Three contracts for a total of 2,288,866 euros were those that RTVE signed between 2020 and 2021 with the producer of the Holy Week controversy, Minoría Absoluta, the producer behind the mockery of the Virgen del Rocío on TV3.
However, RTVE has not been the only public entity from which it has received aid or has supported Toni Soler’s independent production company, the protagonist of various controversies over anti-Spanish gags: the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), autonomous body attached to the Secretary of State for Culture, as well.
While the controversy over the mockery of the program Está Passant, also produced by Minoría Absoluta and presented by Toni Soler and Jair Domínguez, continues to give rise to talk after the criticism received and the derision complaint filed this Tuesday by the Spanish Foundation of Christian Lawyers in a court of Barcelona, ??this newspaper has learned of the agreements signed by public entities with said production company.
The complaint, to which EL MUNDO has had access, indicates that the actress, characterized as the Virgen del Rocío, “flirted with one of the directors of the program, going so far as to send him a kiss and exclaim “handsome!” and ask “do you are you at the green light?” and “and you? You who are more mature, but I don’t hate anything, eh?” Thus, she immediately said: “I’m hotter than a churrero stick.”
Meanwhile, the presenter and independence activist Toni Soler and his collaborator, Jair Domínguez, laughed heartily. The impersonator complained about the Virgin’s costume, which she called “rococo” while by comparison she said that the Virgin of Montserrat was “minimalist”.
But this is not the first controversy or the first anti-Spanish mockery surrounding this production company, creator of programs such as Polonia or Está passant itself, both broadcast on TV3. In fact, in the 2020/21 season, this production company signed contracts worth almost five million euros with the Catalan Corporation for Audiovisual Media (CCMA), the body that manages the public audiovisual media of the Generalitat.
Said production company obtained financing from RTVE for two films The Master Who Promised the Sea, released this year, and Regreso a EGB, by Mario Montero, and the documentary Spain the 20th century in color.
For the first film, Absolute Minority received 484,000 euros from the public channel, for Return to EGB, 786,500 euros and for the documentary, 1,018,366 euros, which was not only the highest amount of the agreements with RTVE but also surprising the content of the even after the numerous anti-Spanish controversies in which various programs from Toni Soler’s production company have been involved.
The documentary premiered on La 2 in December 2022 and was an “ambitious historical production”, according to the description of Minoría Absoluta, of 6 chapters of 1 hour each, which portrayed the 20th century “as it had never been seen before , full color”.
It was the first documentary series that RTVE produced with colored archive material and with the collaboration of the Spanish Film Library, in which you could see a very young Alfonso XIII, who had just been proclaimed king; Concha Piquer in the first film sound recording in Spanish; Primo de Rivera’s coup in 1923 and the birth of the second republic; The spanish civil war; the birth of the Franco dictatorship or the death of Manolete.
In fact, it was because of this documentary that the Absolute Minority signed an agreement with the ICAA “to define the collaboration and commitments between the ICAA, through the Spanish Film Library for the installation of a digital laboratory infrastructure and its use with film funds conserved in the ICAA”. Along with this documentary, the agreement also signed the same for another television series and for a feature film for commercial theaters, which on the date of signing the agreement -May 19, 2020- received the name of Structures of the 20th century.
Said agreement established that the Absolute Minority would have access to the material from the Film Library and film collections owned by the ICAA, as well as the commitment to “exhibit, where appropriate, audiovisual productions in public projection rooms, for cultural purposes, at worldwide, and provide a copy for exhibitions in other Autonomous Film Archives and those belonging to the International Federation of Film Archives”.
Regarding the economic agreements, the agreement established that its signing did not imply “a commitment of any expense for the ICAA”, but that the economic commitment for the Absolute Minority, corresponding to the provision of the Spanish Film Library of the necessary equipment to comply with the object of the agreement, as well as the hiring of the personnel necessary to carry out the tasks provided for in it, amounts to the maximum amount of 497,101 euros”.
However, last February the ICAA signed an addendum to the 2020 agreement with the production company for the installation of the digital laboratory infrastructure and its use with film funds kept at the ICAA, which, according to sources familiar with said addendum, It represents a “significant saving” for the production company since the materials are provided by the ICAA. The agreement began its validity on May 19, 2020 and it ends on May 19, 2023.
According to the BOE, said addendum meant “the ICAA obtaining 1,000 minutes of digitized and digitally restored audiovisual funds for their preservation and dissemination; which has been valued at 911,700 euros.”
Likewise, the amount that the ICAA has stopped receiving as public prices for the reproduction and assignment of rights, according to this addendum, “amounts to 549,979 euros.”
Both the ICAA and RTVE constantly grant aid for film and television projects. However, “it is surprising,” according to sources familiar with these agreements, “that contracts and agreements are signed with pro-independence production companies that do not hesitate to tease and mock the Virgin of Rocío and anything Spanish.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project