Feminist group in Sagunto slams festival club's sexist poster
The Camp de Morvedre Feminist Coordinator has denounced a poster from a Sagunto festival club showing a bull subduing a woman; the regional government rejects it and the PP has asked the mayor to state his position.
A poster put up by one of Sagunto's festival clubs during the town's patron-saint celebrations has triggered widespread criticism, from the local feminist movement to the Valencian regional government itself. The image, displayed at the stand of the club "Un forat és un forat" (a Valencian club name) at the fairground between 15 and 30 July, showed -alongside the phrase "pa una vesprà està bé" (roughly, "good enough for one evening")- a bull sexually subduing a naked woman.
The Camp de Morvedre Feminist Coordinator, a local women's rights collective, argues this is not harmless humour but a form of symbolic violence dressed up as local custom. According to the group, such imagery turns a woman into a target for public mockery, with no shared enjoyment shown in the scene; they also say that criticism like theirs is usually brushed off by appeals to tradition or by accusing critics of overreacting. In their statement, the activists stress that younger generations no longer see the festivities that way and are calling for this kind of imagery to disappear from future editions.
The collective also raised the issue of the council's silence: if any local official saw the poster at the fairground and said nothing, they argue, that silence is itself telling. They also put a direct question to the city council: whether the club receives any municipal financial support, be it through grants or free use of public space. The statement adds that no political discourse, whatever its origin, should treat women's bodies as a target for ridicule or subjugation.
For its part, the Valencian government's Deputy Presidency and the Conselleria (regional department) for Housing, Employment, Youth and Equality issued an explicit rejection of any image that demeans, objectifies or mocks women. The regional Directorate-General for Equality says such content perpetuates sexist roles at odds with progress made on equality, and has asked the club responsible to consider withdrawing or amending the poster. For the regional body, freedom of expression cannot be used as cover for messages that strip women of dignity within a shared community space such as a village festival.
At local level, Sagunto's Partido Popular (PP, conservative party) councillors have asked mayor Darío Moreno for an official statement, given that the story has reached national media. The party clarifies that its request does not question the work of the Festivities Committee, but wants the mayor himself to set the council's institutional position, and it is also calling for a public response from the governing coalition of PSOE and Esquerra Unida (EU). According to El Periódico de Aquí.
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