Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Sex, Lies And Telemadrid

It's been a while since I featured a video from the wackier fringes of Spanish TV, and this one it has to be said is a bit special. A worthy competitor even to the always impressive efforts of Intereconomia. During a break in the very right wing Telemadrid "tertulia" Alto y Claro, one of the participants lets rip on the question of his sexual preferences. Salvador Sostres is his name, and he makes clear his interest in teenagers: "Esa tensión de la carne, esas vaginas que aún no huelen a ácido úrico, que están limpias". Sweet stuff, and that's not the end of it.

Despite attempts by sympathetic media to present the video as interference with what was just a private conversation, this performance by Sostres took place in front of a studio audience. One that contained a significant number of school kids. Oddly enough it seems that many of these came from Rabat and Tarragona. It's a sign of how desperate the channel has become when they have to ship in their audience from Morocco or even from the hated Cataluña. I've no idea what they did to deserve such a cruel and harsh punishment; it must have been something particularly bad. Meanwhile, it tells you all you need to know about Telemadrid editorial standards when the company responds by announcing that it will seek out those who leaked the video rather than doing anything about the increasingly lamentable standard of its guest selection.


Sostres isn't the only participant on Telemadrid who has been in trouble recently over his preferences for young girls. The so-called "writer" and Telemadrid presenter, Fernando Sánchez Dragó got widely criticised for an account claiming that he was seduced by a pair of 13 year old Japanese girls in Tokio. As soon as the criticism began, he claimed that the story (or at least the sexual part of it) was invented. El Mundo came riding to his defence and launched a petition of what they described as "destacados intelectuales" which naturally included the director of the paper himself. This petition railed aganst the burning of books as if the man was a victim of brutal Nazi persecution.

Esperanza Aguirre claimed his work was "literature" even though the book was supposed to be non-fiction, and compared Sánchez Dragó to Gabriel Garcia Marquez! She has been culture minister you know, although she doesn't like to boast about it. I think Fernando might have to wait a while for that Nobel Prize nomination but he still gets the cheque from Telemadrid to see him through these difficult times. These episodes are revealing about the attitudes towards sex of so much of Spain's right wing, who do whatever they can to defend Sostres and Sánchez Dragó whilst denouncing the "progres" of the left for the degraded state of morality in Spain. You would think they might follow the example of the church which they so loudly defend. Oh but then....

1 comment:

Jamie said...

Upon the last time of being told 'there are children here', Sostres replies with something like: 'don't worry, they're all loose anyway'.

Whilst not a particularly great thing to say, there is an outside chance that he could be speaking from personal experience and "investigation". That would at least be a considerable improvement over his writing in AVUI.