Cites Barcelona is a television series that mixes drama and comedy through a recurring plot: the first encounters of different couples who have met on the Internet. Starting from this premise, each story triggers a different ending.
Although the series was initially recorded entirely in Catalan, the third season has been launched on TV3 and on the Amazon Prime Video streaming platform, so the production was recorded with half the dialogues in Catalan and the other half in Spanish. Despite this decision, the regional channel decided to broadcast it entirely in Catalan, dubbing the dialogues into this language.
If the controversy began when it was announced that this new edition would be bilingual, with the first two episodes on the air, social networks exploded, since most of the fiction scenes were shot in Spanish and fans of the series have described dubbing as the Catalan as ”pathetic” and ”deficient”.
”They have ruined everything… He doesn’t give a shit about the language (to TV3), it has become very clear. Hopefully the audience will plummet ” wrote a very angry young viewer on her Twitter account.
Despite the wishes of the user of the microblogging platform, the social response to the premiere of the third batch of episodes of the legendary Catalan series was a success in audiences.
The first two episodes were very well received by the public. The first of them broke the all-time record for the entire series, registering 439,000 viewers and an incredible 21.2% audience share.
The actor from Merlí: Sapere Aude and Smiley gave some controversial statements in a recent interview for the VilaWeb portal that made the general Catalan public feel very bad, as well as the actor Joel Joan. In the interview, Cuevas explained that he filmed his scenes in Spanish due to “script requirements” and that the actors have worked very hard on the subsequent dubbing into Catalan.
After this introduction, the protagonist of 45 revolutions explained that he supports the project and that he agrees with the decision of the series to record it in two languages: ”I think we should ask ourselves: would we prefer fiction entirely in Catalan, but of a quality Shame on us?” These statements angered thousands of Catalans and the actor Joel Joan, who gave him a strong reply: ”Quality does not depend on money, dear, but on talent. And associating your tongue with something shameful is called self-hatred. Please don’t embarrass us.”
After the social commotion that formed around the artist, Carlos Cuevas decided to qualify his words in a Twitter thread: ”I have never said nor would I say that quality fiction cannot be made in Catalan, rather that the talent here cannot remain seated or unemployed until the resources arrive”.
The artist sincerely apologized, but made it clear that he had never questioned the language, but that the medium that published the news took its headline out of context: ”The headline chosen by VilaWeb does not at all reflect the conversation that we kept neither the sense of what I said, it does not represent me at all and I am very sorry”.
