From Anti-Homosexuality to Gay-Friendly Festival? Festive Culture, Cultural Policies and Inclusion and Exclusion of the LGBTQIA + Collective in the Fallas of València

Abstract

Festive rituals have demonstrated their political power at the performative level, as well as to integrate those who are part of the ritual and exclude those who are not. In this sense, governments have a fundamental power in this decision and show their strong capacity to orientate the celebration toward regression or social progress. In the case of the Fallas in Valencia, we can see how, with the arrival of Franco’s regime, the festival was instrumentalised by the conservative class, generating an orthodox definition. This definition has survived in the most orthodox sectors of the festival, in which a hegemonic masculinity is established while other identities are stigmatized. However, the change of government implied a discursive reorientation and generated a paradigm of tolerance and respect for sexual diversity from an institutionalized vision. Thus, the inclusion of the LGBTQIA + community in a neo-traditional festival, the action of the local government to achieve it and the opposition of civil society are debated. Likewise, a double discrimination against bisexual people is observed, as there is a greater representation in the Fallas of the rest of the LGBTQIA + community, especially homosexuals and transsexuals. For this purpose, a combined study is carried out based on a photographic analysis and the subsidies granted to the group.

Keywords:

• Festive culture
• traditional culture
• LGBTQIA+
• anti-LGBTQIA+
• discrimination Fallas

Subject classification codes:

• Cultural studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pau Díaz-Solano

Pau Díaz-Solano is a Non-Doctor Researcher at the Econcult research unit of the University of Valencia for the MESOC project. He is also associate professor at the Universitat de València and contract professor at PROTED. Graduated in Political Science and Public Administration, and Sociology at the University of Valencia, he has specialized his studies in culture, festive culture, and urbanism.

Joaquim Rius-Ulldemolins

Joaquim Rius-Ulldemolins holds a PhD in Sociology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris. Currently, he is University Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Universitat de València where he teaches sociology of culture and sociology of social change. He is author of several books and articles books on sociology of culture and cultural policy to national and international journals such as REIS, RIS, RES, Papers, Urban Studies, European Planning Studies or International Journal of Cultural Policy. Since 2015 he is editor of Debats. Revista de cultura, poder y sociedad (Institución Alfonso el Magnànim) and director of the Centro de Estudios sobre Cultura, Poder e Identidades of the Universitat de València. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Spanish Journal of Sociology, Papers. Revista de Sociología, of International Journal of Cultural Policy and of Publicaciones de la Universitat de València.