Censoring music in Spain: how it works

It is an anomaly, no matter how you look at it: in little over a month three bands hired by the administration have seen their scheduled live performances cancelled. The first instance was in early July, when a Def con Dos gig in Madrid’s Tetuan neighbourhood was called off; then it was a recital by Luis and Pedro Pastor in Aravaca. And only last week, C. Tangana —a popular rap singer— saw his Aste Nagusia show scrapped by the city of Bilbao. There are significant differences between C. Tangana’s case and the other two. In the former two cases, the shows were cancelled by the same council that had initially hired the artists —there was a government change in the city of Madrid following the local elections of May 26—, whereas the Spanish rapper was dropped after complaints by two left-wing political parties, Podemos and Bildu.

Cancelling a performance for political reasons has been far from an exceptional occurrence in the last few decades, mainly due to pressure from Partido Popular on promoters and venues that wanted to schedule Basque pro-independence artists. The band that received the harshest treatment was Soziedad Alkoholika, who went many years without getting a chance to perform in Madrid and saw their 2015 Vistalegre gig —organised by a private company— cancelled by the local authority. Two years earlier, then-president of the Madrid region Ignacio López had managed to cancel a music festival (Irreductibles Fest) featuring Los Chikos del Maíz and Habeas Corpus, among other bands. These two cases are far from anecdotal: it has happened many times before.

While there is no evidence that gigs in Catalonia have been cancelled under similar circumstances, there are bands —mainly those who support Catalan independence— that have been banned in Spain. Ebri Knight is a recent case that springs to mind: last year they saw their Valencia gig cancelled. Nevertheless, it is infrequent for bands to find that a gig gets cancelled once a contract has been signed. Management agency Propaganda pel Fet, a company that has run into trouble with two of its bands, Obrint Pas and KOP, say that “what you typically get is prior restraint. The promoter turns you down on advice from the council, the sponsor or even the Guardia Civil”.

The case of C. Tangana in Bilbao is less clear-cut because the very same institution that hired them got cold feet once the concert was advertised. The local PNB-governed council cited complaints from two political parties and an online petition on change.org signed by over 9,000 people to justify their decision to drop the artist from the Aste Nagusia festival line-up. The petition and the politicians argued that Antón Álvarez’s lyrics are sexist and encourage “rape culture”.

An artistic premise

Dani Granados, the manager of Cultura Viva [a Barcelona City live music programme], claims that the petition was no justification for cancelling the Madrid artist’s Bilbao gig: “You cannot ban a performance without a profound reflection on how the freedom of expression applies to music first”, he says, and he insists that a debate is needed on “the role of song lyrics in pop culture”. Author and music critic Lucia Lijtmaer takes it a step further and believes that “we should be told what criteria the administration follows when they hire an artist”. In fact, we know why C. Tangana’s concert was cancelled, but the reasons why he was chosen in the first place have not been disclosed.

Following the controversial exclusion of C. Tangana from the Aste Nagusia line-up, some have argued that a possible solution might be for local councils to specify what their red lines are when looking to hire bands for live performances. Lijtmaer believes that the “level of public outrage”

ends up being the measuring stick that determines whether a particular artist was a sound choice or not. The author asks whether we need “a code that establishes which artists can safely be hired and which cannot, which is very dangerous”. The regulations of many alternative festivals establish that they will not invite artists whose attitudes or song lyrics are sexist, fascist or racist. But when it comes to local authorities, each council is a world unto itself. Barcelona Acció Musical (BAM), the body that manages some of the live music for Festes de la Mercè [Barcelona City’s yearly fiesta], does not follow any political criteria when putting together their line-up: “Our premise is 100 per cent musical; I’ve never been in a situation where I wanted to hire a band that was musically relevant, but whose song lyrics were offensive”, says Marc Campillo, the festival’s director who hired C. Tangana two years ago. “I’d have him back at the drop of a hat”, he says.

Raise the bar too high

Álvarez is not the first rap singer to have had a concert cancelled because of his sexist song lyrics: last summer the council of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) banned a gig with Kaydy Cain and Kidd Keo, even though it was privately promoted. Primavera Sound sources have confirmed to this newspaper that in their case it is difficult to monitor the lives and personal opinions of 250 artists. Furthermore, they insist on the argument they gave about the Valtònyc case [the exiled rap singer]: “When we select our artists, we are respectful of their creative independence”. Dani Granados can’t and won’t “vouch for” every single artist that performs in the Barcelona city fiesta, but he believes that if the bar is raised too high “we’ll be left alone, and not just with pop music; folk, too”.

Litjamer wonders if “the audience would be over-protected”, should the administration apply moralising criteria to the selection of musical acts. BAM’s Marc Campillo believes it is not so much a matter of protection, but of catering to different tastes: “Our choice is wide and varied enough. If you don’t care for a particular artist, you can just skip their concert. Give it a miss and let other people enjoy it”.