Following the veto of Ariana Harwicz, the International Festival of Art, Literature, and Cultural Humanities Cultur-Alh will lose another of its major assets. The Irish writer, John Banville, has declined to attend the event organized by the University of Granada precisely due to the cancellation that the Argentine author has faced because of her views against the cultural boycott of Israel and the pressure exerted by pro-Palestinian student groups.
It all started last Saturday when Harwicz announced that she had been vetoed because the festival's organization, celebrating its second edition this week, had informed her that her presence could lead to protests by student groups. This move has led Banville, as reported by ABC and confirmed by EL MUNDO, to also decline the invitation. The Irish writer was one of the headline acts of the festival and was scheduled to participate in the closing event this coming Sunday.
According to the Argentine's version, the event's management, which besides the University of Granada also has the support of the City Council, the Cervantes Institute, Spanish Cultural Action, and the Three Cultures Foundation, assured her that they could not guarantee her safety and had to cancel her talk with writer Jesús Ortega. "They yielded to the pressure of militants. They yielded to terror," the writer stated in a statement on her social media.
In a conversation with this newspaper, Harwicz directly pointed to the organization, holding it responsible for her absence, stating that they do not answer her calls or messages. She also excluded the University of Granada, stating that it "does not share this decision." "Hours pass, and I try to make the most of this experience to understand how deprogramming works. I use the word deprogramming to soften others like cancellation or apartheid," she emphasized to this newspaper.
In a statement released last weekend, the Cultur-Alh Festival acknowledged that it had received "requests" from the University Network for Palestine of Granada, one of the book clubs participating in the event, and some readers to exclude the Argentine author. The organization thus decided to "modify the program in line with the University of Granada's commitment to human rights and the agreements adopted by its Governing Council regarding Palestine."
Although the festival stated that they did not intend to create "public controversy," it erupted almost instantly and has continued to grow in recent days. Today, a manifesto has been released, disseminated by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain and signed by 350 personalities from the world of culture and politics, stating that "defending freedom of expression only for those who think like us is not defending it," but rather "replacing free confrontation of ideas with ideological selection."
This document is signed by Fernando Savater, Piedad Bonnett, Jorge Bustos, Óscar Tusquets, Andrés Trapiello, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, María Negroni, Manuel Valls, Pola Oloixarac, Carolina Sanín, Zoé Valdés, and Santiago Kovadloff, emphasizing that "the democratic response to an opinion, no matter how controversial, is dialogue, questioning, public discussion, never expulsion from the program."