Castile and León bars ideological content from film aid as Urtasun takes case to court

Ban on ideological content and the appeal

The regional culture department of Castile and León, run by Alberto Díaz Pico of Vox, has barred public subsidies for projects that imply ideological indoctrination, partisan propaganda or express support for specific political options. The restriction sits in an order published on 9 October in the regional official bulletin and covers funding for pre-production, production and distribution of feature films, documentaries, fiction and animation or television pilots. On Friday, 23 October, culture minister Ernest Urtasun said his ministry would file a contentious-administrative appeal with the regional government that morning. He said the ministry was also weighing a constitutional appeal, but considered the administrative route faster.

Urtasun said the ministry would fight the order in the courts, adding that he would not tolerate censorship in Spain.

We will fight it in the courts. I will not tolerate cases of censorship in Spain, which is not the first.

Urtasun also said censorship has occurred 'every time Vox has held spaces of power', citing the withdrawn subsidy for a Miguel Hernández poetry prize in Orihuela and the cancelled Festival Periferias in Huesca. He accused the Partido Popular of being either complicit or directly supportive in each of those cases.

Regional government and the PP

Carlos Pollán, the regional vice-president and councillor for deregulation, family and social aid, rejected the existence of cultural censorship in the region 'frontally'. He said regional policy would always rest on freedom of creation and the quality of productions, and declined to comment on the Seminci festival or on a possible cut in regional contributions to it.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP leader and candidate for prime minister, told Cadena SER that he opposed 'partisan or sectarian culture financed with public funds'. He said PP would not review scripts in Castile and León and that public money should not fund a film against a party. He also said he needed those funds to finance pensions.

Culture does not admit censorship, and culture must be protest-minded.

Reactions at the Seminci festival

Ana Redondo, the minister for equality, spoke at the opening gala of the 71st Valladolid International Film Week (Seminci) and called the policy a clear regression against freedom of creation. Actor Eduard Fernández, presenting the series 'Matar a un oso' at a press conference, described the veto as censorship.

If someone explicitly and publicly says the ideological factor will intervene, it is called censorship.

Director Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo argued that subsidies are paid with public money belonging to all taxpayers, and said the rule amounts to a warning ahead of elections.

The cancelled Lorca play

The three-person company Proyecto 43-2, made up of María San Miguel, Alba Muñoz and Pablo Rodríguez, had planned to stage 'Federico. No hay olvido, ni sueño: carne viva' on Saturday, 24 October, in the Sala Experimental of the Miguel Delibes cultural centre in Valladolid. The regional government cited urgent renovation works, but the company says the document it received was generic and did not state when the works would start or end. The production has toured more than fifty times since 2024 across Spain without controversy until now. The company says it offered alternative dates and rooms, received no written reply, and suspects censorship over the play's account of the murder of Federico García Lorca and Francoist crimes against humanity. It has filed a complaint with Valladolid prosecutors, who will decide on it. Prime minister Pedro Sánchez also referred to the case on the programme La Revuelta.