Jenni Hermoso’s TVE New Year’s Eve Speech Sparks Public Spending Debate

TVE’s New Year’s Eve and Jenni Hermoso’s empowerment speech

Half of Spain watches La 1’s New Year’s Eve broadcast, while the other half actively seeks ways to avoid it. On December 31, Televisión Española placed Ramón García and footballer Jenni Hermoso in the New Year’s Eve studio, resulting in the predictable outcome: a ratings spike and a storm of reactions lasting several days. The player used her screen time for an empowerment speech. The cost of those minutes, according to the most circulated estimate, was not signed by her.

How much was Jenni Hermoso’s appearance paid?

There is no officially confirmed figure. The most repeated amount was 30,000 euros for less than three minutes of speech, a sum that, according to those who spread it, would exceed the athlete’s annual salary at her then-club, the Mexican Pachuca. This figure should be taken with caution: it comes from estimates, not a public settlement. What is beyond dispute is who pays for the event. TVE is funded by public money, and this is where the issue ceases to be a New Year’s Eve anecdote and becomes a debate about spending priorities. The most repeated phrase was simple: it’s not magic, it’s your taxes.

This discussion is not new. Whenever the public channel places a guest with their own speech in a prime-time slot, the same tug-of-war returns regarding who that schedule truly represents. This time, it fell on the grapes.

A New Year’s Eve without La 1: the erosion of captive audience

The public broadcaster’s New Year’s Eve broadcast was, for a segment of the public, a tradition without alternative. This year, it ceased to be so for some. Some claim it was the first time in 47 years that their home did not have La 1 on during New Year’s Eve, presenting it as a premeditated decision rather than an oversight. It is a personal testimony, not a measurement, but it points to a problem the channel struggles to avoid: the viewer who leaves by conviction does not return by inertia.

And it is not just audience numbers that are lost. The convenient argument that the programming represents all who fund it is also lost. The underlying anger is not about a dress or a joke: it is the feeling that the schedule broadcasts a specific narrative and expects the taxpayer to pay without complaint.

Empowerment as an institutional message

The guest’s speech was not an isolated case within the night. On the public broadcast and in specials on other channels, messages appeared regarding women’s roles, inequality, and the recognition of achievements. One part of the audience viewed this as entertainment with a message; another, as a sermon dressed in gala attire. The label proge appeared repeatedly to describe the general tone of the holiday programming, with the shared feeling in many comments that this year’s content was more politically charged than in previous editions.

There is a current of analysis suggesting that this type of content is part of a broader strategy: normalizing certain causes through prime-time entertainment, taking advantage of the fact that public television does not compete for advertising like private channels. Countering this is an argument as simple as it is reasonable: that a public channel reflecting its time’s social debate is not, in itself, a bias. The real discussion is elsewhere. Where is the boundary between informing, entertaining, and indoctrinating when the payroll is paid by the State?

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The background noise of the Rubiales case

It was impossible to read the controversy without the context of the year. The footballer’s presence in the studio coincided with the controversy peine trinc the kiss in the Women’s World Cup final, an issue to which the debate refers with allusions to the prosecutor’s office. This episode turned the player into a public figure beyond sports, and also into a lightning rod. For some, her presence on New Year’s Eve demonstrates that a narrative has been built around the case. For others, it is the logical consequence of a figure already known before the incident.

It is worth separating two things that the anger mixes mercilessly. One is the legal plane, with its timelines and guarantees, which is not resolved on social media or by a minute on screen. The other is media management, which is decided by headlines and market share. The latter has been discussed relentlessly; the former continues its course, with no known outcome.

The unanswered question

If one thing the controversy clarifies, it is not the correctness or error of a specific guest, but the exhaustion of the captive audience. The viewer who for decades turned on the TV out of habit now chooses to turn it off by conviction, and no single-night audience figure measures the cost of recovering that habit. It remains to be seen whether the public channel adjusts its script for upcoming events or accepts that the anger is simply part of the price.