The singer Mery Bas, vocalist of the duo Nebulossa and now known for her interpretation of the song Zorra, was 15 years old when some girls from Bilbao, the same age, occupied the front page of the media after their performance, on TVE, of the song I like to be a bitch The year was 1983 and the most conservative sectors of post-Franco Spain reacted by unleashing a true witch hunt against the presenter of the program and against those girls: the Vulpes. Four decades later, the author of that letter, Loles Vázquez, watches in disbelief a controversy, as a result of the song Zorra, which she considers “prefabricated” and hardly comparable to what they suffered.
The coincidence between the titles of both songs, the fact that they are performed by women, their popularization through TVE and the very unequal controversy that they have aroused, have meant that some parallels have been drawn between both situations. The former Vulpes guitarist, however, denies this and launches a reflection that invites, on the one hand, to remember the magnitude of that controversy, now 41 years ago, and, on the other, to analyze the use of controversial speeches or apparently rebellious as an instrument to achieve notoriety, even in contexts as close to the system as Eurovision.
“Ours was something else. The first difference is that it was not prepared. We didn't do that topic looking for controversy. Ours was a youthful explosion in the context of a bad Transition. It was something spontaneous. I was 15 years old, I liked Iggy Pop and he sang 'I wanna be your dog'. I studied Latin, we were the Vulpes, which means vixen... well 'I like being a vixen,'" Loles Vázquez explains to La Vanguardia.
The song was performed on April 16, 1983 on the TVE program Caja de rhythms, presented by Carlos Tena. At first he avoided the controversy, until two weeks later the newspaper Abc published an editorial in its opinion pages that included the lyrics of the song. “The constitutional limits of freedom of expression have been widely transgressed by Spanish Television in the program Caja de Rhythms, which is watched especially by teenagers and which is broadcast after a children's program on Saturdays, a children's vacation day,” the text stated. .
“It was a political campaign orchestrated by the sectors that came from the Franco regime, a campaign against TVE and against the Government. We were in the middle. It didn't even cross our minds that that would happen. I remember that Carlos Tena thought about beeping for the word cabrón, nothing more. On the other hand, it was not a program for children, as was said: the children's drawings ended up in the previous program,” he explains.
As a result of that controversy, Carlos Tena was forced to resign and the Vulpes faced a three-year judicial process, until the State Prosecutor closed the case due to alleged public scandal. In the case of Zorra, meanwhile, the controversy has been limited to the criticism of opinion makers, artists and celebrities, from Manu Tenorio to María Pombo, who have considered it “crude” or who have questioned whether the term “zorra” is “empowering.” for women.” Eurovision, meanwhile, understands that it is “suitable”, through the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which does not see the use of “unacceptable language”, an issue that could have excluded it.
Loles Vázquez attends this controversy with a certain boredom and, very kindly, although with a certain viscerality, settles her position by alluding to its “artificial” aspect: “Eurovision seems to me like a festival that was almost finished and that they have found the vein to resurrect it.” linking it to the LGTBIQ movement and, to a certain extent, feminism. Every year they look for a different controversy and this year it has been around Zorra,” he concludes.
At this point, taking into account Loles' statements, it is worth asking to what extent certain apparently rebellious or relatively oppositional discourses are today more at risk of being used or phagocytosed by marketing strategies linked to purposes very far removed from the apparent purpose of those messages. The doubt also remains as to whether this trend is not also expressive of the success of certain social movements, something a priori positive, or, finally, whether Spain has changed so much seeing the reactions that Zorra has provoked in conservative circles.
