On February the 21st a familiar scene happened again, during the final of the Basketball Spanish King’s Cup that took place in the Basque Country and faced Barça against Real Madrid (final result: Barça 80 – Real Madrid 61) while the Spanish anthem started playing on the PA the booing by the Catalan and Basque audience was so loud the anthem could not be heard. Below, the video.
This was a repetition of what happened last spring at the Football Spanish King’s Cup that faced Barça with Athletic de Bilbao. All this would just be in any normal country a fair protest that people could like or dislike but would definitely not be censored.
Last spring’s protest took the Spanish a bit by surprise and improvisation led to literally cutting the anthem (and the protests) from the live TV version. Someone in the Spanish TV was forced to resign, I believe more because they cut the Spanish anthem that because of the censorship to the protests.
But on February the Spanish had learned the lesson. Firstly, the King himself brought a special 30 second version of the anthem to make the situation as short as possible and secondly, the Spanish TV edited the sound mix on the live broadcast and didn’t show any images of the Catalan and Basque audience so that you wouldn’t notice anything. The commentator didn’t mention the booing, either. You can see the Spanish TV version below.
Let’s not forget that we’re talking about Spain, a EU member, one of the biggest economies in the world and what everyone thinks of as a “developed” country. On the other hand, not so publicized facts are that the so called “transición” to democracy didn’t involve any prosecution of the crimes committed during Franco’s regime or that the King of Spain was appointed by the dictator.
More on the King of Spain:
The above is a video of a speech from 2001 and is a clear offense to so many people in Latin America, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, etc. that you’d think he should still be apologizing for it, nope. While other countries have apologized for their colonial past the King of Spain just reminds us that “Nobody was ever forced to learn Castillian (Spanish)” (sic).
Again, another fine example of the status of democracy in Spain, if reality is not to our liking let’s hide it. Everyone loves the King of Spain!