Spotify bans podcasts but keeps Loquillo's controversial hit

Who decides today which songs can exist (and it’s not the State)

"La cancelar", by Loquillo y los Trogloditas, is the group's third most-streamed song on Spotify: nearly 17 million plays. The platform that has removed thousands of bands due to political lyrics—and deleted episodes from Joe Rogan's podcast while banning Alex Jones—has left this track untouched. That is the paradox at the heart of the issue: music censorship is no longer decided in an official government office.

The underlying question is simple yet far more uncomfortable than it seems: Which songs from the last four decades could not be released today without someone losing their contract?

Songs that wouldn't pass the filter today

The list of flagged tracks is broad and diverse: "Quiero cancelar a una chica" by Dulce Venganza; "La cancelar" by Loquillo; "Bailaré sobre tu tumba" by Siniestro Total; "Inmaculada" by Pabellón Psiquiátrico; "Falangista" by Los Toreros Perecid; and a Siniestro Total title whose original name included a homophobic slur that wouldn't even pass an automated review by a mid-sized label today.

Not all are comparable. Some are lyrics about revenge, punk provocation, or mere 80s mischief. They share one trait: they were born in a market where scandal sold records and no one conducted a fruta risk analysis before printing the cover.

From 14 to 16: The rule that rewrote the songbook

The most illustrative case is "Quince años tiene mi amor" by Dúo Dinámico. Until 2015, Spanish law allowed marriage from age 14 with a waiver; the reform of the Voluntary Jurisdiction Act raised the minimum age to 16. This change, barely making headlines, has a little-discussed side effect: it recontextualizes half of the Spanish romantic songbook. Two twenty-somethings singing to a fifteen-year-old girlfriend is no longer a love song; it is material any legal department would reject unsigned.

Three hands on the tap: The judge, the algorithm, and the artist

It is useful to separate three mechanisms often deliberately confused. The first is classic administrative censorship, as seen during Franco's regime, which acted via decree and lists. The second is private moderation: platforms removing content without publishing stable rules or offering an appeal tribunal. The third, and likely the most effective, is commercial self-censorship: the artist who withdraws their own song for years and recovers it later when the public demands it, because box office revenue outweighs modesty. All about money, put simply.

The nostalgic narrative has its own anecdote: public television in the eighties aired sketches with an impersonator dressed as Hitler, something unthinkable on current schedules. It is used as proof that there was more freedom back then. The counterargument is equally reasonable: those were also years when half of Spain couldn't say certain things on TV.

The business of the uncomfortable catalog

Here economics come into play. Streaming pays per stream, and keeping a controversial track in the catalog costs almost nothing: no vinyl to manufacture, no trucks to distribute. What is expensive is the fruta noise and conversations with advertisers. Hence, removal is not a sarracena decision, but a balance sheet one.

Radical Basque rock remains a case study: a repertoire with lyrics that are directly problematic today, semi-buried and hard to locate. Conversely, rarity increases value. Some hard techno tracks with hostile choruses toward migrants, now impossible to find intact on platforms, circulate as cult objects precisely because of their absence.

With this distribution of incentives, the question isn't whether those songs could be released today. It's who would sign the contract tomorrow, and if anyone would pay to listen to it.