Sagunto faces double official demand over sexist festival poster
Spain's Equality Ministry and the regional government have both demanded Sagunto City Council remove a festival poster showing a bull sexually subduing a naked woman.
Sagunto City Council is facing a two-front institutional demand this week. Both Spain's Equality Ministry and the Valencian regional government (Generalitat) have separately sent formal letters demanding the removal of a poster used by the 'Un forat és un forat' group, one of the associations taking part in the city's patron saint festivities, which they consider sexist.
The image at the centre of the row shows a bull sexually subduing a naked woman and forms part of the group's logo, appearing on various items used to identify the association. It was the council itself that first flagged and publicly criticised the poster on Friday 7 August, ordering its immediate removal through its Festivities department, on the grounds that it contradicts the principles of equality and coexistence that should govern public space during celebrations.
Three days later, on Monday, the Equality Ministry restated its objection on the social network X, calling for respect for constitutional principles of equality and non-discrimination “at any celebration”. At the same time, the ministry sent a joint letter with the Institute for Women, addressed to both the council and Sagunto's Federation of Festival Groups, asking for concrete action on the matter.
The group, for its part, has argued that the image has been linked to its visual identity for years and has asked for time to find an alternative design. The council and the group have already agreed to set up a joint working group aimed at preventing this kind of imagery from being used again in future editions of the festivities.
The Generalitat has also added to the pressure on the council. Davinia Bono, the Valencian government's director general for Equality and the Institute for Women, has written to the council asking it to assess whether the message conveyed is compatible with the principles that should guide festive events and the use of municipal public space. Bono is also asking the council to formally require the group to remove the graphic elements in question and to review any space grants or public subsidies the group may receive, making them conditional on respect for equality. The Generalitat has also asked the council to report back in writing on the measures taken or planned.
The body that co-signed the letter with the ministry, the Institute for Women (Instituto de las Mujeres), is not new: it was created in 1983 under Law 16/1983 with a legal mandate to promote social equality between men and women — a mission it is still carrying out more than four decades later, in cases like this one affecting Sagunto's festivities.
The episode is part of a controversy that broke publicly on 7 August, when the first images of the poster emerged, and which has kept escalating institutionally since then, first at municipal level and now at national and regional level too. According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional information from Wikipedia on the Institute for Women.