Spain is experiencing a renaissance in television consumption with the ratings battle between Pablo Motos’ “El hormiguero” and David Broncano’s “La revuelta”, with the public television offering currently having an advantage. Some point out that there has not been as much interest in the data since the radio sports nights between José Ramón de la Morena and José María García. But Euskadi, here too, is an exception. In the offices of EiTB, the public radio and television, they were happy to receive the data from Thursday night this Friday morning. Yes, Broncano won, but the return of “Vaya semanita”, the space for political humor and against indigenous clichés that dazzled two decades ago and continued for three years on the air, obtained 21.3% of audience share. “El hormiguero”, for example, had to settle for a modest seventh place among all the programs of the day.
Yes, the “Wow week” is back. 108,000 people connected to the new space scene and another 94,000 stayed to watch a later program with interviews and analysis of that first golden age that led the Spanish channels to try to imitate the space style without much success. In comparison, it was not far from the 135,000 that the counters attribute to Broncano and Antonio Banderas in “El hormiguero”, it did not exceed 66,000.
Yes, it is true that EiTB promoted the product strongly, especially at the Vitoria FesTVal. It is also true that the start time was 10:50 p.m., when the credits ended almost in the same second the daily segment of “La Révolte” on TVE. “He swept” or “he is still in great shape” are some of the comments that the channel made after knowing the result of the evening.
The product is based on classics – such as a Jonan de Baraka for whom it seems that time has not passed – and updates the jokes to incorporate Pello Otxandiano, the new lehendakari – “Imanol Pradales, who is this joke – and even Isabel Díaz Ayuso?” , who still plays, or Carles Puigdemont as a fugitive singer. It remains to be seen if it meets the expectation generated by the first installment and if it is capable of creating zapping classics again. In the cast of actors there are recognizable faces from previous stages, such as Javier Antón, Maribel Salas or the pilot Andoni Agirregomezkorta, although they are not part of Óscar Terol’s original team.
In the end, the channel programmed a special programme on how this phenomenon occurred. The current security adviser, Bingen Zupiria, formerly of Culture and also director of EiTB for years, admitted that there were fears about authorising such a product and that there were jokes that were not appreciated by the political leaders of the channel. Zupiria himself recalled that these were years of “tension” because ETA was still killing, because Juan José Ibarretxe was confronting the State with a sovereignist project and because they were years of social division, as he said in Basque.
But it worked, even though Salas was convinced that there was no future. The report showed Terol or the actor Gorka Otxoa remembering the irreverence of telling the story of homosexual love between agents of the Ertzaintza Mobile Brigade, the coexistence between nationalists and Hispanists in a family with the name Sánchez – or Santxex – and even the homilies of the “aitites.” Xabier Arzalluz, then all-powerful leader of the main Basque party. There are those who remember that “Vaya semanita” also triumphed on a Thursday night when TVE was programming what was its great series of the 21st century, “Cuéntame como paso”, and Telecinco was programming its great “sociological experiment” since the beginning of the millennium, “Big Brother”.
