Many of the classic tics of the Madrid pijerío are contained in the new video of the comedy duo Pantomima Full, formed by Rober Bodegas and Alberto Casado. Pure real estate sociology in less than three minutes. The video about the real life of a salesman is not really funny: it rather irritates and freezes the viewer’s half-smile.
“In recent years, we have been alternating frivolous videos with deeper, crude or existentialist things. Now we want to show how rude, old-fashioned and inappropriate it seems to us to show these houses on a social network,” Rober Bodegas tells elDiario.es. A flat salesman (played by Bodegas himself), simulates real estate TikTokers and reviews all the clichés of capitalist elitism while trying to sell us a luxury house in the Salamanca neighbourhood: “A neighbourhood of good people”.
Of course, the potential buyer to whom the video is addressed has no money of his own (“your parents will see it as an investment and will be happy to help you”). Nor does he get his hands dirty cleaning (in the kitchen there is “storage so that the housekeeper can organize everything”). The seller addresses the buyer in simple Spanish – full of professional Anglicisms – so common among the elite (in the dining room there is a “table to ‘support’ your dinners”). The hypothetical buyer has a “white collar” job, and white is also his footballer’s heart (in the living room there is a large sofa to “come home from the office and relax watching your favorite series or a Madrid match”). The dressing room offers plenty of space for the expected clothes (“to store your suits, polo shirts, boat shoes, etc.”). Of course, the seller is addressing the one who decides: the man in a heterosexual couple (“all your things and those of your girlfriend are fine”). And the apartment, valued at 2.4 million euros, is considered a mere whim, like someone buying a T-shirt (“Ask for it as a birthday present”).
But this bubble, mental and real estate, bursts when the salesman removes the microphone and tells the cameraman that he is in a hurry. We are no longer in a promotional video. The image format goes from 16:9 to the old-fashioned 3:4 and the salesman goes down into the street. It looks very sad Salt and skinby Franz Gordon, when the salesman goes down into the subway as if he were going down into hell, or in real life. He will reappear in any neighborhood, a normal neighborhood, a real neighborhood. Coming out of a grocery store with a prepared salad…
Later, we see him back at home, discussing “crappy houses” with two roommates in a tiny kitchen. Rober Bodegas’ character eats straight from a pre-made salad container. He doesn’t have time. You’ll sleep listening to a self-help podcast, taking turns in the tiny bathroom with your roommates. He’ll return, the next day, to the other world.
Taking the metro back to the Salamanca neighborhood, the salesman briefly crosses paths with another character in a suit carrying a bottle of hair gel in his hand. He appeared in a Pantomime two years ago. He is a real estate agent from the “Casaplón” agency, Alejandro Gómez (played by Alberto Casado): the one with “Grigori now for all”, in reference to the brand of hairspray. This is how two real lives intersect within a fiction – with a few exceptions – in which there are people who buy houses worth 2.4 million euros as a birthday present.
Bodegas also reflects on the consumption of these videos, the frustration they generate: “You see them over the top, as if to hurt you.” The intention, comments the comedian, is to mix two spheres: “That of people who say they are conquering the world and then tell you that they pay 800 or a thousand euros for a room in the north of Madrid.”
Made by Flowtime Studio, the video released this Friday and which has already accumulated tens of thousands of views received the comment of the Minister of Health, Mónica García: “Behind the bubble of real estate tiktokers and alarm sellers, 40% of Spaniards have suffered from anxiety about housing. The PP defends the mental health, yes, that of speculators. “We will not stop until housing is a right and not a commodity.”
