You may have heard the statement that we Spaniards are the funniest in Europe. It is not an easy thing to answer, although it is true that the country has for years had high-class comedians such as Gila, Eugenio or Pepe Rubianes, and currently Silvia Abril, Ana Morgade or Dani Rovira. But is that true?
Jaime Rubio Hancock defines himself as a great defender of nuances and, for this reason, the journalist specialized in humour, philosophy and social networks has written El gran libro del humor español (Arpa), in which he debates this and other issues like, for example, where we come from and, above all, where we are going in this genre.
“First of all, I would like to clarify that there is no such thing as Spanish humor, but humor made in Spain. There is no gene that if you have it you laugh with Tuesday and Thirteen and if you lack it then you opt more for Monty Python. The mechanisms of humor, such as incongruity or surprise, are universal but, beyond that, there are codes and references specific to each society and, if we narrow it down, we can even say from different generations”, explains the author to La Vanguardia.
Hancock acknowledges that at the time it shocked him to learn that some people under 30 did not understand what the public saw in Chiquito de la Calzada, "but if you analyzed it, it was perfectly understood." In fact, it is also summed up by the sociologist and professor at the UOC Natàlia Cantó: "It is impossible for people who have not lived through a historical moment to have the necessary emotional charge for something to produce the same sensations."
Another concept that the journalist deals with in his book is that of the offended, “those people who seem to be bothered by everything, although in reality what they do is express their opinion. This leads us to wonder if we are offended more than ever. The explanation is simpler than many think: we have changed as a society. I always give as an example a sketch that Tuesday and Thirteen did in the 90s in which an abused woman was parodied. Millán Salcedo himself has apologized many times about it in the years since. What seemed harmless to us a few years ago now seems frivolous. Ethical reasons change and that's not bad, but it's normal that it doesn't make us laugh the same way it did years before”, reflects the Barcelona-born author. He sang, for his part, adds another note: “Despite the fact that there is more freedom of expression than years ago, it is a time when many comedians have acknowledged self-censorship more than before. And, beyond ethics, there is the issue that society defends itself more than ever by relying on laws. The moment you know that anything you say can be prosecuted, then you just measure it more."
This is something that is recognized by part of the new quarry of comedians, many of them born on social networks, such as Carmen de Lorenzo, who admits that, “despite the fact that I try not to censor myself, I do recognize that I try not to hurt sensitivities. What happens is that the type of parodies that I do don't usually give it too much ground."
The young woman is one of the comedians who has grown the most in the last year and who already has more than 2.1 million users on Tik Tok, the platform on which she began her career. “I have always been the funny one of the group and during the pandemic I was very bored and I started recording myself doing impressions and some jokes. I uploaded the videos to Tik Tok since I didn't know anyone there and I thought it would be a good way for them to see me, but not my acquaintances, because it gave me a certain respect at first. What I did not imagine is that the matter would get out of hand and that so many people would start following me, ”acknowledges the young woman, who now dedicates herself to humor when before it was just a hobby. In fact, she anticipates that she is preparing her own show that she will announce soon.
The pandemic was also a golden opportunity for Álvaro Casares. “In 2015 I started doing monologues in theaters and a year later uploading a video to Facebook, but it was not until the pandemic, when they sent me home due to the state of alarm, that I started uploading continuity videos. It was a time when people were scared and humor was what helped us all cope." From a sociological point of view, Cantó agrees with him and recalls that "humor helps to face tough situations". Hancock, for his part, sees the jokes in this context as "small reliefs", and recalls what they meant during the dictatorship, since "they made it possible, in an almost clandestine way, to find people who thought like you". In this sense, “I don't think that satire will help fight a regime or that it will overthrow Putin overnight, for example, but it does show the weaknesses that exist in a system, and that can influence people. ”.
Regarding the future of humor in Spain, Hancock admits that “I don't have a crystal ball. But I do trust some aspects. The first, that there will be more women. More and more women burst onto the scene, showing that it is no longer a male domain. On the other hand, a new growing ecosystem of young people, who are knowing how to take advantage of social networks to carve out a niche for themselves and set the tone for the coming years and who increasingly rely on author jokes, following in the footsteps started by Eugenio and its so personal 'they know the one i gave'. And then, don't leave aside memes or podcasts, for which all you need is a decent micro and a good script, as Carolina Iglesias and Victoria Martín have shown with Stretching the Chicle ". Either way, I think we're going to have fun. We have always done it”, concludes the author.
