A Madrid mural honoring the lives and achievements of 15 pioneering women, including US singer Nina Simone, US activist Rosa Parks and Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, has been saved from destruction after city councilors stepped in to thwart far-right attempts to have it removed.
The 60m-wide mural, emblazoned with the slogan “Your ability doesn’t depend on your gender,” was commissioned by the local council in the neighborhood of Ciudad Lineal and painted on a sports center wall in 2018.
Also included in the artwork are US tennis player Billie Jean King, Russian sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, veteran US civil rights campaigner and academic Angela Davis, Russian cosmonaut and politician Valentina Tereshkova and Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Photo AFP / Gabriel Bouys
On Thursday last week, the far-right Vox party introduced a motion to have the mural removed on the grounds that it featured a “political message,” and should be instead be replaced with one related to sport.
The motion was supported by the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the center-right Citizens party, and the local council voted to replace the 15 women with a mural honoring male and female Paralympians.
However, the decision angered local residents, who on Sunday protested the move, and triggered an online petition that attracted more than 55,000 signatures .
On Tuesday, the left-wing Mas Madrid party brought an urgent motion before the city council calling for the mural to be protected.
The move succeeded thanks to the support of the Socialist party and Citizens party, who reversed their opposition and backed the motion.
Madrid Deputy Mayor Begona Villacis, of the Citizens party, said that while she was not a fan of the mural, she respected the wishes of others.
“Our politics is about doing things, not erasing things,” Villacis said. “I want a city that’s diverse. I don’t just govern for the people who voted for me, and respecting things you don’t like comes with being deputy mayor of the city as a whole.”
Vox accused the Citizens party of “a lack of loyalty” to its own members, while PP said that Villacis and her colleagues should have left the decision in the hands of the local council.
Jorge Nuno, a member of the Unlogic collective , which created the mural, said that it was delighted by the city council’s decision.
“I think some people have had trouble understanding that the women featured in the neighborhood mural are not there for political reasons,” he said. “They’re all there because of their social contribution to equality, and because each and every one of them fought for proper equality and a fairer society.”
While the collective hoped the mural would remain where it was for many years, it was in favor of seeing another mural to commemorate Paralympians and their achievements, Nuno said.
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