Transgression and Scandal at the 1979 Seville Carnival

 

“Seville should have a proper Carnival, but not a bacchanal. A dignifying Carnival, not a vulgar queer celebration”. ABC de Sevilla editorial, February 15^th 1979

The long-standing Carnival tradition in Seville came to an abrupt end after the fascist coup-d’état against the democratically-elected Republican regime in 1936. For the next 40 years, Seville was banned from organizing its traditional Carnival festival.

Around the mid 1970s, a number of locals promoted setting up a flea market every Sunday at the Alameda de Hércules boulevard. Among them, Julián Gamito, painter José Luis Aguado, and the Pepes (also known as the Joses), a couple who dealt in antiques. That Sunday “sorority” took upon themselves the initiative to bring back the long-lost Carnival, this time to the Alameda, a bohemian area which, at that time, had not been devastated by heroin traffic yet, as was the case in the 1980s.

There was a first attempt to bring back the Carnival in 1978, but with no success due to political and social opposition at the time. So, it was a year later, in 1979, when that festive tradition was reinstated with the celebration of Carnival, not without overcoming endless obstacles, such as weather conditions or a political ban.

Originally scheduled for the beginning of March 1979, its proximity to the date of the upcoming General Election, to take place on Thursday, March 1^st, made the Government hesitate about authorizing it. But a massive signature campaign, which reached as many as 10,000, forced the Representative of the nation’s Government (Governador Civil), Luis Fernández y Fernández, to issue the proper authorization.

Besides, a number of weekend activities which were meant to take place in February to promote the upcoming Carnival, such as a bike march, suffered the consequences of the heavy rains of that “crazy February,” as a columnist from the local ABC newspaper called it.

As a member to the organizing committee, José Luis Aguado was in charge of the esthetics: decorating the floats, and designing the official poster, which was printed and copies sold to help finance the celebration. And it was precisely Aguado’s poster, together with having chosen queer artist Ocaña as the person to inaugurate the event, what caused the scandalous rejection of ultra-conservative local sectors.

This explains the news clip that the ABC editing board ran on its edition of 15^th February, 1979, which pointed out that:

There should be no objection to trying to bring back Seville’s traditional Carnival, which anyone in our town remembers with nostalgia and joy, had it not been publicized almost as a “gay” display, as these events are now called. We totally respect “gays,” like any other sevillanos, however, things may happen in such a way that this Carnival may turn into a bacchanal at the Alameda if Mr Ocaña is to act out half of the performances he did in his recent, controversial film. People from Seville are faced with a dilemma, whether to reinstate Carnival, like Cádiz, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Trebujena or Isla Cristina have rightfully accomplished, or we might prevent it from being popular, spontaneous, cross-class, tolerant and open to everyone. Let’s hope we are wrong, but what is being organized at the Alameda can be referred to with a strong local expression of its own. If this happens, we will be giving a pretext to those who affirm that Carnival is dead and well dead, which is not true, at all: Seville should have a proper Carnival, but not a bacchanal. A dignifying Carnival, not a vulgar queer celebration.

This furious reaction from ABC, would lead the Central Government’s Representative to withdraw his support and eventually ban the event, although such a prohibition was ignored by the organizers, amidst great uproar of Seville’s conservative press.

The 1979 Carnival

All things considered, and in spite of this opposition, Seville celebrated its Carnival once again in March 1979, as the organizing committee had planned.

For those who experienced that Carnival, this event meant a truly turning point for Seville, as it transitioned from the dull, grey city it had been during Francoism to the lively transformation it underwent as a result of the first democratic local elections after a 40-year dictatorship, when Luis Uruñuela became the elected mayor in 1979 and Manuel del Valle in 1983.

This Carnival celebration, and the expected “queer performance” from artist Ocaña, upset ABC particularly, and prompted the following commentary on their March 6^th edition: “It needs to be mentioned that Mr Ocaña and his entourage of gays toured the city amidst provocation, ending up at the Chapina gardens on Sunday.”

Without doubt, the 1979 Carnival became the most relevant example of the appetite for change in the provincial, prudish society that Seville was at the time, a city which struggled for fresh air consigned in the deep south of the Iberian Peninsula, far away from freedom beyond the Pyrenees border.

Furthermore, this historical Carnival marked a turning point in the cultural and social life of the city and of its gay community, which would consolidate itself after the first democratic local elections in May 1979. The Seville where decisions were taken according to Catholic dogma was beginning to become outdated.

The poster of the Seville 1979 Carnival

After the massive rally of 4^th December 1977 in favor of political autonomy for Andalusia, in April 1978 a form of partial political autonomy was granted by President Suárez’ national government. Therefore, in 1979 the whole region, and Seville in particular, being the political capital of Andalusia, were experiencing a big autonomous push.

Andalusia was finally retrieving the symbols designed by Blas Infante, a visionary politician who would later on be designated Father of the Andalusian Homeland by the regional Andalusian Parliament: the green and white flag, the anthem (“Andalusians, rise…”) and the emblem, which had been approved by the Andalusian Assembly in Ronda in 1918. Blas Infante himself had stated that

“it was the appropriate symbol to express the task of restoring a Country culturally, showing a juvenile Hercules, reminiscent of the eternally young strength of the spirit, taming or coordinating the instinctive force of animal stimuli represented by two lions, and including the inscription: «Andalusia for Itself, for Spain and for Humanity».”

In this context, the parody of poster, where a youthful Hercules had transformed himself into an effeminate figure, wearing an ornamental comb (peineta), holding a fan (abanico), and in which the ferocious lions had been transformed into dogs (with scabies, it was said in 1979, as one of them scratches its ear with its hind leg), sparked outrage, not only among the right-wing sectors of the city, but also among Andalusian nationalists, and even among liberal, leftist political parties, which had laid claim for autonomy themselves.