The Extrarradios festival, which replaces Periferias after being canceled by Huesca City Hall under pressure from Vox, was presented this Wednesday in Huesca. When the far right set this condition for approving municipal budgets, the Ministry of Culture announced that it would work so that other cities in the region could host an exhibition with the same approach. Finally, the new Periferias will take place in Ayerbe and Almudévar, places chosen for a first edition which will deal with censorship in the field of culture of different creative disciplines: literature, plastic arts, music or cinema.
The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, participated in the capital of Upper Aragon in the press conference presenting the Extrarradios Festival, accompanied by the second deputy mayor and advisor for Public Services and Events of the Town Hall of Ayerbe, Marisa Latorre; the councilors of the Almudévar City Council, Sofía Avellanas and Fernando Martínez, and the festival programmer, Luis Lles.
The festival will be held from October 25 to 27 in Almudévar and from October 31 to November 3 in Ayerbe.
The organization is managed by the municipalities of Huesca d’Ayerbe and Almudébar, with the support of the Ministry itself, and was born with the objectives of exploring the universe of contemporary cultural creativity from a thematic and multidisciplinary perspective ; seek a balance between the global and the local; establish a dialogue between the popular and the avant-garde; and create a cultural breeding ground in the region.
Urtasun thanked the organization “that the theme of this first Extrarradios revolves around censorship.” As he stated, “it is essential to make visible what some are trying to do in this country and to do it from a critical and transversal vision and with multiple voices and perspectives, as you have propose”. He added that “faced with the attempt to silence certain voices, it does not seem to me that there is a better response than the one you are proposing.” And he concluded by assuring that “where there is censorship, the Ministry of Culture will act to guarantee the cultural freedom of Spain”.
The event was created with the aim of being a space for reflection and a radar of the most advanced trends in the cultural panorama, with an emphasis on diversity and resistance to uniformity. Organized by the town halls of the two municipalities with the support of the Ministry of Culture, it arises in response to the cancellation of the historic Periferias Festival, retaining its multidisciplinary spirit, free creativity and critical thinking.
The program will offer nearly 40 activities including music, theater, comics, dance, cinema, puppets, exhibitions and conferences in its two locations. Among the participants are Niño de Elche, Cristina Rosenvinge, Moha Gerehou, Titiriteros de Binéfar, Sergio del Molino, the Gabeiras Foundation and the Museu de l’Art Prohibit.
Cancellation of peripherals
Last December, the budgets of the city of Huesca for next year were known and the Periferias Festival was not included in them. This was one of Vox’s demands to support city budgets. The far-right party has never hidden its animosity towards this festival and, before Orduna’s inauguration, it called it a “waste”: “Vox Huesca does not have red lines, but it has green lines. One of them is the Periferias festival, which only serves to flood progressive culture with hundreds of thousands of euros.”
Periferias began in 2000 with the aim of showcasing the artistic avant-garde. Its founder, Luis Lles, has always defended its plurality, recalling that personalities of various ideologies participated in it.
