How as a ‘healthy’ 17-year-old I longed to be allowed to stay up late enough to watch those Spanish films on channel Four with the red triangle displayed prominently in the top right-hand corner of the screen, when anything that came out of Spain or France, had subtitles, and ended up on British TV late at night, was bound to have a decent bit of flesh in it.
At last, my dreams are to be fulfilled! El Pais, Spain’s most respected of newspapers, is giving away soft porn every weekend for the foreseeable future, starting next Sunday with ‘El Portero de la Noche’ – “The Night Watchman” ( … the “naughty” night watchman, I imagine…)
Under the banner “Vuelve el Erotismo” (Erotic is Back), this latest get-something-free-with-your-paper campaign is likely to send sales through the roof. As I said to the wife, better get down to the kiosko early next Sunday for a chance of getting the first instalment, especially at 1 Euro a pop!
But hang on a minute (says the old British person still hiding inside me), free ‘dirty videos’ with El Pais? Can you imagine The Times of London, or the venerable Sunday Observer giving away this sort of ‘filth’? It’s a disgrace!
For more details, be very careful about checking out the special promotional webstie, www.quevuelvaelerotismo.com – just don’t look behind the third door for the good stuff… a blooming disgrace, that’s what this is…
Damian Corrigan, About.com Spain Travel
9 Mar 09 at 12:22 pm
Smacks of desperation to me, don’t you think?
Does anyone read Spanish newspapers? At one euro a copy, that’s 30 euros a month. The average graduate in Spain would be happy with 1,000 euros a month – which means newspapers cost 3% of their salary.
ValenciaSon
9 Mar 09 at 12:43 pm
Well the free press ain’t so free.
Richardksa
9 Mar 09 at 12:53 pm
I think it’s disgusting. I shall be first in the queue ot the tienda de prensa to voice my complaint – after some preliminary research, of course.
Mark
9 Mar 09 at 1:49 pm
It does seem very wrong, and definitely desperate, although if it gets teenagers reading the newspaper then maybe some good will come of it.
Also there’s a great vocabulary test behind door number two on the website. I’d be ‘caliente’ if I could spell.
Yoli
9 Mar 09 at 3:12 pm
I can’t believe the comments I’m reading here…desperation? disgusting???What is the connection between this and erotism??
To Damian..So many people in Spain read newspapers every day. Not earning a decent salary doen’t mean not being able to aceed to the information…the printed version is not the only option!! and so many people read them at the bars, having un cortado every morning…and buy them every weekend or when they give something else like Dvds, which, by the way, are expensive in Spain…so offering them for 1 euro with the newspaper is a good idea for everyone. The client get a good bargain and the newspaper sells more….
Parubin
9 Mar 09 at 4:00 pm
Jajaja… yes Richardska, I’ll second your complaints. Let’s get all the collection so the copies do not fall into innocent hands.
There is a long distance between ‘erotism’ and ‘porn’ (even soft porn). The first are movies of any genre which show a bit of flesh here and there with a purpouse of any kind. The second are movies only intended to satisfy a sexual desire.
Portiere di Notte, an Italian film made in the 70′s is hardly anything but porn or soft-porn. It is a disturbing and obscure history about human deccay and destructive relations, which was very controversial at the time and has become a cult movie. And yes, it has some torrid and daring erotic scenes (at least for its time) but it can harldy ever be labeled as porn or soft port.
I’d say it’d would fall into the cathegory of flicks such as ‘Last Tango in Paris’ or more recently ‘Jamón, Jamón’.
Particularily I don´t like this movie that much (it looks outdated and pretty creepy at times) but I’d say that ‘El País’ marketing team might have created over expetations if people is to think they are getting porn of any kind with their morning paper.
Graham Tappenden
9 Mar 09 at 7:21 pm
@Ben: nice SEO, you’re on Rank #1 in Google(.de) with “el pais free dvd”
Ben
9 Mar 09 at 11:18 pm
@Graham – that should bring the $’s rolling in
Lucky I changed the P word to pxxn!
acosta
10 Mar 09 at 1:13 am
Yes to have good opinion on this I need to do a through study and research!
Perhaps the Obama stimulus plan will give me a grant to study it in Spain for a year, that and the qualities of Spanish wines vs US Wines, I think that study could take years of intensive research in Spain.
Could you imagine what our local US wackos would do if a major US news paper did this. I think there would be scores of scummy politicians lining up to complain about the proverbial gambling in Casablanca.
ValenciaSon
10 Mar 09 at 12:38 pm
Does El Pais deliver to the US?
gary
11 Mar 09 at 6:17 pm
“Can you imagine The Times of London, or the venerable Sunday Observer giving away this sort of ‘filth’? It’s a disgrace!”
I cant imagine Gill going to the kiosko to fetch my soft porn let alone for “one euro a pop”…
Anwar
21 Mar 09 at 12:26 am
@ValenciaSon.
You can get both ABC and El Pais at your local Borders Bookstore, but all the extra goodies that come with the Sunday edition of El Pais in Spain are removed before being shipped to the U.S.. They don’t even include the normal Sunday supplement, though ABC does.
Anwar
21 Mar 09 at 12:29 am
@ValeciaSon.
By the way, the last time I checked both ABC and El Pais sold for $3.50 in the U.S. which works out to about 2.58 Euros at current exchange rates. By the way, I forgot to add that Borders ONLY carries the Sunday editions of El Pais and ABC.
Claire Ridgway
27 Mar 09 at 7:00 pm
They just don’t seem to think the same way about porn as we Brits do. I was channel flicking one night at around midnight and was shocked to find a film that I would consider hard core porn, although I can’t say I’ve ever watched any to know what the difference is. This was on a normal mainstream channel!