The Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC), the body responsible for regulating public media, considers that the comment by comedian Joel Díaz on the name of Sílvia Orriols’ daughter does not imply “any violation of audiovisual regulations”.
As reported by ‘Diari Ara’ and confirmed by elDiario.es, the CAC responded in these terms to the government media secretary, Carles Escolà, who asked the organization to analyze the statements made by Díaz in the podcast ‘ La Sotana’. » (broadcast on YouTube) and will take “relevant measures”.
CAC sources explained to this media outlet that after rejecting the government’s request, they sent Escola’s complaint to the president of the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation (CCMA), mentioned in the letter, because it is of an organ which together carries TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio, two media in which Díaz is a collaborator.
The controversy comes from a comment that the comedian made at the beginning of October about the sound of the name of one of the daughters of Sílvia Orriols, leader of the ultra Aliança Catalana party. The girl’s name is Violant, which in Catalan is the gerund of the verb “to violate”.
Díaz comments that “Violant is funny because it’s a gerund”, and after a few seconds he adds. “They rape the Violator» (They rape the Violant, in its translation). The ultra party then launched a pressure campaign on the networks in which they tried to transform an unfortunate comment about a name into a joke about the rape of the daughter of the leader of Aliança Catalana.
In his letter, the Media Secretary said the joke “incites hatred” and “discrimination” and generates “a climate of unnecessary tension”. Thus, although “La Sotana” is a podcast that operates in a private media, the government wanted to emphasize that the program “benefits from the public projection that Joël Díaz has through public media”.
At the time, Díaz already explained that the gag referred to the name chosen by the xenophobic leader. “I’m obviously not, for God’s sake, talking about raping anyone’s daughter,” the comedian tweeted. “The only thing here is a childish, bad and quite vulgar pun on the name Violant.” “Actually, as we see in the video, I thought it was a boy’s name,” adds the comedian.
