The content critically analyzes a recent survey on cultural habits in Spain, arguing that "culture" is often a vague, market-driven concept used for commercial gain rather than genuine humanistic enrichment, and that true value lies in literature that leads to profound understanding, exemplified by Cervantes.
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We are going to refer here to a current issue, a current issue
that has recently been echoed by different media outlets due to
a survey of cultural habits and practices in Spain. Regarding the years 2024 and 2025, the
current year in which we are already in, this publication that I take as a reference through
the newspaper La Vanguardia and Serim Media puts on the table a series of very important data
but above all very revealing regarding the idea of culture, what we understand by culture
. In my opinion, it is a postmodern grimoire, I already mentioned it from the beginning and
some of you may be wondering. What is a grimoire? A grimoire is a book of spells. It is a book that contains
spells and
that refers to the practice of spells to the execution of certain
activities that can be magical. So to speak, the culture
. You will say that these
are real nonsense because everyone wants to be cultured. Culture is something that
publicly accredits the identity of a group and that also personally accredits the characteristics
of a person. This is nothing more than a belief that a mythology. In reality, we can say
that culture is the surname of politics, as has been frequently said before
me. Other people have said it
. As I have said on
multiple occasions, it can be said that culture is ideology. Many things can be said about
culture because culture. It is a term in which absolutely everything fits because there is really nothing
specifically original in it. Today, for example, many universities have replaced
literary studies with cultural studies, an American invention from which they
try to culturally colonize academic institutions to make them a protectorate,
another province of the universities of the American empire, and it is surprising that
most of the people trained in the Hispanic Greco-Latin literary tradition have replaced the
studies. literary studies with cultural studies and has replaced it as someone who believes they are joining
an avant-garde position in literary studies. In reality, the only thing they achieve with
that, but since they have never reflected on it, they do not understand it, the only thing they achieve
with that, I say, is to dissolve literature in an indefinite culture in a completely
indefinite culture in which absolutely everything fits because they do not really know how to interpret anything.
Of course, reducing Don Quixote to culture is confusing Villanueva de los Infantes with Miguel Esteban and
Gasilla de Alba with Pedro. Muñoz and not knowing that a place in La Mancha is a very small municipality,
it seems that almost every station we are not going to say every day because there is no talent for
so much, no matter how surprising the talent, it seems that almost all stations,
chronological stations, I mean not train stations, almost every station, someone appears who discovers What is the
place in La Mancha, that is, there are no more places in La Mancha to discover to be attributed
to Don Quixote. So now a new place in La Mancha appears, next summer
another place in La Mancha will appear. Mancha and so on and there will be someone who finds
the birth certificate of Don Quixote de la Mancha as if Alonso Quijano had
already been born calling himself Don Quixote de la Mancha and Don Quixote de la Mancha was not an invention
of Alonso Quijano who was more than 55 years old and not an artifice of Cervantes. But in short there are
people who take fiction seriously and as a consequence of that we often find
that there are those who have found it in La Mancha yet the footprints of Rocinante's horseshoes
Walking through the fields of Montiel but apart from this I insist that culture is a common code so
common that it reveals absolutely nothing more than the intentions of whoever manages the culture because
In short, culture, like ideologies and beliefs, is nothing more than a business in
of the friends of commerce is nothing more than a more controlled device managed
administered by the market what is behind the culture In short it is nothing more than
the business commerce naturally through culture it passes through different places
But all culture ultimately leads to a commercial activity This is neither Good nor bad
this is a reality the good or the bad is what you interpret what you consider or what
you do with the money with the Market or with the culture goodness or badness is already a
very later question In short There are people who are enriched by culture and
people who are impoverished by culture. That is already an individual, collective, even
state management in many aspects, but that already depends on what each one does with the so-called culture.
Now, what is behind culture? Freedom, business, market, happiness
, politics. Hey, everyone can think what they want, but in short, what surrounds everything. In
short, I insist is the market because no matter how they pull, they will always end up in the ocean
of the market. It is said that 66.3 percent of Spaniards
read at least one book in the last year. This is the headline, the headline that gives synthetic expression to the
question, but of course reading a book tells us absolutely nothing because it is not the same to read my
struggle by Adolfo Hitler as to
read Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes.
to survive in the 21st century, which is
a book that leads to Don Quixote, however, my struggle with Adolf Hitler does not lead to Don Quixote,
precisely it leads to the Extermination Fields among other horrendous places, sinister and
unspeakable and of course incompatible with human reality, of the people who preserve the
values that make possible the continuity of this human rationality and of this humanism that is not
so ideal at times. As one might think, there is a characteristic and this is what I must highlight in all
my work, all my work, all my books. they lead the reader not by kicking but by the hand Towards Don
Quixote by Cervantes If I pride myself on something, it is not that I have written many books, obviously, and Borges,
who was much more immodest within the narcissism of modesty than anyone, said that he was not
proud of the books that he had written, that he was proud of the books that he had read,
as if we cared about what this man was proud of. I am neither proud nor disappointed. I
have simply always set myself an objective when I write a book among
various other objectives. And it is that this book leads to the human being by the hand and not by kicking Although some might
deserve this but it will certainly not be on my part to Don Quixote if each of us writes
a book that leads the reader to Don Quixote that will be a great achievement Because obviously everything
that is written is In short a hypernym of Cervantes that is to say it is something that is contained in
the H great hypernym Cervantino everything that is written is a hyponym
we should really say a hyponym of Cervantes because no one can surpass Cervantes everything
we write It is a hyponym of Cervantes which is the great hypernym of literature
and thought. That is to say that if there is something to satisfy a work as a writer as an essayist,
let's put a book as a philosophy to survive in the 21st century already in its second
edition that we will present next Wednesday, February 12 at the Faro de Vigo press club in
Vigo with immaculate naya vice dean of the faculty of philology and translation.
I want to mention that as a fact that we will have in the coming days and to which everyone is
invited to go in case you want to ask any pertinent question in relation to the book February 12,
two days before Valentine's Day at 8 in the afternoon in the center of Vigo
we will be there But I insist that if culture has value it is because it leads us towards something that has value
that is why I constantly insist that all the books that I have written take the reader to the
doors of Don Quixote and that is truly a great objective in my opinion because if the best
What we can offer the reader is to end up in Don Quixote is to take a chance on reading
Cervantes' work, we will do him a great favor. Of course, my books do not end up in monstrous or
aberrant works, such as the one I mentioned before about Adolfo's. In short, that
has nothing to do with what is behind culture, there are many things that depend on the
use that you want to make of it: leisure, freedom, happiness, money, market
, etc., etc. But the fact that it is said that they have read a book as if they have read 10 books, that is
to say, that in itself means absolutely nothing unless we specify which book we have read,
which book we are talking about when we talk about reading a book because not all books are the same
even if they are digitally published in softcover whatever you want to call it, but what
matters about a book is the content. And in some way a book that takes us away from Don Quixote is a
less valuable book than those other books that bring us closer to Don Quixote, although that approximation
may be more or less disturbing turbulent problematic reflective etcetera etcetera That already
depends on the possibilities of the reader now well Why do people Read well, most of them
did it for leisure during their free time and they did it in paper format in printed paper format
cover or white cover That is to say, people continue to prefer in principle the version of the
traditional printed book among other things because it is usually more comfortable in some contexts which
does not mean that the other one is not comfortable in other certain contexts, these data, I insist, as
I said at the beginning, are reflected in the survey of cultural habits and practices. in Spain
2024-2025 But I insist that to speak of culture is to speak in such extraordinarily
indefinite terms that in reality what fits are simply customs, that is, surveys
of habits and customs practices, we would say almost in the purest style of Larra,
author of customs articles in In short, I am not clear, I quote the information from the vanguard
by serv media, it is said that the document shows a recovery with respect to the figures
of cultural participation, of course, cultural participation is, in short, cultural management,
the administration of culture. in practically all areas. Compared to the
previous edition, the 20212022 edition, which sometimes exceeds the figures prior to the pandemic, that is to say,
the pandemic is always taken as a reference as if the pandemic had meant at this point
some type of transformation and in reality
it has not meant anything, it has simply meant
an alteration. The pandemic
has been like in a score, a set of accidental alterations. and coded
, it is noted that the recovery most intensely affected live performances of
performing or musical arts, whose annual rate stood at 48.3 compared to 19 in the previous wave.
Well, here there are alterations while the annual cinema attendance rates are
at 48.8 compared to 27 in the previous survey, that is to say, there is a return
to conventionality. I will not say normality because we no longer know what normal validity is, but it is
clear that culture does not It is literature and that literature is not culture. Interpreting literature
in terms of culture means confronting with myopia what literature demands to see with greater clarity
than
what
culture
offers
. which has nothing to do with this. In short, regarding
reading, which is something that particularly interests us, 63.3 of those surveyed
read at least one book in the last year, as stated in the fundamental premise, and most
of them did so out of idleness for free time, that is, they spend reading to cover
empty times I don't know to what extent today people have free time that to begin with
because free time is occupied above all by the tyranny of social networks by the tyranny
of emotions mortgaged by social networks and wherever we go we always end up
in social networks for those who have social networks and when someone does not have social networks
others invent them for them to make profitable the image the name and the contents of these
people who H Well, they are useful to others who eh in some way amortize They amortize the
work of these other people naturally with inevitable advertising consequences in
this sense, the annual readers for non-professional reasons reach 60.2 percent. 60.2 per. but
of course it was to tell you, Hey, there are a lot of people who have free time because 60.2 percent of
people who dedicate themselves to reading in their free time is because they have free time. What is more important is
almost the data that reveals that there are 60.2 percent of people who have free time, right, than that
they dedicate that free time to reading because what is surprising here is not that they dedicate themselves to reading that
many people do. What is surprising here is that there are people who still have free time and they will tell me
that they are retired. It's not that it doesn't matter to me or whatever whether they are
still babies in the maternal fetus or in the placenta of the mother who is going to give birth to them before 9 months
of gestation is completed and that they already read in the maternal placenta or that they listen to the music that their parents listen to
. What surprises me is that there are 60.2 percent of people who have free time in a
society where time has been criminalized and has been extirpated. It is a society that is totally let's say eh.
chronophagy
with
respect
to
time
the knowledge that
they use professionally, of course, are questions that one asks oneself not 62.5 of the population analyzed
read at least one book in the last year in paper form and 31 in digital form, that is, note that
the proportion in
paper doubles
At the moment the digital one. 8.7 Well,
they are trends, I imagine that they are common and that they will do it for professional reasons. I don't think that
anyone visits an archive in their free time. In principle, of course, the survey
witnesses as evidenced by the fact that 54.3 of the population visited this type of facility in
the last year, but of course this is tourism or it is culture and they will tell me Well, it is not cultural tourism
or it is tourist culture. Okay, that seems very good to me, but here we are already playing with the language because what
is behind culture, tourism and what is the support of tourism, a financial activity,
a commerce, then In definitively there is no free culture, that is to say that culture always has either
a cause or an economic consequence and you will tell me, well, everything has a cause and an
economic consequence. I agree that everything has it, but if everything has an
increasingly intensely economic and commercial center of gravity, that naturally subtracts value and subtracts quality and
subtracts content from cultural content because writing a book for the market
is not the same as writing a book for literature; talking about literature for the
market is not the same as talking about literature so that literature have value is that
speaking under the pretext of literature to have listeners, followers or spectators is not the same
as talking about literature so that literature has value is that that is the difference between what
others do and honestly speaking what I do I do not speak so that you pay attention to me
I speak so that literature has more value and if it seems good to you it seems good to me and if
It doesn't seem right to them. It's just that it seems equally good or bad to me. It doesn't affect me. It doesn't affect me. It can't
determine the emotional state of those who give their opinion or those who listen. It can't determine the
quality of the knowledge of the speaker. In other words, here we don't talk to attract an audience. Here
we talk so that literature has value. The point is that precisely because we talk about literature
and talk so that literature has value, there have been many more people than
we initially assumed who have been interested in this matter. Naturally, many stow
away and They are interested in other aspects but that is already a problem. I mean, here I speak for
literature, not for you, that is, I speak so that literature has value. If you want
to be interested in the value that literature can have, when I speak about it, that is another question, but
stay with literature and leave me alone. That is what. That is what really
matters
. Practically half with annual rates
of visits to museums of 41.6, exhibitions of 36 and art galleries of 19.7%, of course
, of course, handling these data statistically is very important from the point of view of the
administration of the ideology and from the management of the market because according to the inertia of the
population, the market knows where it has more sales and better financial results and where it has
worse financial results, the same thing happens with ideologies, that is, if we are interested
in injecting or promoting a certain ideology in a certain human activity Well yes. We know
which is the most frequented activity, it will be more profitable to inject that ideology within that
guild within that terrain within that section and reduce the ideological dose. In those other
contexts or terrains where human frequency is lower, I want to say that all these data
are not made in the name of culture but rather they are made in the name of those objectives that through
culture as a pretext for culture as morio are intended to be exerted on the population in such a
way that I would tell you synthetically that culture is the hook And the bait is the market
In short, or if you want to understand it the other way around, you can understand it the other way around, culture is the bait and
the hook, the market but what it is about is that you take the bait. That is to say, that
you consume the culture, it does not want educated people, the culture wants consumers, but a culture
that wants consumers does not serve the human being, it serves the market, which is not the same as the
human being because the market is very dehumanized. Unless we consider as human values
the enrichment of a few compared to the general impoverishment of almost everyone who, on the other
hand, being very ignorant, believes they are very cultured in a semantic third world, but that is another
question. In short, live shows, look, 48% of Spaniards attend
an indirect cultural show in the last year, one of them, I am not into that because I don't go to
live cultural shows now, what do we understand by a live cultural show
because of course the presentation of a book is a live cultural show, of course, the
presentation of a book is the presentation of a book but but It would have to be a
spectacular presentation of a book. What do we mean by a spectacular presentation of a book?
Throwing fireworks when a work is presented. Of course, it seems to me that
terms are used that are frankly ambiguous and very imprecise when referring to
a series of facts that would have to be subjected to statistical data and stochastic data that
are much better defined. We talk about current music concerts, but current music concerts are
Daniel Baren Boin performing Chopin nocturnes or 20th century music. Of course, at
concerts of current music, the current thing is the concerts or the music because this is a hypálage
that must be determined in the present adjective to the concerts or adjective to the music, it is not like
when one orders a hot coffee with milk, how hot the milk or coffee is. Of course, if we
We put in that plan so we end up requiring people to ask for H2O When they want to drink
water and of course This is not a plan but if we talk about statistical data H I require greater precision
in the use of language because if not I don't know very well what we are talking about if we talk about
culture as a grimoire or if we talk about culture as an ideology or if we talk about culture as
a Market or what we talk about no and then of course Here it is talked about less frequently the audience is
classical music concerts of course it is called music classical music to the fantastic sinf of
Héctor Berlio which is romantic music classical music is called classical music to the bass clef concerts
when it is baroque music and we will talk about classical music perhaps when we talk about Tomás
Luis de Victoria who is Renaissance then of course talking about classical music in such
general terms is already a wrong label but of course we are not going to start correcting the language for this
type of issues what I do notice is that the wrong language is used to make
scientific analysis of facts statistically a lot more debatable than what is seen in
this type of work, the opera has a 3.9 percent attendance rate and the Zarzuela a 1.8. Who would say that
to the 19th century zarzuelas? The survey reveals, I quote, the importance
of the Internet as an instrument of access to culture, but we return to the same thing as always.
What
is culture?
classifying and assimilating cultural content ultimately depends on the intelligence of the
receiver who has become a consumer who, without having a classifying criterion, swallows what is
given to him swallows what is given to him for commercial purposes. In short, to the above we add that 12.1
per person saw in the last year some performing arts show through the internet through the
internet by performing arts we must understand the theater mimetic
scenic operatic musical performances and they abuse here the gerund of posteriority being in theater
and it was in theater do not never use the gerund as posteriorly that is to say Cervantes wrote Don
Quixote influencing dostoyevsky man where does Don Quixote go To dostoyevsky where does it go from Cervantes to
Crime and Punishment that is not to say the gerunds They are of simultaneity not of posteriority and even less
with a posteriority of 300 years because what a gerund come on let's go and it was a 5.8 theater by
in baleto dance 4.8 per. and the data continue, however, the highest rates are recorded in
virtual access to current music concerts, I understand that it is not bare Boy interpreting
Chopin's nocturnes with 18.9 of the population compared to 6.3 that concentrate classical music concerts online
on the Internet is a very very curious and very surprising listening modality, on the other hand, says the
survey that I quote through the avant-garde, the active cultural practices and the
type of artistic activities that are carried out annually by people under study are investigated. of
this statistic And in this case, high rates are recorded in relationships with the
plastic arts such as taking photography good photographing taking photographs photographing in principle if
there are no surprises with this not with 29.6 for painting or drawing with 15% or making videos with 11.3 per.
They are followed by playing a musical instrument with a 9.1 by writing with a 7.1 by I am surprised
by such a low activity for writing because I don't know how they communicate if with emoticons
and ballet dancing with a 3.8 by web design with 2.9 participation in a choir 2 with 1 creation
of their own blog 1.6 I am also surprised because every God has a blog and the theater with a 1.4
by But in the end these are the data that are objectiveized in the survey and of course the habits by gender
the habits by gender in reality hardly show any differences in anything but I don't know why
they insist on showing differences when they are really imperceptible and and they are really
imperceptible Although the report says that they are very noticeable but you go to the habits by gender
and and you say but well first of all how can you establish habits by gender if there are a lot
of genders, no, we had not agreed that there were 40 genders. So how can they make a statistic
limiting themselves to two genders? This then refutes other beliefs that they postulate in other contexts.
Agree on how many genders there are and make the statistics according to two genders, three
genders, four genders or 40 genders. In short, here it seems that they recognize two genders in
this statistic, which means that they already fail to comply with some information related to what is normally
required to be several genders. I don't know to what extent. but I don't know if there are 40 genres, it depends on who
talks to us about this, but in short, it is an open approach, it is an open controversy and it is a non-
closed topic. The indicators of cultural participation offer differences by gender, but here I understand
that they refer to only two genres and there are more
genres according to what has been recently discovered
or what has been recently recognized
. 6.3 of the men and there really is such a difference
but
it
really is
such a difference
. In other words, writing, men write more or less
the same as women. It seems that reading is dominated by women. Women read more with the
exception of professional reading or the sports press. In other words, women read more for
and. Men read more for professional reasons, of course. Eh Well, I don't know how to interpret
this. The truth is that men seem to read more sports press than women. That is to say,
women read more than men, but men who read less in general than women read more
for professional reasons and less for leisure and more for sporting interest. out of interest in other
matters, of course. These are very impressionistic data, we must know more details. I suppose that
these details will be revealed by deeper dimensions of the report and will be put in the hands
those who manage culture, reading, publishing, the publishing world, publications
and commerce, to play well the organ of cultural
profitability
. Men read more for
professional reasons than women, so we have to assume that women go to libraries for
leisure. There are issues here that I don't understand very well and say, you can ask certain
amendments or certain questions that naturally can have a coherent answer that perhaps
is not seen at first glance in the report. We would have to find a way to explain justifying
different ways of combining the data provided by the statistics that objectify the statistics to
see what we are talking about. Of course, we could also make a difference between those who are myopic and those
who are not myopic, that is to say what. type of cultural consumption do the myopes, those of us who wear glasses, those
of us who are myopes, and what type of cultural consumption do those who are not myopes, of course, that should
be seen, it would even be necessary to examine those who, being myopes, in
natural conditions, because medically they have corrected their myopia through laser surgical interventions or whatever type
and they are no longer so, then of course we would have to go into these types of details, not
that they are already very and subtle, very very precise. I don't know to what extent it may be of interest or not, but well,
the Men are more fond of making videos than women, more fond of playing a
musical instrument or playing video games than women. According to the report, and in the latter case, 27.3
of men usually play at least once a month compared to 11.7 of women, of course.
These are the data that the report gives and of course in the face of data like this evidently the
video game
industry either has not yet found a vein in women or it continues
enhance the vein that men provide by inducing them to engage in certain
forms of behavior that are financially more profitable.
circus and opera there have two contexts that Apparently can
be very different from each other the circus and the opera does not talk about television gatherings does not talk
about political debates does not talk about the Circus and the opera And finally women says the information
related to the report go more frequently to music concerts and men say
they listen to more music than women it is curious that this information reveals above all reveals above
all this information and details deliberately in my opinion contradictory paradoxical oxymoronic
in the interpretation of the statistics but be it In any case, very curious details are revealed that
naturally help to enhance culture, not to benefit the so-called cultural content,
but to benefit. In short, the cultural industry is that reading Don Quixote
to make money from book sales is not the same as reading Don Quixote so that people stop being idealistic.
Those are two completely different issues.
Those who manage the market
are not idealists at all.
They manage the market are very realistic Because if they were idealists they would end up in
failure And they would be surpassed by the competition but those who consume the market's products
are very idealistic and there is no doubt that the failure of happiness is about to fall because
in fact the failure of happiness already lives among us and we will talk about that very soon
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