Politics in the dressing room

The director of the Mérida International Theater Festival has resigned, saying she was put under pressure to remove a large-format photograph depicting a naked actor with a crucifix covering his private parts from an exhibition connected to the event.

Actress Blanca Portillo announced on Friday that she would be stepping down following protests over an image in an open-air exhibition at the annual theater festival in Extremadura titled Camerinos (or, Dressing rooms). The photograph features Spanish actor Asier Etxeandia shortly before going on stage in a production of Dante's Divine Comedy, staged at Madrid's María Guerrero Theater.

Portillo says the pressure to remove the image came soon after the May regional elections, which saw the conservative Popular Party take control of Extremadura.

"Both Mérida City Hall and the regional arts council made several requests for the photograph to be removed, although these were done via third parties, except for the telephone call from the head of the regional arts council direct to Blanca Portillo," the actress said in a press release. The head of the region's arts council, Trinidad Nogales, denies this.

The offending photograph was originally displayed in Mérida's Roman Amphitheater. National Heritage, the body that oversees the complex of Roman buildings, asked Portillo to remove it, saying it had received complaints from schoolteachers visiting the site. The photograph was then placed in the Temple of Diana, but further complaints led to the decision to remove it all together.

Portillo said that "hundreds" of emails had been sent to National Heritage, all with the same text, saying that the photograph was "an attack against Christians," and that the decision had been taken to remove it from the open-air exhibition.

There appears to have been a concerted campaign to have the photograph removed: banks and other sponsors of the theater festival were targeted, with threats from customers to close accounts if action was not taken.

"Art must always be, above all else, a space for freedom, whose objective is not to offend but to prompt thought," said Portillo.

Sergio Parra, the offending photographer, added: "I must be naive, because it never occurred to me that the photograph could have caused such controversy or offense."

The exhibition of around 50 large-format black-and-white photographs on aluminum plates, all taken in dressing rooms, includes many of Spain's most highly regarded actors, among them Amparo Rivelles, Berta Riaza, Alicia Hermida, María Asquerino, Esperanza Roy, Silvia Abascal, Núria Espert, Blanca Portillo, Carlos Hipólito, Vicky Peña, Maribel Verdú, José Luis Gómez, Luz Casal, Tamara Rojo and Ángel Corella.

The photographs were taken over the last 12 years, and the exhibition itself is a co-production involving the Merida International Theater Festival. It will run until the festival ends on August 28, after which it will move to Madrid, where it will be shown in the Plaza Santa Ana, the site of the Teatro Español. A book of the photographs goes on sale next week, and includes the polemical photograph of Asier Etxeandia.

Etxeandia said last week that he was "puzzled" by the affair. "It is a photograph of an actor immersed in the intimacy of his work. I am putting on make-up to represent Dante, who is hurled into hell naked and wounded, like Christ. The idea came from a photograph of Velázquez's Christ. I think that it is an incredible image: it is so vulnerable, so beautiful. As I was naked, I put the icon over my private parts, but it would have been better to have remained naked."