The Periferias de Huesca Festival, a benchmark for avant-garde cultural offerings in Aragon, will not be held in 2024. This was announced by the City Council governed by the alliance of PP and Vox during the presentation of its budgets for the following year. Vox Huesca had warned that it would only approve these budgets if the Periferias Festival was left out of next year’s accounts.
Vox Huesca had the Periferias Festival in its sights. Recently, the far-right party had expressed that “VOX Huesca does not have red lines, but it does have green lines” and that one of those green lines “is the Periferias festival, which only serves to shower progressive culturetas with hundreds of thousands of euros.” . Vox Huesca had described the annual celebration of the event as a “waste.”
The City Council is now considering replacing Periferias with a “leisure-cultural-festive festival aimed at youth” and “based on citizen participation” that would offer “events in a week and also spaced throughout the year.”
The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has expressed his regret at the end of the Aragonese festival: «I deeply regret the cancellation of the Periferias de Huesca festival, which for 23 years has been a reference for the entire country. “The duty of administrations is to promote culture, not censor it.”
Artists of enormous national and international prestige such as Enrique Morente, Anohni and the Johnsons, Sun Ra Arkestra, Niño de Elche, The Human League, Vladislav Delay, Waterboys, Sugarhill Gang or Paco Ibáñez have passed through the Peripheries of Huesca. Each edition was dedicated to a specific theme, such as the party, the cosmos, roots or altered states. Gypsy culture has marked the last edition of the festival held just a few months ago.
