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TELEVISION

Why on earth do Spain’s TV channels always cut out film credits?

If you’ve watched a movie on Spanish TV you may have noticed that once it ends, they abruptly cut to ads or another film without showing the credits. Why does this happen?

woman watching tv in spain , film credits
Unfortunately, it looks like Spanish TV's credits-cutting habit is going nowhere anytime soon.Photo: Kalila Kal/Pixabay

You’re watching a fantastic film at home in Spain, one that’s impressed you for its cinematography, acting or location.

But just as the final scene ends and you’re anticipating checking out the main credits, the channel quickly cuts to ads or directly into another film or programme, not giving you the time to process, talk about it or make yourself a coffee.

Why do Spanish television channels do this?

In an interview published by Spanish broadcaster RTVE in 2011 (which showcases how long the problem has been going on for), short film director and screenwriter Raúl Díez Rodríguez sent in a video complaint denouncing how La 2 channel was cutting out the credits and thus the recognition of people in the film and TV business.

“This omission constitutes damage to intellectual property rights,” Díez read from Spanish legal text, but La 2 responded that they only had to show 15 seconds of credits as that is their rule. 

More recently in 2018, Spanish writer Javier Sierra also tweeted: “Why don’t TV in the UK cut off the credits, at the end of the movies and in Spain they always do it? Isn’t it disrespectful to creators?

One Twitter user argued, “well, I suppose that for the same reason why in Spain most people leave the cinema when the credits begin”, and another said “nobody can last 5 minutes seeing a black background with passing names”.

But other commentators didn’t agree with that view, saying it showed a lack of respect and ethics as well as an attack on intellectual property. 

So is there an official answer to why the majority of Spanish TV channels cut out credits?

Money from advertising is the most likely answer, as this remains the primary source of income for private television channels, albeit dwindling as mobile video takes a bigger chunk of viewership. 

Most foreigners in Spain will agree that Spanish TV channels show a higher amount of TV ads than back in their home countries. 

In early 2020 as Spaniards were confined to their homes during the first coronavirus lockdown, there were as many as 900 hours of TV adverts a week across the channels. 

The limit of ads per hour in Spain was supposed to be 12 minutes but Spain’s independent competition regulator the CNMC has opened up investigations against big media companies such as Mediaset and RTVE for surpassing these limits, in the public broadcaster’s case for showing too many self-promo ads.

In November 2021 the Spanish government made the limits more flexible to a maximum of 144 minutes of ads between 6 am and 6 pm, and a maximum limit of 72 minutes between 6:00 pm and 12:00 pm.

Keeping all this in mind, it seems that replacing the five minutes of a film’s credits with money-generating TV ads is an offer private channels find too hard to pass up on. 

And unfortunately for film crews and creators, it looks like Spanish TV’s credits-cutting habit is going nowhere anytime soon. At least people in Spain don’t have to pay a TV licence.

Member comments

  1. We once sat in a cinema in Olot and refused to leave until they showed all the ending credits!
    This they did with no argument.
    We were the last to leave…

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SPAIN EXPLAINED

Why the Basque Country is the strike capital of Spain

Around half of all strikes in Spain take place in the Basque Country, but it wasn't always that way.

Why the Basque Country is the strike capital of Spain

Though airport workers are currently striking in Valencia and Madrid, and trade unions have played a leading role in the farmers’ protests across the country in recent weeks, there’s a specific part of Spain that stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to industrial action — the Basque Country.

According to figures from the Basque government’s Labour Relations Council (CRL), in 2023 almost half (46 percent) of the total strikes called in Spain took place in the Basque Country.

In 2022, that figure was 50.36 percent. That is to say, a region with less than 5 percent of the country’s total population had half of its strikes. More specifically, 342 of the 679 strikes that took place in Spain in 2022 were in the Basque Country alone, according to data from the Ministry of Labour.

READ ALSO: What are the pros and cons of life in Spain’s Basque Country?

What explains this phenomenon? Is there an underlying explanation? Are the Basque people particularly organised or more radical than other Spaniards?

Part of the explanation for this trend comes from the fact that Basque trade unions have grown, or maintained, at least, as union activity has declined in the rest of the country.

As Spanish trade unions slowly began waning in power and membership over the years (like in many countries around the world) the Basque Country became a hotbed of trade unionism activity and industrial action in Spain from the early-2000s. In more recent years, the 2020s in particular, the proportion of strikes in the Basque Country versus the rest of Spain has grown ever higher due to an overall decrease in the number of strikes around the rest of the country.

Jon Las Heras, Professor of Political Economy at the University of the Basque Country and expert on Basque unions, says that this high rate of strikes compared to the rest of Spain is due, above all, to the trade union model and strategy adopted by the region’s two major unions, Eusko Langileen Alkartasuna (ELA) and Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak (LAB).

“ELA and LAB have formed a ‘counter-power’ bloc in opposition to CCOO and UGT [the traditional, major unions in Spain] that are more prone to engage into social dialogue,” Las Heras argues in his paper Striking to Renew: Basque Unions’ Organising Strategies and the Use of the Strike-Fund.

This strategy, he argues, is “based on organising workers ‘deeply’ – especially with ELA’s recurrent use of a strike-fund that fosters membership participation and affiliation through confederal solidarity.”

In short, whereas Spain’s larger national unions are, Las Heras suggests, more inclined to dialogue to resolve industrial disputes, Basque unions prefer more direct action. “This has produced very high strike rates since the 2000s, perhaps the highest in Europe,” he adds.

It is worth considering that the Basque Country, in addition to effectively using strike funds, is also one of the wealthiest parts of Spain. In other words, that workers in the Basque Country take home the second highest salaries in Spain on average, behind only Madrid, could mean that union members are more inclined (or have the financial flexibility) to take strike action than if they were from poorer regions such as Murcia, Extremadura and Andalusia.

READ ALSO: Why are the Basque Country and Catalonia so rich compared to the rest of Spain?

At the very least, being wealthier on average means that Basque workers can afford to stay on strike longer than workers in other parts of the country, something essential when settling disputes through industrial action.

However, trade unionists would no doubt point to their strong trade unionism as one of the reasons they are comparatively well paid, rather than the other way around.

But it wasn’t always like this. According to Las Heras, ELA, LAB and other Basque unions formerly relied on dialogue and sector-wide collective bargaining agreements, as many unions still do, but began to develop “a strategy of political autonomy and trade union action at a level closer to the grassroots” between the 1990s and the 2000s.

This came about partly as a result of changes to the labour market and industrial changes in the Basque Country (which began from the 1980s onwards, notably the types of industry and engineering in the region) as well Basque unions distancing themselves from national unions

“The rise of the second Basque union (LAB) allowed for the two Basque sovereigntist unions to form a new alliance that stood in opposition to the two main Spanish unions,” Las Herras argues.

But it’s also about strategy. Elena Pérez Barredo, Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Security in the Basque government, told La Vanguardia that the fundamental reason strikes are so common “lies in the trade union difference that exists in the Basque Country.”

“The ELA has a union strategy and culture that encourages confrontation… a very marked strategy in favour of the strike as an instrument of confrontation,” she adds.

There seem to be several plausible, inter-connected reasons that the Basque Country became Spain’s (and possibly Europe’s) strike capital.

It has strong regional trade unions that exist separately from the larger confederate national unions; these unions have effective strike funds, meaning they can strike for longer; their employees are, on average, likely to be better paid than elsewhere in Spain, meaning they could be more inclined and financially able to take strike action; and finally, Basque unions take a more direct, confrontational approach to industrial disputes, whereas other unions rely more on dialogue and border collective bargaining agreements.

Perhaps Unai Rementeria, a local Basque politician, summed it up best after widespread strike action in the region in 2019. Basque unions, he said simply, “seek permanent confrontation.”

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