Segura aligns Torrente with Vox, leaving PSOE without satire

Segura places Torrente in Vox and leaves the PSOE without parody

Which party would José Luis Torrente vote for if he left prison to run in elections? The circulating answer is that Santiago Segura has decided to position his most profitable character within the Vox sphere in the saga's next installment. This announcement has split those who have long read Spanish politics through the lens of this franchise. The character was born as a grotesque caricature of an average Spaniard that the left wanted to ridicule, but has ended up functioning as an uncomfortable mirror of something else.

The trigger is a leaked scene from the new film that spread on social media, trinc by an immediate reaction from part of the audience: if Torrente is a pimp, sens, drug addict, and functionally illiterate, the party that fits him best is not the one governing, but its competitor on the right. The discussion has evolved into something more interesting than a joke: a fight over who holds the intellectual property rights to the character.

From anti-establishment anti-hero to electoral trailer

The first Torrente film premiered when the character could be read as a mockery of tacky, marginal Spaniards, devoid of affiliation or shame. Twenty-five years later, the same character has become a family product, with Christmas sequels and a commercial drift many consider debasing. The shift is not just aesthetic; it is functional. What once served to unsettle official Spain now serves to confirm the prejudices of part of its audience.

Some argue this move is pure box-office calculation. If the character goes to Vox, the film becomes a walking meme, a consumable object shared before viewing. And if the release coincides with an election, the multiplier effect is free. The suspicion is not new: Spanish cinema itself thrives on subsidies and self-perpetuating controversies.

Why was the PSOE the character's natural destination?

The most repeated thesis in the conversation is that the character fits better with the PSOE than with Vox. Not due to ideology, but biography: the pimp, the fixer, the one who clings to power to collect commissions. The Ábalos case, with his name and surname, did the rest. The phonetic coincidence between Torrente and Torrent, the Valencian municipality where the former minister is from, has been celebrated as an involuntary joke gifted to scriptwriters by reality.

The argument has its logic: if the character is an accumulation of flaws, the party that has held power for decades offers more material than it seems. Brothel scandals, commission schemes, and official trips with unexpected endings are already written scripts. Placing Torrente in the PSOE would have been braver, more uncomfortable, and probably funnier. But also riskier.

The paradox of a character who ridicules and seduces simultaneously

The character works because he voices aloud what part of the audience thinks but dares not formulate. That is his trap: he was born to mock that Spaniard but has ended up validating him. The laughter of the viewer mocking the character and the one laughing with him are indistinguishable in the theater. This ambiguity is exactly what makes the franchise profitable.

Ultimately, the discussion is not about Torrente. It is about who has the right to laugh at whom. One sector argues the film will end up parodying all parties, with the character confronting his own party's candidate before the credits roll. Another believes the damage is done: the association between the character and Vox has settled in the collective imagination, and no script can dismantle it.

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In the end, the question is not which party owns Torrente, but which party benefits from him being so. That decision is not made by the character. It is made by whoever collects the box office.