, giving her assessments about “shared knowledge and the exchange of experiences and good practices between cities.” Meanwhile, the classrooms that were previously used to teach courses have been dismantled to make way for company headquarters and the rooms of the artists’ residences and the reverberant room and the sound laboratory: dismantled, dismantled, companies and more companies.
What happens in Etopia is the symbol (although not so symbolic, sometimes it is quite concrete and realistic, lacking metaphor) of what this City Council intends with cultural events: that everything is paid for. It is true that, technically, every public activity is paid for, that every show or cultural center is financed with taxes. But this is a twist on the added value: you also have to pay an extra at the time, please go to the checkout, and then you can enter the new reZintos.
To the investment in Christmas lights, more paid lights and sounds were added, 15 euros per person, in an occupied area within the Parque Grande and where the official occupation is written without a k, there will be no confusion. This thing is called Luzir and it is managed by the company Zusup, the same company that was in charge of Espacio Zity during the Pilar Festival. And it means the privatization of a public park and the hierarchization of the city’s inhabitants: whoever can pay will privately enjoy a show full of magic and classic Christmas stories with the northern lights, angels and nativity scenes of light; Those who cannot pay for it will have to settle for the plebeian magic of public lighting.
And for those who find walking under Christmas lights vertigo, there will always be ironic consumption, exploring any kitsch option with the prefix post- and trying to create post-culture, post-tourism, post-cynicism. But it is so difficult in this scenario and given the city council’s insistence on spending public money on, for example, the omnipresence of Leticia Sabater in the major and minor festivals. Is ironic consumption possible in the face of such a monument of the grotesque? There is the option of the Cultural Block, of course, a platform in defense of the associative cultural fabric in Zaragoza that meets in an assembly and plans protest actions against the cultural policy of Natalia Chueca. And there is also the possibility of conforming and complying, of thinking that nothing happens with all this that happens and of swallowing all the tips of tradition as they come, of feeding a city permanently satisfied with itself, the opposite of what Enrique Vila -Matas said about Barcelona, whose chronic dissatisfaction he compared to that of Emma Bovary, Gustave Flaubert’s character. To what literary character could Zaragoza’s permanent self-satisfaction be compared? The unknown remains to play at home.
And another extra, that more than an unknown is such a dark doubt: what will be behind all this pomp, if there is anything. That is, if this ellipsis that the Government of Natalia Chueca draws between the story of tradition and the entrepreneurial meritocratic discourse hides something that is not seen, that is not told. Or if it is directly pure emptiness, air, nothingness itself. It would be sad to discover that behind those repeated smiles there is absolutely nothing but daring ignorance.
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