From Anti-Homosexuality to Gay-Friendly Festival? Festive Culture, Cultural Policies and Inclusion and Exclusion of the LGBTQIA + Collective in the Fallas of València

Abstract

Festive rituals have demonstrated their political power at the performative level, as well as to integrate those who are part of the ritual and exclude those who are not. In this sense, governments have a fundamental power in this decision and show their strong capacity to orientate the celebration toward regression or social progress. In the case of the Fallas in Valencia, we can see how, with the arrival of Franco’s regime, the festival was instrumentalised by the conservative class, generating an orthodox definition. This definition has survived in the most orthodox sectors of the festival, in which a hegemonic masculinity is established while other identities are stigmatized. However, the change of government implied a discursive reorientation and generated a paradigm of tolerance and respect for sexual diversity from an institutionalized vision. Thus, the inclusion of the LGBTQIA + community in a neo-traditional festival, the action of the local government to achieve it and the opposition of civil society are debated. Likewise, a double discrimination against bisexual people is observed, as there is a greater representation in the Fallas of the rest of the LGBTQIA + community, especially homosexuals and transsexuals. For this purpose, a combined study is carried out based on a photographic analysis and the subsidies granted to the group.