More culture against barbarism

In our so­ci­ety, the ef­fects of crises are usu­ally mea­sured by the im­pact they have on pub­lic ser­vices in gen­eral and on cul­ture in par­tic­u­lar. Cut­backs often af­fect both. And dur­ing the pan­demic this was es­pe­cially vis­i­ble. For­tu­nately, so­ci­ety is re­cov­er­ing its pulse and the cul­ture on offer is fi­nally ap­proach­ing nor­mal­ity. The new sea­son brings dar­ing, orig­i­nal and risky of­fer­ings and also ones for very large and fam­ily au­di­ences, which con­tribute to the sense of nor­mal­ity so de­manded and so missed by every­body. Al­though we will not be able to achieve it as long as the Russ­ian ag­gres­sion con­tin­ues in Ukraine and as long as we have not re­versed the dis­as­trous ef­fects caused by cli­mate change, it is clear that the cul­tural prod­ucts of­fered to read­ers in this issue (see pages 12-21) are surely get­ting closer to the good times.

Cat­alo­nia is a coun­try that gen­er­ates a lot of top qual­ity cul­ture and at the same time is a great con­sumer of it. Firstly, be­cause of the in­ter­est of its in­hab­i­tants, and sec­ondly be­cause cul­ture is an es­sen­tial el­e­ment of Cat­alo­nia’s her­itage and in­ter­na­tional ap­peal. It’s not just Barcelona and all its ex­tra­or­di­nary cul­tural power as the cap­i­tal; it is the coun­try as a whole that strives to pro­vide con­tent - from music to the­atre, music, pop­u­lar cul­ture, you name it - of high qual­ity and great in­ter­est.

The chal­lenge lies not so much in the prod­ucts on offer, which are solid and pow­er­ful, as in in­creas­ing cit­i­zens’ cul­tural ac­tiv­ity. Ac­cord­ing to the avail­able Eu­ro­pean data, which analyse cul­tural ac­tiv­ity at state level, the Span­ish state oc­cu­pies a very low po­si­tion in par­tic­i­pa­tion in live cul­tural ac­tiv­i­ties. Smaller coun­tries, which at­tract far fewer tourists, reg­is­ter al­most dou­ble the par­tic­i­pa­tion rates. This is there­fore a major chal­lenge. The sup­ply of cul­ture does exist, with many com­pa­nies and artists doing ex­tra­or­di­nary work, but they need an au­di­ence and a de­cent in­come to be able to con­tribute to a civ­i­lized, co­he­sive and ad­vanced so­ci­ety. A so­ci­ety that in cul­ture will have the best an­ti­dote against bar­barism.