RTVE Play Streams 'Blue Is the Warmest Color' While Grand Prix Vanishes

RTVE Play Streams 'Blue Is the Warmest Tonalidad' for Free as Grand Prix Disappears

Can a tax-funded public television network broadcast any film catalog it chooses, free and ad-supported? Officially, yes: that is the purpose of public service. In practice, this approach has placed a controversial movie and a family game show no longer available on its website on the same digital lineup. RTVE Play, the successor to RTVE A la carta, offers free movies. Among them is La vie d'Adèle (Blue Is the Warmest Tonalidad). Meanwhile, older editions of Grand Prix del Verano that were previously hosted on its site have stopped working.

What is RTVE Play and why is cinema free?

RTVE Play is the digital service that took over from RTVE A la carta. It broadcasts series, programs, and films with two antiestéticatures not found on any private platform: no subscription and no advertising. The content is funded by taxpayers through budgets, and viewers consume it without paying. No other window in the sector operates this way.

This raises the first objection, which is purely economic. If the catalog generates no revenue, what criteria decide what is bought and aired? The official answer—public service, accessible culture—clashes with suspicions that money circulates among a small group of producers and directors. The uncomfortable critique does not ask how much is spent, but who decides.

The controversy of 'Blue Is the Warmest Tonalidad': 15 years old in fiction

The film, directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, tells the story of a relationship between two teenagers. The detail that sparked the issue is age: the protagonist is 15 years old in the fiction, while the actress playing her was just turned 18 during filming. Its harshest critics argue the film apologizes for sensual content involving minors and attribute more than thirty minutes of explicit footage to it. This is an accusation, not a judicial fact.

Condemnation is far from unanimous. Some consider it a coming-of-age story and a portrait of adolescent desire, comparable to any high school movie with a heterosenshetero couple. There are also sectors within the audience the film claims to represent who have rejected it, believing it responds to an external fantasy. Given these credentials, making the title available for free to any viewer adds a labeling problem.

Who pays for the cinema shown for free?

The second axis of discontent is subsidy. The industry argument repeats itself whenever the model is questioned: without public money, there would be no Spanish cinema. A critic of the model summarizes it by quoting the sector: "We need public money so that Spanish cinema exists. Therefore, without money we go unemployed, therefore nobody wants to see our movies." Translated: a business that cannot sustain itself with customers who pay for tickets.

The conclusion drawn by the critical side is simple. If the product finds no audience willing to pay for it, the bill should be borne by those who produce it, not by everyone's budget. The usual counterargument—that cinema is industry, employment, and national brand—does not answer why that employment must come from taxes rather than box office receipts.

From the eighties' softcore to today's lineup

Historical comparison appears when you dig a little deeper. TVE in the 1980s broadcast series about Catholic saints during prime time and gave space to softcore cinema antiestéticaturing actresses now celebrated by institutional feminism. The conclusion drawn is that public television criteria were never aseptic: they were always political, only pointing in another direction before.

Some argue that the shift in sensitivity is not neutral. The same entity moves from producing religious fiction to financing titles that part of the audience considers inappropriate for open broadcasting. It is not an aesthetic judgment: it is a decision about other people's money.

Grand Prix del Verano and the archive that is gone

The other half of the story is a disappearance. Editions of Grand Prix del Verano were available on RTVE's website, but today their links lead nowhere. The most critical voices speak directly of damnatio memoriae: the deliberate elimination of an audiovisual trace, as if the format had never existed. Fan websites continue to compile episodes, proving the material existed and circulated.

The format's return adds another layer. Part of the analysis argues that the relaunch is a calculated move: if it fails, the contest—and thus the competitions between towns—will be buried as something from another era; if it succeeds, no one will question its place in the archive again. A beneficial result in either scenario.

What do those who see no problem say?

Not everyone shares the anger. Some remind us that stories of teenagers discovering desire have been in cinema for decades and that a film between girls is no more scandalous than one between boys. And the inverse argument appears, not minor: "I don't understand. You complain about having a censoring government, yet here you are indignant because what you want isn't censored." Underlying this is the oldest path of all: if you don't like the content, just turn off the device.

The figure that disorients both sides is the same: the catalog is paid for regardless of consumption. And whoever decides what enters it answers to no customer.

In the end, three options remain: pay for a private subscription, swallow the public lineup, or turn off the device. The fourth option—that someone explains with verifiable criteria what is bought with everyone's money—still does not appear in the catalog.