Filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen, writer Alana S. Portero, artist El Niño de Elche, philosopher Paul B. Preciado, and 34 other cultural figures have signed a statement announcing that they are “suspending” their participation in the Ideas Festival held from September 17 to 20 until it “publicly commits to severing ties with Allianz and not accepting financial support, neither in this nor in future editions, from entities that collaborate with the State of Israel in the destruction of the Palestinian people,” reads the text obtained by this newspaper.
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“The German insurance giant, Allianz, is today the world’s largest buyer of Israeli government bonds and, therefore, a key financier of the ongoing genocide,” continue the signatories, which also include communicators Inés Hernand and Nerea Pérez de las Heras, philosophers Laila Yousef Sandoval and Paul B. Preciado, and artist Rodrigo Cuevas, among others.
The signatories consider that “Allianz cannot claim ignorance because its name appears in the 2025 report by United Nations rapporteur Francesca Albanese From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide, precisely for the purchase of those bonds, whose investment has tripled since then.”
The organizers of the Ideas Festival, which planned to hold its third edition in 2026, state that they are trying to proceed with the event as originally conceived. “We do not want the public to lose this space for reflection and debate that has been running for two years and in which pro-Palestinian positions have been expressed,” they explain, and announce that they will release a statement this Tuesday. Among other events in this vein, they cite last year’s opening lecture by Pankaj Mishra at the Allianz Plaza de España stage, where the intellectual referred to the situation in Gaza and stated that colonialism has not disappeared.
Among the signatories who have denounced Allianz’s participation in the festival are personalities from various cultural fields who were to participate from Thursday in events spread across different venues in Madrid. The Ideas Festival was born in 2024 as a cultural and civic debate event to bring philosophy, history, and thought to the streets. In this new edition, the central theme of the event will be Bodies, in a broad program designed by philosophers Javier Moscoso and Marcela Vélez.
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The heart of the festival will be in Plaza de España, where the Allianz Stage will be located at street level. The Círculo de Bellas Artes will be the other main venue of the event, which will extend to many other locations, including the city’s main cultural institutions such as the Prado Museum, Reina Sofía Museum, Thyssen Museum, Ortega Marañón Foundation, Ateneo de Madrid, Telefónica Foundation, and CaixaForum, among many others.
“We make this decision from a diversity of voices and perspectives, but united in a common position of solidarity with the Palestinian people and rejection of any form of cultural or business complicity with the violation of human rights,” the statement continues.
“Culture is not a neutral space: it is a field crossed by power relations, economic interests, and political conflicts. An Ideas Festival that makes the body its central theme of reflection cannot, at the same time, contribute to whitewashing the economic actors that allow extermination, occupation, and apartheid to take place,” the signatories believe, who assure they do not intend to single out the festival organization led by the Círculo de Bellas Artes and La Fábrica with Allianz sponsorship. “On the contrary, we hope this gesture serves to open a collective reflection, for the festival to review its ties, and hopefully, to provide a public, positive, and committed response to this statement, allowing us to join the debates and make them a place of thought and expansion of democratic space. We believe in a culture committed to justice, human rights, and the dignity of all peoples.”
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See the list of signatories
Inés Hernand (communicator)
Marta Sanz (writer)
Delameseta (musical group)
Rodrigo Cuevas (artist)
Carolina Meloni (philosopher)
Clara López (Mesa Camilla) (artist)
Mónica Egido (artist)
Paula Ducay (communicator podcast Punzadas)
Inés García (communicator podcast Punzadas)
Rodrigo Sorogoyen (filmmaker)
Juan Evaristo Valls Boix (philosopher and writer)
Fidel Moreno (writer and journalist)
Sergio C. Fanjul (journalist and writer)
Alana S. Portero (writer)
Laila Yousef Sandoval (philosopher)
Eugenia Tenenbaum (art historian)
Locus* (artist)
Nerea Pérez de las Heras (writer and communicator)
Alberto Velasco (actor)
Carlos del Castillo (journalist)
El Niño de Elche (artist)
Paul B. Preciado (philosopher)
Javier Gallego (communicator)
Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán (political scientist)
Carmen Pérez-Lanzac (journalist)
Fernando Balius (philosopher and writer)
María Roig (writer)
Javier Gil (researcher)
Eva Cruz (philologist)
Remedios Zafra (writer)
Herstóricas (cultural project)
Tenants’ Union
Ramón Nogueras (psychologist)
Cristina Consuegra (manager and cultural curator)
Luz Arcas (dancer)
Rocío Molina (dancer and choreographer)
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