Abstract
After two Spanish puppeteers were arrested for a scene from their show,
After being arrested and charged, we struggled to get work. We were banned from leaving the country and became victims of a vicious media attack, all because of a puppet show.
It began with a performance of La Bruja y Don Cristóbal (The Witch and Don Cristóbal), which we staged as part of the carnival festivities in Madrid last February. Shortly after the scene with the witch, the real police arrived and arrested us. We were charged with glorifying terrorism, a crime which carries a possible jail sentence of up to four years. We were also charged with inciting hatred.
The day after our arrest we gave a statement before an investigating magistrate and, although we explained the content of the play, he sent us to prison without bail, pending trial. We remained there for five days until our lawyer was able to prove we were at no risk of flight, which had been the reason given by the prosecutor to lock us up.
But our ordeal did not end there. For the first month after our release, we could not travel abroad and had to check into our local police station daily. As a result, Raúl and I, who live in different parts of the country, could not work together. Our lawyer appealed the decision and from 10 March Raúl had to report every 15 days and myself only once a month, because of health concerns.
Fortunately, after that we were able to tour the country and because of our raised profile, we performed to large audiences, including recently in February 2017 where we staged The Witch and Don Christóbal in Madrid. It was a sell-out performance and incident free.
It was the first time we could perform this play though as until then we were concerned we would run the risk of being arrested again. In fact, we had to continue reporting to the police right up until September 2016, when the terrorism charges were dropped.
While we found support from some members of the public, as evidenced by the success of our subsequent shows, not everyone believed our innocence, and some were outright hostile. Reporters camped outside my parents’ house and called us “terrorists”.
We also received anonymous threats. For example, one person wrote saying: “We know who you are and where you live and you should tread carefully.” Another message attacked us and named our parents too. It said: “This is going to cost you and Adeli, Mariluz, Juanma and Carlos.” These threats were later attributed to a former high-ranking member of the military.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of our case was how easy it was to end up in our situation and what it means for other artists. We were charged with inciting hatred, which is a felony created in theory to protect vulnerable minorities. The minorities, in this case, were the church, the police and the legal system, none of which can be considered vulnerable as they wield great power. And we were charged with glorification of terrorism of a completely fictitious Alka-ETA organisation. Our lawyers compared it to charging James Bond’s author with glorifying Spectre.
Alfonso Lázaro de la Fuente and Raúl García Pérez with their puppets
CREDIT: Angela Cañadas Pérez
These are troubling times in general, especially for this form of theatre. Punch and Judy-style shows derive from the traditional Italian commedia dell’arte. When the church discouraged public theatre during the Reformation, travelling companies took their place and rescued one of their most iconic characters, Pulcinella (in Italian), Polichinela (in Spanish) or Mr Punch (in British popular culture). This character would mock anyone and anything seeking to oppress society. He would take on the powerful and come out winning, to the delight of the oppressed.
As in the past, Punch and Judy shows do not follow protocol. They rely on the use of sarcasm, rudeness and bad taste. The play Raúl and I put on used the same dynamics and differed only from mainstream ones in tone: it was more serious than normal. Many Punch and Judy shows tend to feature violence without any justification, but our play focused on structural violence in society. This included the injustice of private property, the church and its conservative pressure on families, and the role police forces and judges play as state oppressors. Incidentally, the intention of the scene for which we were arrested was to protest against the way police in Spain present evidence, and against the fact that many anarchists are facing terrorism charges based on flimsy evidence.
The terrorism charges were dropped in September 2016, and the hatred ones were dropped in January 2017. In the end the case never went to trial. But this only happened because in the play no character praised Alka-ETA. The sign appeared as a means of framing the witch for a crime. It was therefore assumed we did not share the thoughts of the characters. What if one of the characters had praised terrorism? Would the court’s decision have been different? Many fictitious characters commit all sorts of crimes and it troubles us that artists can be prosecuted because of what happens in their scripts. A work of fiction was judged by its content. It was assumed a playwright shared the opinions of their characters. This was an assault against creative freedom.
The consequences of two artists ending up in prison for the content of their work spreads fear among other writers. They might feel forced to revise their texts and impose limits on themselves, out of fear of being imprisoned for their work. I thought we had left behind the old Francoist mentality, which prevailed in the transition year of 1977 when members of the Catalan theatre company Els Joglars were prosecuted for performing a play, La Torna (The Return), about the trial and death sentence of two anarchists. I thought incorrectly.
Footnotes
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