{"id":483610,"date":"2026-03-19T07:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/483610\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T07:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T07:16:14","slug":"meet-the-racist-cop-lampooning-populists-and-uniting-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/483610\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the racist cop lampooning populists \u2014 and uniting Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spain\u2019s most famous cop has a combover and poor personal hygiene and is corrupt, racist and venerates the memory of the dictator Francisco Franco.<\/p>\n

And now he\u2019s aiming for the country\u2019s highest office. The latest film featuring Jos\u00e9 Luis Torrente, the picaresque creation of the director-actor Santiago Segura, has broken box-office records, grossing more than \u20ac7 million since its release at the weekend.<\/p>\n

Torrente, presidente (\u201cTorrente for President\u201d), which Segura says is intended as a riposte to Spain\u2019s polarising politicians, has drawn about one million Spaniards to cinemas. The film is on everyone\u2019s lips.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Its success comes as the most obvious target of its satire, the populist right-wing party Vox, appears to have peaked. Vox is lampooned in the film as Nox. The party failed to meet expectations of a historic surge in Castile and Leon\u2019s regional election last weekend, which only confirmed its place as the country\u2019s third party.<\/p>\n

Vox has dropped 2.3 points from the 18.9 per cent of the vote predicted in February, according to the state pollster CIS. Analysts suggest party infighting and its anti-system stance is taking a toll on its appeal.<\/p>\n

The slowing down of Vox\u2019s popularity, after two previous regional elections in which it doubled its number of seats, will be a source of optimism for Segura. At his film\u2019s launch he called for less divisive and more constructive politics. \u201cI\u2019m really fed up with seeing all this division,\u201d he said. \u201cIt feels like we hate each other. This whole civil war vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Analysts suggest Vox\u2019s popularity has soared in recent years as anti-immigration sentiment in Spain increases, a housing crisis bites and corruption cases<\/a> taint the Socialist-led government of Pedro S\u00e1nchez, the prime minister.<\/p>\n

\"SantiagoSantiago Abascal, the president of Vox, campaigns for the Castille and Leon regional electionClaudia Alba\/Europa Press\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\"PosterA poster for the filmAmiguetes Entertainment<\/p>\n

Fans of the Torrente film point out, though, that its broad appeal extends even to Vox voters. In the streets of Madrid\u2019s Salamanca neighbourhood, a well-heeled sanctuary for the party\u2019s supporters, Jaime Jimenez, a 23-year-old student, said that in spite of being a Vox voter, \u201cI thought it was brilliant. The Torrente films are the best Spanish ones ever made.\u201d He added: \u201cEveryone in the cinema, of all ages, was laughing like crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimenez went so far as to say that the disgusting antihero, who specialises in wicked opportunism \u2014 for example robbing a food shop he happens to be in when its cashier is held up at gunpoint \u2014 holds fable-like lessons. \u201cTorrente is chauvinistic and racist, a warning of whatever politics you adhere to, you cannot end up like him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWhat Nox transmits is how Vox appears in Spain. But then so too do the representations of the [populist-left-wing] Podemos party and the Socialists. I think it is a clear message about what all the politicians are up to \u2014 doing badly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Segura has built the Torrente series around caricatures of social and political life since the first film, Torrente, el brazo tonto de la ley (\u201cTorrente, The Dumb Arm of The Law\u201d), came out in 1998. The latest and sixth instalment pushes the satire further by placing the character directly at the centre of national politics, turning an election campaign trail into a string of gags about populism, media spectacle and the personalities who dominate Spanish public life.<\/p>\n

It features Mariano Rajoy, a former Spanish prime minister, as himself, Alec Baldwin as President Trump and Kevin Spacey as the villain.<\/p>\n

\"SantiagoAlec Baldwin in his cameoSONY PICTURES INTERNATIONAL<\/p>\n

The political tone has fuelled a debate about whether the film mocks particular parties or the political class as a whole. Segura has affirmed that his film attacks all political sides equally. \u201cWe are a country with a strong sense of solidarity, which is why this polarisation that politicians force upon us \u2014 and the \u2018you\u2019re just as bad\u2019 attitude \u2014 hurts me all the more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to get politicians to relax a bit, to be a little more serious,\u201d Segura told Spanish media. \u201cThey\u2019re losing the trust of the Spanish people. And I think politics is very important. They can\u2019t lose the public\u2019s trust. They have to make us trust the bloke we\u2019ve put in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"VOXVox supporters at a rally in Madrid in SeptemberPABLO BLAZQUEZ DOMINGUEZ\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

He pointed out that one of the film\u2019s characters turns up at a left-wing rally and a right-wing rally with the same speech and is carried out in triumph on people\u2019s shoulders at both.<\/p>\n

Some deem the film\u2019s humour to be nationally unifying and its depiction of Spain more real than satirical. Ram\u00f3n P\u00e9rez-Maura, the opinion editor of the conservative online newspaper El Debate, said: \u201cThe film\u2019s huge popularity suggests that we are witnessing a sociological phenomenon. It captures the Spain so typical of Torrente. Being in a cinema with an audience that laughs equally at the satire directed at Vox and at S\u00e1nchez seems to me to show that attempts to impose polarisation in Spain have not yet fully succeeded.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain\u2019s most famous cop has a combover and poor personal hygiene and is corrupt, racist and venerates the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-483610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}