The hidden history of Chiquito de la Calzada

What is Mario Conde doing in a documentary about Chiquito de la Calzada? The former banker appears, in a somewhat sinister way, in a room and explains the day he met the comedian who monopolized the television of the nineties. The production transports us to the Spain of after the Seville Expo and to the emergence of private television channels. Also to the pretensions of a country that thought it was more modern than it was. And in this breeding ground, no one could escape the tsunami of the “Fistro pecador de la pradera!” and those “¿Cómorrrr?” and “¡No puedooorr!” that so many people used as a crutch in any conversation. An unbearable wave with that stocky gentleman who dressed like a flamenco singer walking up and down the screen moving his legs and arms as if he had a bad ailment. Warning: viewers of the younger generations will not believe the spectacle.

El otro chiquito (Movistar+) is an entertaining documentary for those who enjoy pop culture, exploring the television archaeology that takes you back to the past. The title already hints at the discovery of a story that, at the time, did not transcend: Chiquito de la Calzada's fight against his alter ego. The first part of the documentary portrays the comedian to understand how this media phenomenon appeared in the middle of the television landscape of the era. A delirious success. In just six months, that individual swept Antena 3 and became a determining factor in the fight against Telecinco. He was the network's golden goose. Through the story, the documentary draws in broad strokes the Spanish power dynamics and the gears of media influence. The second part is more interesting because it focuses on the great conflict that disturbed the pleasure of Chiquito de la Calzada's success. Telecinco premiered Esta noche cruzamos el Mississipi, the great trash TV format orchestrated by Pepe Navarro. In the fauna of the execrable program, he incorporated Florentino Fernández, a night watchman with imitation skills, who cannibalized Chiquito's character. They created Lucas Grijander and, later, Crispín Clander, giving a new life to the original comedian without his consent. Chiquito de la Calzada began a fight against that doppelgänger who ruined his plans. “Al ataquerrrr!”. The comedian, por la gloria de su madre, turned to the courts, and the documentary raises an interesting debate about the violation of intellectual property rights. There are many nuances at play: personal identity, authorship, and to what extent mass success causes what you have created to stop belonging to you. Was Lucas Grijander a plagiarism, a copy, a reappropriation, a version, a tribute, a parody, an influence, a hybrid, or an inspiration? The overanalysis of the character in El otro Chiquito raises, based on a specific case, how popular television culture is constructed, the kind that permeates us even without wanting it.