UTBH video mocking a retired woman exposes Spain's economic divide

UTBH and the retiree: the video exposing the generational economic divide

A video that has been circulating for some time shows the YouTuber UTBH ridiculing a 73-year-old protester during a demonstration. At the 7:30 mark, the woman —who defends public pensions— blurts out a confusing term, "pagapensiones" (roughly, "pension-payer"), which the content creator uses to dismiss her. Shortly after, at 10:30, he lashes out at those who move to Andorra, calling them "fake Spaniards", and also takes aim at foreign engineers who come to Spain after being trained in their home countries.

There is more to the scene than meets the eye. On one hand, it is easy to mock someone who does not master economic jargon. On the other, the one laughing is no Nobel laureate either: he studied audiovisual communication and became famous for claiming that water is wet. His videos are free, but they are funded through superchats, bits, stickers and subscriptions. In other words, the audience pays, one way or another.

The interesting part of the debate is not the joke, but what lies beneath it. Some argue that these people "are the ones who vote", and that their ignorance is dangerous. Others reply that ridiculing someone without training does not turn the audience into economists. And in the background, the uncomfortable question: is the public pension system sustainable?

One camp jokes that retirees "in favour of the public sector" should hand their little flats over to the State and move into a care home. Exaggerated, of course, but it points to the heart of the problem: many defend public services without bearing their real cost.

There is no consensus. The video is merely a symptom of a generational rift between those who lived through Spain's economic boom years and those who assume the current model cannot hold. But mockery videos do not help anyone understand it either. They only divide.