Spain's cultural blackout

Part of the cultural community in Spain has decided to carry out the so-called "cultural blackout" against the Spanish Minister of Culture -and the position of the Ministry of Culture- during the coronavirus crisis on April 10th and 11th. 

Without getting into political issues and ideological positions, this initiative has an interesting way of spreading: completely digital. 

The confinement and consequent closure of cultural institutions and museums, have made the institutions focus 100% of their activities and communications to their digital channels, so this type of initiative proposes to stop producing digital content as a sign of protest against the current situation. 

 "We propose that all online cultural channels be closed, that no cultural content be broadcast in streaming, through social networks or websites, that culture enter into a total digital blackout to oppose in value and claim the need for urgent measures to combat this crisis". 

Under the #APAGONCULTURAL (culture blackout) , thousands of people have joined this initiative. A brief analysis of the people and institutions that are under this demand, shows that most of the content is created by workers' associations, modest art companies and smaller, independent venues, with the absence of the large cultural institutions in this country. It is true that there is also great confusion among users between the terms #entertainment and #culture, but again, we would enter the eternal debate. 

And what about museums? 

To give some examples, neither the Museo Nacional del Prado nor the Reina Sofía or the Guggenheim have ceased the interesting and prolific activity they have been carrying out since the beginning of the confinement. For their part, the Thyssen or other museums such as the Lázaro Galdiano, the Sorolla Museum or the Cerralbo Museum, to name just a few exclusive examples in Madrid, have not published on their channels for three days, perhaps opting for a low profile in terms of positioning or even taking advantage of the fact that it coincides with the Holy Week in which we are immersed. 

For the time being, the major Spanish museums are still struggling to bring culture closer to the public who inevitably spend their days at home and choose not to position themselves or join the initiative that has accumulated more than 5,000 publications on Instagram.