The most popular video in Spain this Christmas

Below you can see the ad that in my opinion will end up being be the most popular video in Spain this Christmas

It depicts Fofito (a clown very well known in Spain) with other well known comedians, actors and even journalists, sending parcels to “important people”: from Angela Merkel and IMF to Moody’s and Standard&Poor’s. In those parcels, Fofito sends, bundled with “cold meat” (that’s what makes the company that prepared the ad), some sort of Curriculum Vitae of Spain, telling those “important organizations”, why Spain should be respected.

The ad is quite moving, because it mixes Spanish popular culture, jokes (i.e. considering Felix Baumgartner as Spaniard) with drama (i.e. elder people are paying the bills for their unemployed children and grandchildren).

Even the background melody is “Suspiros de España”, which could be translated like something like “Sighs of Spain”. Spain suffers. Spain sighs.

I find it very interesting from a pure “getting to know common perceptions in Spain”.

Many people in Spain do not understand the root of their problems. In fact, for many people in Spain, their problems are motivated by those “sort of villains”: Angela Merkel, IMF, rating agencies and “markets”. Nobody has explained them neither the root of their problems, nor the path to get out of them. When I was coming to London (to work for one of those villains), some people looked at me as if I was a traitor.

And for many people, speaking 6/7 different official languages (none of them English) in a 45 million people country is something to be proud of (despite the money wasted in making those languages official). Or having 50+ airports most of them with a couple of flights a day. Or being the country with the biggest high speed railway network in Europe. Or having the highest percentage of people with university studies (“la generación más preparada de la historia”)

And many people do not connect the dots. They don’t understand that their problems have many roots, but some of them are exactly those things they feel proud of. That every local authority in Spain wanted to have their airport, high speed railway, and university. Because those things were an easy sell to their voters, and because those things left money in many pockets (corruption).

And they blame the people that could help.

Yes. In my opinion there are things happening in Spain to be proud of. Some of them appear in the video but from a wrong perspective.

But this post is long enough already.