A telecommunications company from Alcantarilla (Murcia) has been receiving WhatsApp calls and messages for two years because its phone number appears in an episode of The Simpsons that was first broadcast in Spain 21 years ago.
This is episode 22 of season 13 of this popular series, which is entitled ‘Dad has a new license plate’. In it, Homer Simpson creates a citizen security patrol called ‘Spring Shield’. At one point in the chapter, the telephone number of said patrol appears: 636 555 347 2, which coincides with a number from the Murcian company InaTic except for the 2 at the end.
The phone number, which has been active since 2015, belongs to Alicia Manzanares, an administrator at this company specializing in innovation applied to the ICT sector that employs 12 people. “It was the first mobile phone number that the company had,” she recalls, to later joke that “thank goodness” that it is a company number, since today she plans to turn it off as soon as she leaves the office. “When I leave tonight I turn off the phone and leave it here. I’m not even going to take it home today,” she says.
However, it was not until 2021 when they received a first Whatsapp message in which an unknown number told them that this phone appeared in The Simpsons. Alicia remembers that it was during the confinement, so they think it could be either because there was a rerun of the episode in Neox, or because people watched all the seasons of the series again. “We were teleworking, in confinement. With the Covid and the pandemic, people, having more free time at home, still watched the series again,” she says.
In that first WhatsApp message, an unknown phone number asked them if they knew that this number appeared in The Simpsons. And, after a while, a second message arrived, from another phone, which even indicated the episode number in which it appeared. Later, messages and calls continued, in many of them, just without saying a word, they asked him: “Spring Escudo?” and at first he admits that “he didn’t understand anything”.
For this reason, they did not pay much attention to the first message. “I gave it to a colleague, we looked for it and we saw it. It shocked us a lot because it is true that it was the same phone number. The people who have called, from what we see, are Spanish people. They have tried to see if the number exists, there are many geeks of The Simpsons”, he adds.
For her, the most striking call came just a week ago, when a boy “who was a big fan” asked them not to change their phone number. “He told us: you have a number that is worth gold, he was very excited,” recalls Alicia, who jokes that her cell phone is now abuzz with calls. After the EFE news agency released the news, her phone did not stop ringing: “Apart from the media, people are calling to try and they tell you:” Spring Shield?
Asked if it bothers her to receive these messages or calls, Alicia answers with a resounding no. She insists that the company she works for is a telecommunications engineering company, “a very serious company” in which they are “all day in front of the computer.” “You are focused all day and if they call you from time to time for this, it’s even funny. So we make a stop, it doesn’t hurt. Anything that is a joke and laughter does not bother me,” she explains. She did not expect, according to her account, that the news would arouse interest, but she is happy because with current affairs marked by “political or war news, it is good to put a note of humor.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
