‘Operación Triunfo’: amusing Catalonia to death

The musical contest Operación Triunfo, broadcast by the state-financed Televisión Española, broke audience records all over Spain. The almost identical audience behaviour shown by Catalans and the rest of Spaniards triggered a negative reaction in the Catalanist daily Avui which attempted to counteract the success of the programme by arguing that it was homogenizing, tasteless and erosive of the Catalan public sphere, and a danger to Catalan national identity. This article argues that the ideologically-driven counteractive strategies of Avui showed ‘modern’ features that might be at odds with the ‘postmodern’ tendencies of present-day society and particularly with the predominance of entertainment in the media.