Jesús García Calero: The cultural VAT

In one of the most lucid articles on the subject, the classic that Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio wrote in “El País” in December 1984, when we were all naive, adolescents (some would not have been born), the inversely proportional relationship between financing and … culture. “Culture, this invention of government”, as the great author of wrecks titled it, reviewed all the industries and adventures of the enthusiastic managers of the era of “change” who accessed the ministerial ranks to nourish crazy projects. The spirit of the times made us forgive almost everything, even these beaked drawings in the colors of Parcheesi, or the uniformity of the new class blessed by budgets, who dressed like Bruce Willis in “The Fire of the Vanities” and professed this sweet freedom of supporting the unusual with an idea well welded to the new power. Forty years have passed, it’s too many, and we have perfected the invention. We even changed the situation. Today, the pastor and his prophets decide what is culture and what is not, for the sake of money. As before, but with philosophical pretensions. In reality, culture is what remains outside of its creations, what emerges on its own and does not need to be emphasized. We’re not even talking about the bulls, or the “Afternoons of Solitude” and “Los Domingos”, who have their own lives to influence beyond ministerial aid. But no one understands that this tax-collecting government will not lower cultural VAT. What we wanted to demonstrate is therefore clear: only true culture immobilizes the minister. Finally.

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