The famous advertisement shows us, year after year, in the cameo and the commentary, the ideological transversality of the product: the mainstream of the Spanish left that, more than “caviar”, would describe as “Campofrío left”.
With King Juan Carlos fallen, it seems that the only thing that still unites us Spaniards, the only thing that makes us forget for a few moments our irreconcilable political, regional, social and generational differences, is the Christmas advertisement of a brand of processed meats. It doesn’t matter that no one dreams of their signature cooked ham during the Christmas holidays: for some mysterious reason, as Christmas approaches, we are called to contemplate the announcement of this multinational that takes upon itself the duty of commenting on the year in Spain. The list of directors of the spot Christmas of Campofrío impresses: Isabel Coixet, Álex de la Iglesia, Daniel Sánchez Arévalo… The advertisement itself is usually a parade of cameos, a true encyclopedia of celebrities from the audiovisual sector and others. Not content with being able to buy almost anyone of the living, the spot of 2024 resurrects characters from the history of Spain such as Isabel la Católica or Francisco de Quevedo, intrigued to know what has been lost from the traditional Spain that they remember while sharing cooked ham…
Anyone would say that the brand knows how to put the European taxpayer’s euros to good use, even though it has been making losses for years. Millions of the CAP, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, end up in a company with six slaughterhouses and a penchant for hiring celebrities for advertising. But, above all, the famous advertisement shows us, year after year, in the cameo and the commentary, the ideological transversality of the product: the mainstream of the Spanish left, more than “caviar”, I would describe it as “Campofrío left”.
The motto of the first spot Christmas, in 2011, was a declaration of intentions: “Let nothing take away our way of enjoying life.” In later ads he became more aggressive: “Let nothing and no one (…)”. The current slogan of the multinational (owned by the Mexican group Sigma, which in turn belongs to the Alfa conglomerate) does not differ in essentials: “Know how to enjoy, let nothing take it away from us.” Apparently, in love with sausageswe have to be on guard against anyone who questions our “way of enjoying life.”
It is true that we Spaniards, who were such Arabs and such good Arabs, can be singularly disconcerted by the existence of populations that abstain from pork, which is one of the meats most detested by our human species, from perhaps Ancient Egypt to two of the three religions with the most followers today (Islam and Hinduism). The porcophile, then, has a little bit of anthropology pending. His displays of astonishment and gloating are tired and trite, and have been repeated for centuries; It is enough to mention that, a few months ago, the fans of the selection Spanish woman “celebrated” a Muslim soccer player by shouting at him to eat ham.
We continue fighting to mentally expel the Moor and the Jew, as if it were not already clear, as if we had not replaced that historical diversity of cultures with Catholicism. supremacist and a herd of pigs that today surpass in number to humans. As if Christmas ads were needed that lament the kebab and convert the ham from york into an anti-globalization symbol… In another time, converted Jews and Muslims had to publicly display their consumption of sausages (perhaps this is why no one can say no to a cameo for Campofrío?) and lard became an means to exorcise them, used as cooking fat, preservative or infiltrated into innocent pastry products. One of the most Moorish sweets on the peninsula, the Andalusian alfajores, is beginning to incorporate butter in recent industrial versions. The Reconquest continues.
That said, today racism and Islamophobia are only openly displayed in underworlds such as football, which in 2023-24 is on track to be the most retrograde sport in Spain on this side of the cockfights. The chorus of derision prefers to direct itself, in recent decades, towards vegetarians or vegans: they are the real challenge, the real “pain in the ass”, aggravated by the fact that they use secular and even ecological arguments, against the mandates celestials of some gods or others (although in the impurity of the pig the gods usually coincide). They put a face to that mysterious SOMEONE who, according to Campofrío ads, has the potential to take away “our way of enjoying life.”.
After putting ourselves on the defensive against those who could take away our idiosyncrasy of enjoying charcuterie, Campofrío Food Group went on the offensive. In a 2008 advertisement, it introduced us to a family of sectarian and superstitious vegetarians, well-off but disheveled, who only eat lettuce, celery and the like. The son convinces them to try meat for once (“No one has asked me if I want to be a vegetarian”) and they end up “converting” to Campofrío’s processed meats, thus introducing them into their diet. carcinogens of group 1.
Hippies, anti-system, strange people… Worthy of laughter! The same laughter and clichés similar to those used in Franco’s time for the naturist vegetarians who survived the civil war, to preserve their antipodean “way of enjoying life.” Well, vegetarianism has a long tradition in Spain, interrupted by the war and absent from the culture of the Transition: by then we were all Campofrío.
Strange as it may seem, less than a decade after that spot burlesque, the multinational promoted a range of products called Vegalia, standard bearer of “not having labels”. Greeted like a step back in Campofrío’s anti-vegetarian crusade, in reality the protagonists of their advertising are non-vegetarians, and they even insist on it with a characteristically defensive attitude, which suggests that it was originally designed for flexitarians or simply curious people, people “without labels” (despite that the name might suggest veganmany of the products replace meat with eggs and dairy).
For the launch in 2022 of some nuggets of 100% vegetable chicken from Vegalia, the brand, true to its style, had a interpretation exclusive from Fran Perea, who expressed his confusion at the similarity of flavors between this vegetable chicken preparation and the macro-farm chicken that is almost exclusively consumed in Spain. The title of the ad was “Emosido deceived”, in reference to a viral graffiti for years, which turned out to be on a wall in Alcalá de Guadaíra. Jovial and smiling title, from a company that knows how to take the pulse of Spanish society, that knows how to make us laugh, cry and make our chins stick, until, as always when faced with these types of statements, one wonders who was being fooled.
#Campofrío #mother #lamb
