Watching TV is not one of my favorite hobbies. In fact, my time in front of the tube is usually limited to just a few moments while I’m having breakfast, lunch, or dinner. During dinner time, there is a show I especially enjoy watching called El Intermedio hosted by comedian El Gran Wyoming. In the show, they present the news in a humorous way.

Last October, during one sketch, a collaborator of the show blew his nose on the national flag. This guy is Dani Mateo, and this one action turned into a pretty huge controversy, with some legal headaches when people took offense to his treatment of the flag.

The following month, there was a comedy show called Nunca os Olvidaremos (We’ll Never Forget You) scheduled in Teatro Olympia, Valencia, in which Dani Mateo was performing with two other popular comics. The comedians and the theater owner received threats from a few extreme right people and the owner decided to cancel the show. Obviously, these threats were directly related to the incident with the flag.

Joan Ribó, the mayor of Valencia, upset by the cancelation, offered one of the main venues in her city, Palau de la Música, to produce the show on a new date in February. Not all was lost! The comedians, thankful for that arrangement, decided to give all of the ticket money to an organization that protects animal rights.

Diana and I decided to buy tickets right away, as a ton of people wanted to attend this event, especially now it was even more interesting and popular. We had hesitated for a while before purchasing them, since the show day coincided with Requena’s Sausage Festival as well as Diana’s birthday. But enjoying a comedy show sounded like a great option to celebrate and the Sausage Festival lasts a whole weekend.

When we arrived at Palau, there were several patrol cars and a lot of cops. The show started with a grave in the middle of the stage. Dani Mateo and Raúl Cimas appeared onstage and portrayed the funeral of the third comic, J.J. Vaquero. The first nod to Mateo’s controversy happened just after the start: “So many threats and, in the end, it was a natural death,” one of them said.

I didn’t know J.J. Vaquero despite the fact he is a well-known comedian who collaborates in the very popular TV show El Hormiguero (hosted by Pablo Motos, from Requena). It was a really good way to start, because this guy is super funny and his performance was hilarious. To top it off, he reminds me of a friend of mine, also a very fun guy.

The second comedian, the actor and humorist Raúl Cimas, is from Albacete and is associated with several comics from this city, participating with them in a number of TV and comedy shows. Sometimes a comedian’s content has to do with the where you live or where you have grown up, and Requena and Albacete are pretty close. So I have always found this kind of humor especially amusing, and Cimas didn’t disappoint me at all.

After Dani Mateo was introduced in a similar manner, with the funeral gag, he started his performance. During his thoroughly entertaining set, he thanked the mayor and the audience, as this night was really important for him due to the situation. The mayor was there too, in the audience.

In the end, the event went down without incident and everything worked as expected. As Dani Mateo said: “I’m really astonished that there was a big fuss about this show, with a lots of cops and journalists, and I just came here to talk about masturbation.”