Que! What?

Barcelona has a handful of free newspapers which are handed out to commuters on the metro, left in shop doorways and cafés or dumped on porteros' desks. As might be expected, the free newspapers vary somewhat in their quality, ranging from Metro (a global giant in its field) and the new (and politically uncertain) ADN to the impossibly silly Que!

[I've never really been happy with the Spanish expression 'que!' because it seems wrong to me. As ought to be obvious, I'm no linguist... but the exclamation mark in 'que!' really pisses me off. I understand that it's something which is said in an exclamatory way, but it's also definitely a shortened question. There's another publication, some sort of prensa rosa deal, called 'Que Me Dices!' - more of the same, but somehow even worse. If I said in English "What the hell are you talking about?", it would obviously remain a question, however exclamatory or rhetorical. Linguists, please explain.]

Que! is a brightly coloured, giant headlined monster. It consists of the sort of right-wing, sensationalist campaign-driven 'news' 'coverage' which makes The Sun look good. Normally they'll approach the main story of the day with a no-nonsense, loudmouth style leader which sounds like it has been written by one of the portly and high-volume matrons who live in my apartment building. "String 'em up!" and "It's the immigrants" are hypothetical examples. Incidentally, when there isn't much to complain about, the paper will invent a campaign of its own and stick to that for weeks if necessary, until a juicy atrocity comes along.

Today's three page campaign is about 'the crisis of delinquency' among the country's children. Ostensibly about the implementation of a new law that allows courts to jail parents of criminal children (cos that'll sort things out), the paper has an interesting slant on things. Accompanying the story are a range of statistics and pictures of delinquents. Every single picture features 'eastern European' or 'Roma' people. While there's no doubt that some eastern Europeans and Gypsies commit crimes, there was no evidence given as to what percentage of delinquency cases are related to people of Romanian origin. The clear intention was to link the two in the minds of bleary-eyed readers on their 8am commute to the city.

That is to say, the entire article discussed one problem - the increase in anti-social beaviour among Spain's youth - but the pictorial told a very different story indeed. This sort of semi-overt racism is commonplace in the pages of Que! and El Mundo, and does nothing to cure the growing problem of racial prejudice in Spain. I should note that there is a specific story relating to some Romanians being in court today for running thief gangs in Madrid, but that this was not the focus of the main article which dealt with 'delinqunecy' in general.

So, not only is Que! rubbish, but it's also full of racially suggestive messages. perhaps not that surprising, but well worth pointing out as often as possible. Personally, I'm hard pushed to find a single newpaper I like in Spain or Catalonia.

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March 28, 2006 | Filed Under Catalonia, Politics, Rants, Spain 

Comments

2 Responses to “Que! What?”

  1. Nick on March 28th, 2006 5:24 pm

    Que! is a joke although still nothing to compare with our comics that pass for newspapers in the UK. I quite like the new ADN though. I was reading it earlier and it seems to me that maybe as you say, it hasn't made up its mind as regards politics in Spain. They carried a cartoon the other day though with Bush saying something like "We'll continue to bomb them until they understand that we've liberated them" or something like that which was quite out there. Other than that, I liked the general layout and I think they carry a few more interesting features than Metro.

  2. guirilandia on March 28th, 2006 6:57 pm

    Que! Is my last resort paper. If I’m in a bar and nothing else is available a greasy copy of Que! is ALWAYS available.

    I never considered the significance of the title, but now that you mention it, it is pretty damn irritating. I just spent a full five minutes trying to make sense of it, and they were five minutes wasted. What the hell are they trying to say?

    On the flip side, I know more than a few people with the habit of putting a question mark at the end of sentences that are not questions. Like this? It is not a question? Maybe it’s just a way of mimicking speech patterns. I've given the whole thing too much thought already.

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