Laurence Dollimore
A GAY white Jesus and a Roman orgy. That’s the verdict of some furious locals after seeing the posters for two hugely traditional festivals in Spain this year.
The first poster is for Semana Santa in Sevilla, which shows a scantily clad Son of God wearing just a crown and a piece of cloth covering his manhood, which is tied around his waist by a rope.
Since it was posted on Instagram last month, it has caused a huge backlash on social media, with some comparing the Jesus to a ‘gay man taking a gym selfie’.
Others commented that he was far ‘too white’ for a man who would have been born in the Middle East.
However the artist behind the poster, Salustino Garcia, said if someone sees something dirty in his painting, it is “his own internal dirt that he is projecting onto the image.”
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It comes as more than 10,000 people have signed a petition on change.org to remove the image as the official Holy Week poster in Sevilla.
Garcia added in an interview: “He is very white? Like all European Christs, all Gothic Christs. That he is half naked? Like all the crucified and resurrected Christs of Spain and Europe.”
The second controversial poster is for the Carnival in Molins de Rei, Catalunya, a traditional week-long festival which celebrates Dijous Llarder (Fat Thursday) on the first day, ushering in ‘six days of excess and fun’ before finishing on Ash Wednesday.
Although it seems the artist for the promotional material this year focused a little too much on the ‘excess’ – with the image of more than a dozen intertwined nude and semi-nude bodies being deemed ‘inappropriate’ by locals.
“It looks like a Roman orgy,” one woman told Spanish newspaper Metropoli.
Another said: “It looks like something sexual, not like a carnival…I think it’s too explicit.”
In the banner, designed by artist Marc Viamonte, you can see a group of completely naked people laying down in a temple full of candles.
The protagonists of the image touch each other under the gaze of a mysterious woman covered in a white cape, also without clothes.
