Usually our campaign films are taken down from the internet by others. Think Nestle. Think VW. But the opposite happened on Saturday – we took down our own film.
Why? Well, because our humour misfired. By wanting to use paella - that amazing traditional dish of Spain - as a way of talking about the Spanish fishing industry, we unintentionally touched a patriotic nerve.
The story of “Paella-gate” starts about two week ago, when we launched a report and later an animation, exposing how fishing companies in Spain, known by the Spanish government for illegal practices, were being funded by millions of EU subsidies.
As with a lot of our campaigns, the nuts and bolts of the issue are quite dense, so we often try and wrap them up in a concept people find easier to digest. That’s why we used a story about ‘rotten paella’ as a way to describe the shady practices overlooked by the Spanish authorities.
The video was getting a good reaction in the UK with lots of positive comments on social media. Then on Saturday morning, the kick back started.
A newspaper in Spain interpreted the video as an attack not on the Spanish fishing industry but directly on paella itself. "The information is false, unfortunate and an attack on the Valencian identity."
The conversation moved to Twitter, some paella lovers finding their common voice against our alleged ‘anti-paella’ campaign under the hash tag #paellasi. Others retaliated with #fishandchipsno!
But not everyone in Spain thought we missed the mark. There were some positive media articles and prominent Spanish chef Francis Paniego said that “the paella example exposes a glaring truth that the Spanish fishing fleet is the most subsidized in the European Union and destroy half the world's seas.”
The flood of criticism was valiantly met by our friends in our Spanish office on Saturday, who did their best to move the debate on to the main issue at stake - the bad fishing practices being used in Spain and how these are being funded by the European tax payer.
However, as the complaints and banter continued, we decided the passion around our paella was getting out of control and we didn’t want our Spanish colleagues to spend even more of their time trying to explain our British sense of humour. Check out our paella-free campaign video above.
So - by way of clarification, we say “Paella, Si!, European subsidies for shady fishing practices overlooked by the Spanish government … NO!”
