Prague elite fights 'vulgar' invaders

The intellectuals of Prague - copies of Kafka to hand, fuelled by too many espressos and cheap cigarettes, black polo-necks and scarves to the ready - are on the march. After the stag nights, the coming of McDonald's and Starbucks, and the shopping malls, the final straw was a banal administrative order. Now the 'culture wars of Prague' are reaching their climax.

This week the battle will intensify with more demonstrations, petitions, scores of meetings in smoky cafés. A fight for the soul of one of Europe's most famous cities is under way, say campaigners. 'It is a last-ditch fight to preserve Prague from mediocrity,' said local journalist Martin Plichta.

The intellectuals' enemy is the city council. Last week an estimated 500 theatre directors, gallery owners, artists and writers demonstrated against a municipal order in effect cutting public subsidies. A second target is a £250,000 advertisement for the city now running on international TV channels which features top Czech models drinking champagne to a soundtrack of Mozart with a backdrop of the famous castle. The advertisement summed up the conservative council's vision of the city, Plichta said. 'It is all glitz and glamour, top models, luxury cars, showbiz, celebrity, not culture.'

Officials and owners of Prague's popular music hall theatres have struck back at the intellectuals, saying that cash can be better spent than paying for 'people to pull their pants down on stage'. One impresario said: 'We attract the tourists, we get the biggest local crowds, why should the difficult arty stuff get all the help?'

No one at the town hall was available for comment. But the immediate spark for the trouble was the decision of Prague's deputy mayor in charge of cultural affairs to introduce a flat rate of subsidies for all entertainment - in effect slashing the funding of the non-profit sector in favour of the healthy, but resolutely middlebrow, market.

'This year's subsidy will be 18 per cent of last year's,' said Yvonna Kreuzmannova, founder of a globally renowned contemporary dance festival in the city. 'The situation is very serious.' At least two visits to Prague by dance companies have now been cancelled.

But the fight over subsidies is about more than cash. It is about the future of a city which has changed out of all recognition in a decade. Prague and the Czech Republic have seen one of the biggest tourist booms in Europe, with nearly seven million visitors a year.