The news from the queer community in Spain this week is good………. and also not so good. The former was when 31-year-old Mario Alcalde came out as pansexual in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Mundo. It makes him Spain’s first openly LGBTQ+ matador and he is hoping that more people in the bullfighting industry will come out after watching him do it.
Alcalde says It was a spontaneous decision to come out, he says. Not even his family knew.
Bullfighting is a cultural segment of old Spain, where flamboyance meets machismo, and is associated far more with Spanish conservatism than the contemporary gay scene. A very surprised Alcalde said “I thought there was going to be a feeling against it but people are accepting it and in the best way possible,”
Meanwhile in Seville (one of our very favorite Spanish cities) there was a painting, recently unveiled as the official poster of the Holy Week by Spanish artist Salustiano García Cruz, that had some of the townsfolk up in arms. The image depicts a young muscular Jesus wearing a loin cloth, which was modelled on the artist’s own son. However, unlike more common depictions of Jesus throughout art history, this image does not depict suffering,
Barcelona gallerist Artur Ramon commented “It’s a Christ that I would say is effeminate or androgynous in a way,. Spain is a country that is still quite homophobic, and people don’t like that he is represented in this way for a festival that marks the passion of Christ in his final moments of life.”
The Institute of Social Policy, a conservative Catholic Group, went mush further and labelled it a “true aberration,” arguing that the portrayal is both “sexualised” and “effeminate.” It demanded its removal, as did a petition circulated on Change.org that demanded the painting did not represent “Christian values.” So far, it’s received 14,000 signatures.
