What do we Catalans laugh about?

Barcelona"Hilària is a festival that can only be held in Catalonia and with Catalans in mind," states its director, Oriol de Balanzó. It has been ten years since Cruïlla began a comedy cycle infiltrated into its musical programming, and it has been two years since the comedians have been walking on their own, under the umbrella of Hilària. This year, nine shows will be offered with more than thirty guest artists who –due to the closing of El Molino– are distributed across various spaces in the city. Observing the lineup, there is no doubt that it is designed by and for Catalans: they have set up a duel of comedians titled Barcelona vs. Regions, they will hold a roast of El Foraster, and they will offer a late night show hosted by Joel Díaz with a single guest, who will be Lluís Gavaldà. Thus, we finally have a self-centered comedy scene. But what does that mean? What makes us Catalans laugh?

"What makes us Catalans laugh is what interests us, and what interests us is ourselves. There is a kind of happiness in looking at ourselves, criticizing ourselves, and making ourselves laugh when we talk about ourselves –says comedian Maria Rovira, Oye Sherman, who co-programs the festival–. Shit too, it’s obvious, we are a scatological people. A scatological joke about Catalonia would be the quintessence of what we find funny," she jokes. "Comedy is a very egocentric thing and the topics end up being the comic's life," corroborates Josep Català, the godfather of the Catalan scene and founder of El Soterrani. At Hilària, he is premiering his first solo show, titled Decadència i caiguda, which speaks, effectively, about himself. The third programmer of Hilària, Manel Vidal, adds fuel to the fire: "There is a Catalan cultural consumption that has to do with death. We like to go to concerts when bands retire and do as my grandmother did: open the newspaper to the obituary page. It is a taboo that we find funny, but I don’t know if it is especially Catalan; it is surely universal, like everything that happens to us."

The label of Catalan humor

"All comedians talk about what happens in their society, but Catalans do it with a greater degree of discomfort and acidity because we are an uncomfortable country, in which politics is mixed into day-to-day life," points out Oriol de Balanzó. "Repression is potentially very comical, because humor pivots on the taboo, on taking people to a place where they shouldn't be because it makes us ashamed. We have so many shames that we are a very fertile country for comedy," states Roger Coma, actor and comedian. And he continues: "Since you always have to do comedy against someone and I am very modest, I end up doing it against myself. That's why self-fiction works, because it's for cowardly and insecure people, who feel bad about bothering others and going to court."

"If we compare ourselves with the Spanish, they have a more direct and primary humor, more visceral, and ours is more of a dejected and beaten-down people, and we take refuge more in irony, in saying things without saying them," explains Josep Català, and immediately qualifies it. "Nowadays this is very blurred, because the influences are not local, they are not El Club de la Comedia, they are international." For Carlo Padial, Catalonia is "a space of permanent innovation, a space of advanced people in humorous terms," he asserts, citing Pepe Rubianes and Carles Flavià as "the only model of stand up comedy genuine in the whole state."

Manel Vidal considers that "pigeonholing" the explosion of stand-up comedians in recent years under the label of Catalan humor "is provincial" and does not respond to the diversity of styles and themes. In fact, he thinks that if La Trinca's strategy of double meaning were still in force after fifty years of democracy, it would not be something to be proud of: "We should bet more on the gut than on irony," he defends. Oriol de Balanzó believes that this is already the path: "Catalan comedians have a very direct way of facing things, they don't hide, they speak without filters or prejudices, in a dry way."

The danger of the small country

Comedians have found live performance to be a freer and more trustworthy space than other formats, such as television, as was proven with the cancellation of Zona Franca. "We have an endemic problem between what is public and what is private: people say things in private that they censor in public or scold you for saying. I am not particularly skilled at distinguishing the places where one thing or another can be said, so I think it's basically about trying it out and sometimes ending up without a job," states Manel Vidal, co-founder of the podcast La Sotana, a successful space that he finds comfortable because "the audience understands the code and we protect each other." The fact of being a small country can be a drawback, but also a reason for pardon: "Sometimes you leave scorched earth and make enemies with someone, but, since we all know each other, there is also a layer of cynicism that makes the insult carry less weight because in private we all understand each other," admits Vidal.

"The viewer is looking for a space that is not mediatized," states De Balanzó, brandishing the audience figures. "Last year, 240,000 comedy tickets were sold in Barcelona, more than Oasis will sell." The sector has only grown and there are already ten comedy festivals in the country. Public subsidies are not rising at the same rate, still considering humor as a theatrical genre, while Hilària would ask for a specific line. "The scene is there, now we need to build the industry," says Maria Rovira. "We are still between amateurism and professionalism, and there are few comics who can dedicate themselves only to comedy," explains De Balanzó, who is a screenwriter for La Competència. Carlo Padial has indeed transported his humor from the podcast (Media Offline, which he will perform live at Hilària) to the audiovisual, in series and films (Doctor Portuondo, Pizza Movies), and he believes the path is set: "Producers are very attentive to what happens on stages and in podcasts, because there are people who have personality, drive, and things to say. Today, intermediaries have less power."