The unraveling of Mérida

"The darkness of the offices." This is what most surprised Blanca Portillo during her fleeting experience as director of the Mérida Classic Theater Festival, Spain's most important event of its type, which is staged at the magnificent Roman theater in the Extremaduran city. Portillo spent just one edition at the helm; last October's. She left immediately afterward, citing the worst professional experience of her career as an actor, producer and director. Portillo had, however, experienced an "almost childish" level of excitement when she was originally given the post of director, alongside the producer Chusa Martín.

"There was a lack of honesty," Portillo says now, adding that she was honored when she received the call and that she "vehemently" believes in the project, which, she says, would be "a marvelous adventure" to guide if there was a clear, clean and healthy structure to it. In Portillo's case, exactly the opposite was true. She found a financial system that lacked transparency, something that she brought up with the festival's political overseers as well as artists, technical staff and collaborators.

"We spoke out when we discovered that things were not as I had anticipated. I think our attitude made many people nervous, because they feared a scandal, with all the damage that could have meant for all those involved," she explains.

Portillo and Martín, at the head of the festival, realized that the management had no idea how much money was available.

"We couldn't manage the budget; we didn't have legal authority; we weren't informed of the financial mechanisms; and they systematically denied the reality of the financial situation. The festival was completely unviable."

Portillo was named by the previous Socialist government of Extremadura but she ended up having to work with the Popular Party after it won power in the western region in last May's regional elections.

"All of them, the representatives of both governments, were equally aware of the festival's state of disarray," she confesses. "It did not take them by surprise and nobody lifted the lid on it. Although to be honest, I think we should be talking more about people than political parties."

Portillo believes that when a party spends 28 years in government, as the Socialists had in the region, it is easy to feel as though you are at home. "But it is not their house, it is the taxpayers' house," she says. "If everybody knew, why did nobody do anything about it?"

She and Martín say they feel proud about speaking up over the management of the festival and leaving in protest. "All the people who knew about the situation are public officials and, if something is illegal, if something isn't right, then go! It drove me mad that nobody had said anything."

But Portillo also has room for self-criticism, given that she left all her projects in tatters for eight months to work on the festival. "My mistakes? I didn't take into account that it wasn't the best year, given the crisis, and that we should get the public along to see more than just Greco-Latin historic reconstructions - that there are more things, even though they might not be profitable at the time, but will be in the long term, as was the case with Avignon and Stratford-upon-Avon."

When Portillo was named, she suggested that the festival should be cleaned up, by paying off its debts, starting afresh from zero and reducing its length to three weeks. But she was told it was impossible, despite the obvious fact that running a festival for two months (July 7 to August 28 in 2011) is unthinkable given the state of the economy.

Portillo is also stunned at the fact that many professionals at the festival - from actors and directors, to technical staff - were never paid. On that matter, as with so many others, Portillo says that she felt a huge sense of impotence.

"When they invited me to take over they said that they would not allow non-payments to be repeated... and, well, they were. It is very complicated to undo the effects of this - it is a very small community, where everybody depends on everybody else."

One of the episodes that best highlights the level of interference Portillo faced, and one that she remembers least fondly, is related to the "controversy of the photos." Portillo was obliged to remove a photograph taken by Sergio Parra from an exhibition. In the picture, the actor Asier Etxeandia, strikes a Jesus-like nude pose, complete with fake wounds and nothing but a print of Velázquez's El Cristo to cover his genitals. The image provoked furious protests.

"It was a very sad moment," says Portillo. "We took it down out of respect for the citizens who complained, and then I read and heard that had been no political pressure. Of course there was political pressure, and a lot of it!"

For Portillo, the experience has taught her that a culture divided by the right wing or the left wing of politics must not exist. "It's a space for freedom," she concludes. "Above all else, theater needs freedom."