Artists protest death by crisis cuts in no country for culture

For the austerity-seeking government, it's a target for crisis taxes and cuts like any other. For actors, artists and audiences, it's Spain's moral lifeblood, bleeding away in the recession.
The subsidized arts sector in Spain - including big film, which gave the world Pedro Volver Almodovar - is in peril from a sales tax spike that will drive away audiences, top cultural figures say.

"They are generally killing the cultural activity in this country," said Javier Bardem, as the No Country for Old Men Oscar-winner joined in a street protest in Madrid.

"It's a country that produces great culture and is very well recognized outside our frontiers," said the 43-year-old and one of Spain's best-known actors. "But what they are doing is to really minimize the cultural industry in this country."


Economists warn measures such as the rise in sales tax from September 1 will hit consumption and hurt the economy further. Spaniards have already been curbing spending on cultural pursuits and the industry warns the tax rise will be the final blow.

"I go out much less," said Cristina Rial, 28, a Madrid resident. Jobless, like one in four Spanish workers, for the past year, she has cut weekly outings to concerts and shows to virtually none.

"I have to eat and live. Everything else is a luxury," Rial said. Artists say the subsidy cuts threaten the intangible long-term benefits of culture in a country still marked by its 1936-1939 Civil War, which saw one of its greatest poets - Federico Garcia Lorca - shot dead by the soldiers of fascist dictator General Francisco Franco. The next four decades of dictatorship and censorship drove its most influential film maker Luis Bunuel into exile.

"It's like going back in history," said Carlos Iglesias, 56, an actor and film director, who was at the Madrid protest.

"A great effort has been made to recover the level of culture we had before the [civil] war. Now all this progress could be lost. A country without culture is a dead country."

The reform - the latest in tens of billions of euros in savings announced by Madrid - raises sales tax on cultural shows from its current preferential rate of 8percent to a full 21percent.

If passed on to the consumer, it could add more than a euro to the price of a seven euro (HK$67.25) cinema ticket and several euros to a more expensive theater ticket. Tax on bullfight and professional football tickets will rise from 18 to 21 percent.

- AFP