Spanish Humor After Cervantes?
One of the most dangerous things a Spanish politician can do is to make a joke. Everybody feels deeply offended and nobody gets it.
One of the most dangerous things a Spanish politician can do is to make a joke. Everybody feels deeply offended and nobody gets it.
Judge Manuela Carmena had barely been sworn in on Friday as Mayor of Madrid after May elections when Spanish Twitter blasted her –non-stop all weekend– for having included a Jew-hater in her team. “How do you get 5 million Jews in a Seat-600 car? In the ashtray.” This is what Guillermo Zapata considers a hilarious joke, so funny that he posted it in 2011 on his Twitter account, among many other hate tweets, one of them making fun of a victim of Basque terrorism who lost both her legs in an ETA bombing. On Monday afternoon Ms. Carmena finally ceased Zapata as Head of Culture for the Madrid Town Hall, though he’ll continue as councilman.
If Spain’s genius Cervantes took humor to superb heights, undoubtedly surpassing his British contemporaries Shakespeare and Ben Jonson in modernity, Great Britain went on to master irony not only in literature, but in all aspects of life. From Pope and Swift to Orwell and Wodehouse, from to Monty Python to Little Britain and the BBC original version of House of Cards, Brits have excelled for centuries in laughing at themselves, while Spain has been pitifully unable to use comic wit as an intellectual approach to life. In the 20th century Spaniards took the risky course of Buñuel’s surrealism and then stuck with brain-dead comedies like the Torrente saga.
While in countries such as the United States politics is inconceivable without a sense of humor, one of the most dangerous things a Spanish politician can do is to make a joke. Everybody feels deeply offended and nobody gets it. Incongruously, though, Mr. Zapata’s brutal jokes are not only understood, but celebrated by hundreds of thousands of Spaniards. A cultural problem? Yep. Huge. And a big gap with the Western world.
