In the same week in which the squad of 28 participants in the Madrid Festival of Ideas led to the cancellation of the sponsorship of the insurance company Allianz (accused of financing the Government of Israel in the Gaza war), the Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz has denounced her expulsion from the Cultur-Alh International Festival of Art, Literature and Humanities that will be held throughout the week in Granada. According to Harwicz, the Festival management announced that it could not guarantee his safety due to pressure from groups supporting Palestine and that, therefore, it was suspending his talk with the writer Jesús Ortega.
"Since then, they have not answered my calls or messages," explains the author of The Noise of an Era to EL MUNDO. The University of Granada, which appears as the organizer of Cultur-Alh, has issued a statement in which it clarifies that the veto was a decision by the festival management: "The University of Granada does not share this decision. A public university must be a space open to critical thinking, the contrast of ideas and the expression of plural positions, even when these are discrepant or controversial."
In Granada, the festival management also issued its statement: "The Cultur-Alh organization received requests from the University Network for Palestine of Granada, from different readers and from one of the participating [reading] clubs to reconsider the presence of Ariana Harwicz. After evaluating them, we decided to modify the program, in coherence with the commitment of the University of Granada with human rights and with the agreements adopted by its Governing Council regarding Palestine. It is an organizational decision regarding this specific edition and we do not want turn it into a public controversy or a personal confrontation with the author, whose literary career we respect. John Banville, Lina Meruane, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Silvia Federici, David Trueba, Juan Villoro and Rita Segato will participate in the festival.
"Hours pass and I try to take advantage of this experience to understand how deprogramming operates. I use the word deprogramming to mitigate others like cancellation or apartheid," says Harwicz, who then refers to the professor and co-director of the festival, Ana Gallego Cuiñas, as the person who took her to Cultur-Alh and who, in her opinion, let her fall. "I had a frequent relationship with Ana. Common friends, messages on birthdays, how are your children?... I learned that, once, Ana tried to defend a Jewish student who was being attacked by her classmates, just as she would have defended an Arab student. They called her a Zionist. Zionist is a magic word that serves to disqualify anyone," says Harwicz.
"They told me: 'Don't worry if any message comes against you, we elected you, the important thing is the books,'" Harwicz continues. "The students worked with my books, it was part of their academic work. There were months of bonding. I knew I was going into a terrain that could be hostile but I thought that literature is also that, debating, creating friction. Consider that the title of the talk was Opposing the World."
"Then the message came, 'we cannot guarantee your peace of mind or your safety' and nothing more. In other words, they were expelling me. The anguish came to me because I was trying to get something else explained to me and no one answered me, not Ana or anyone else. In 24 hours they have become radicalized to the point of not answering me," says Harwicz. Have they become radicalized or are they afraid? "It could be fear. That's how SMA works, the acquired fear syndrome. I don't know if they have been threatened. If someone came with a kalashnikov or if that wasn't necessary. Words are more terrifying sometimes."
Did you see something like this happening? Are you surprised that it happened in Spain? "The atmosphere has become nightmarish, hostile, very heavy. They harass us and we remain silent. We Jews are on the front line, but it can happen to anyone who thinks differently. Recently, someone spoke of genocide in Sudan and they attacked him for talking about Sudan and not Israel. They condemn us to repeat the same speech... Spain? I think this could have happened anywhere in Europe, but something similar already happened to me at the Madrid Book Fair. I had a public talk scheduled and "Someone vetoed me at the last minute so I ended up speaking on a marginal site." Harwicz refers to the English writer Sheena Patel without naming her. "I love Spain."
Harwicz continues his complaint with several stark sentences. One: "This speech is very profitable [profitable] through festivals, awards and publications. That's why no one complains." Two: "We live under linguistic extortion. You don't know where terror comes from, what little lost word. You say: 'I have a friend in Israel' and that's it." Three: "I try to think against myself. I always go to debate at tables with people who think the opposite of what I think. It's what has always been done in art. Art and literature are born from friction, but now we are under a state of terror. Artists accept this nightmare and that is why the average books are so weak."
