On the Perils of Public Moralising

British visitors to Barcelona often come away with the impression that it's a pretty avant-garde sort of place, with lots of trendy shops and hallucinogenic architecture to go with the sunshine and cheap beer. But much of rural Catalonia can be as socially conservative as anywhere this side of the Khyber Pass… today's Periódico brings us this story from the town of Cervera, in central Catalonia.

The Cervera town council has decided that it's time to end the ban on wearing miniskirts in public. At the same time, residents will also be allowed to blaspheme, should they so wish, and even – shock horror! – to run in the street!!!

One might think that such laws dated from the darker days of "National Catholicism", when Franco's hangers-on and suckers-up would do pretty much anything, however silly or pointless, to keep their grubby little hands on power. But no! Said Cervera by-law dates from 1991, just eighteen years ago; well after what most historians deem to be Spain's "transition to democracy". The town council at the time was in the hands of Convergència i Unió, a centre-right party with a strong Christian Democrat wing but usually far from the neofascism which can be found on the extremist edge of the Spanish Catholic Church.

Now Cervera has some claim to being one of the more conservative towns in Catalonia. Philip V considered it trustworthy enough to build a university there in the eighteenth century, just as he was closing every other Catalan institute of higher education on (accurate) suspicions of subversiveness. It is also the seat of a Catholic diocese, whose current incumbent could hardly be described as one of the more progressive of his ilk.

All the same, banning miniskirts in 1991! What were they thinking? To the credit of the common sense of the town and its inhabitants, the by-law has not been enforced recently, and is now being abrogated. Today's politicians should take note the next time they are tempted to play holier than thou instead of resolving the problems which actually affect their electors.