By Leyre Castro
Last Saturday, March 6th 2021 Spain’s annual film awards, Los Premios Goya (the Goya awards) were celebrated in Malaga. Since 1987, every year the Goya Awards are held to celebrate the quality of Spanish cinema. Big names such as Fernando Trueba, Pedro Almodóvar, Álex de la Iglesia, Javier Bardem, Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz or Paz Vega are already part of the history of these renowned awards.
This year, the nominees included Salvador Calvo’s “Adú”, which was nominated in 13 different categories and won four of them, “Las niñas” by Pilar Palomero and “Akelarre” by Pablo Agüero, both of them nominated in 9 categories and winners of four and five awards respectively.
As it may be expected, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s Goya Awards were celebrated in a “hybrid way” and the nominees, who were connected through video chat, received their awards from their homes. However, this year’s awards have been marked by a rather unpleasant incident caught during the Facebook live transmission by the Spanish national broadcaster RTVE.
A video in which sexist comments about different women were heard behind the cameras has gone viral in all social media. One of the women targeted in those comments was the actress Marta Nieto. While she walked down the red carpet, comments such as “She is the only beautiful one because the rest of them are in their bones” could be heard.
Other comments were directed at the singer Nathy Peluso. An unnamed woman was described directly as a “whore” by one of the reporters, while another one would add, “that’s the one for me”.
Despite the incident, the live kept going. At first, it was just muted but RTVE later removed the video from its Facebook page. However, a few days prior to the International Women’s Day, these comments did not go unnoticed and soon everyone was sharing the polemic video on their Social Media.
The actress Marta Nieto denounced these comments the next day through her Instagram account by saying “because of this kind of comments, the 8th of March is more important than ever.” RTVE has already apologized and condemned the sexist comments in the red carpet and has also opened an information file and identified the exact point from which the comments came from.
It is not the first time that female artists are judged more by their appearance rather than by their work and professional achievement. These comments are a reflection of the society we live in, in which women’s bodies seem to be a topic that can be discussed by everyone and anyone and this just makes it more obvious that there still is a long way to go through when it comes to women’s rights.
Today, in celebration of the International Women’s Day, and in face of the incident at the Goya Awards, I encourage you to support female artists, to consume and promote art produced by women and to admire them by their profession and their work, rather than by their looks.
Picture Credits: Pexels, Remerciez Ryutaro
The Euroculturer 