No doubt like they do everywhere else, Spain hauls out its special gala TV shows on New Year’s Eve to help bring in the celebration. We must eat our twelve grapes and let off a firework.
This time around, the fierce competition between the national television and the commercial Antena3 channel (no one watched any of the others) came to a head.
La Una had David Broncano (host of the leading comedy chat show La Revuelta) and Lalachus (a jolly and overweight comedienne) to host the countdown from the roof of a building in Madrid overlooking La Puerta del Sol, while across the way, on another rooftop with another premium view of the square and its clock, were the Antena3 stalwarts Cristina Pedroche and Alberto Chicote. Cristina, for some reason, wearing a skimpy dress made from mother’s milk (no kidding).
And, it’s cold out there, on a Madrid rooftop, half naked, at half-past eleven at night.
At one point, as sensible folk stay home with the heater on high to watch the telly, Broncano is seen to break the unwritten rule as he shouts though a megaphone over to the rival team to ask ‘Say fellas, when do we get to eat the grapes?’ (Spaniards eat twelve grapes during the New Year chimes).
Well, I don’t know, but Antena3 promptly put up a screen so that their presenters could no longer be seen from the roof of their cheeky TVE rivals. Heh!
All good fun. Then Lalachus pulls out una estampita (a small card) from her copious bosom and waves it at the camera. It’s a representation of a popular TV show called Grand Prix: a version of It’s a Knockout: an affable looking cartoon-bull logo wearing a gold medal, only instead, this card has a bleeding heart around the bull’s neck – a joke that’s sure to offend the easily offendable: that’s to say, a small and extreme section of the Catholics.
Not that New Year’s Eve has anything to do with Christian tradition.
Duly offended, Hazte Oir and the Abogados Cristianos people were at the door of the juzgados bright and early the next morning to denounce the fat lady and her smarmy companion, along with the head of the Spanish television, and anyone else who may have laughed or sniggered. Blasphemy!
Cue the Monty Python joke (reworked): ‘Nobody laughs at the Spanish Inquisition!’
The Archbishop of Seville asks ‘How long will they take advantage of our patience?’ The senior Spanish prelate Monseñor Luis Argüello calls the joke ‘an intolerable offence’.
The opportunist Vox party calls for the presence of the president of the RTVE José Pablo López (a socialist appointee) to give an explanation of the affront in Congress.
Turn the other cheek, girls.
La blasfemia (or rather, its modern version known as el escarnio) is an offense that’s still on the books, although it will likely be removed this year says Félix Bolaños the justice minister. But first, presumably, we will have to suffer some lawfare from m’learned friends.
Some of those offended, says one editorial following the hateful affront to Catholics worldwide, are the very same people who regularly criticise Lalachus for being a fatty and complained about her appearing on the New Year’s Eve show (where the national TV beat out Antena3 in viewer numbers for the first time in fifteen years).
In the end, it’s not about religion, it’s about politics: where, of course, anything goes.