WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.500 Seven syllables. That's all it was. When you 00:00:02.500 --> 00:00:04.759 think about diplomacy, you think about treaties, 00:00:05.139 --> 00:00:08.019 long negotiations. Right. Very formal, very slow. 00:00:08.599 --> 00:00:10.960 But this was not that. It was the complete opposite. 00:00:11.060 --> 00:00:13.259 A moment that just punctured the whole balloon 00:00:13.259 --> 00:00:17.000 of diplomatic protocol. It was raw, unscripted, 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:20.480 and probably the first, like, truly viral moment 00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:23.480 in global politics. Absolutely. We are, of course, 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:26.300 talking about, ¿Por qué no te callas? Or, for 00:00:26.300 --> 00:00:28.399 everyone listening, why don't you shut up? I 00:00:28.399 --> 00:00:30.379 mean, it's just so direct. And coming from a 00:00:30.379 --> 00:00:34.759 king, it's shocking. Completely. So today we're 00:00:34.759 --> 00:00:36.920 doing a deep dive into that incident. We're going 00:00:36.920 --> 00:00:40.549 back to November 10th. 2007, the Ibero -American 00:00:40.549 --> 00:00:43.170 summit in Santiago, Chile. And we should probably 00:00:43.170 --> 00:00:45.009 set the scene because Ibero -American summit 00:00:45.009 --> 00:00:48.630 sounds a little dry. It does. Think of it like 00:00:48.630 --> 00:00:51.090 a big family reunion for the Spanish and Portuguese 00:00:51.090 --> 00:00:54.109 speaking world. You've got Spain, Portugal, and 00:00:54.109 --> 00:00:56.189 all their former colonies from Latin America. 00:00:56.450 --> 00:00:58.829 And like any family reunion, there's always baggage, 00:00:59.090 --> 00:01:02.210 there's history, and there's always that one 00:01:02.210 --> 00:01:04.890 uncle who just won't stop talking. Right. And 00:01:04.890 --> 00:01:07.310 in this story, the players are almost perfect 00:01:07.310 --> 00:01:10.489 archetypes. You have King Juan Carlos I of Spain, 00:01:10.670 --> 00:01:13.989 the old world monarch. Okay. Then you have Hugo 00:01:13.989 --> 00:01:16.310 Chavez, the president of Venezuela, who's this 00:01:16.310 --> 00:01:19.890 fiery face of 21st century socialism. And stuck 00:01:19.890 --> 00:01:22.209 right in the middle. The prime minister of Spain, 00:01:22.549 --> 00:01:25.170 José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, just trying to 00:01:25.170 --> 00:01:27.790 keep the peace. So our mission today is to unpack 00:01:27.790 --> 00:01:30.230 not just the outburst, but the collision that 00:01:30.230 --> 00:01:33.000 caused it. We've got... Reports from the BBC, 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:35.959 El Pais, we've even got some linguistic analyses. 00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:38.780 Because this wasn't just a rude comment. No, 00:01:38.799 --> 00:01:41.560 it was a flashpoint for, you know, all this post 00:01:41.560 --> 00:01:44.319 -colonial tension. And it ended up generating 00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:47.659 millions of euros in ringtone sales. Which is 00:01:47.659 --> 00:01:49.719 still one of the most absurd parts of this whole 00:01:49.719 --> 00:01:51.780 story. But let's start in the room. These summits 00:01:51.780 --> 00:01:54.780 are normally so choreographed, so boring. Why 00:01:54.780 --> 00:01:57.000 was this one different? Well, the pressure was 00:01:57.000 --> 00:01:58.980 already building. This wasn't just a sudden snap. 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:01.540 Throughout the whole summit, Hugo Chavez had 00:02:01.540 --> 00:02:03.280 been interrupting the Spanish prime minister 00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:05.859 Zapatero over and over again. And he wasn't just 00:02:05.859 --> 00:02:08.139 like interrupting. He was launching a full on 00:02:08.139 --> 00:02:11.539 verbal assault. He was. Specifically, he was 00:02:11.539 --> 00:02:14.419 attacking Zapatero's predecessor, Jose Maria 00:02:14.419 --> 00:02:16.740 Aznar. Right. The conservative prime minister 00:02:16.740 --> 00:02:20.379 before him. Exactly. And Chavez hated him. He 00:02:20.379 --> 00:02:22.979 kept calling Aznar a fascist. The transcript 00:02:22.979 --> 00:02:26.280 is wild. He says Aznar was less human than snakes. 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:29.120 That's the quote. Less human than snakes. Yeah. 00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:31.780 He was accusing Aznar of supporting a failed 00:02:31.780 --> 00:02:35.439 coup against him back in 2002. So for Chavez, 00:02:35.659 --> 00:02:38.000 this isn't just politics. It's personal. It's 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:39.939 existential. Okay, but here's the part that's 00:02:39.939 --> 00:02:42.819 so interesting to me. Zapatero, the guy Chavez 00:02:42.819 --> 00:02:45.740 is interrupting, is a socialist. He and Aznar 00:02:45.740 --> 00:02:48.580 were bitter political rivals back in Spain. Total 00:02:48.580 --> 00:02:50.460 opposites. They had completely different visions 00:02:50.460 --> 00:02:52.759 for the country. Exactly. So you'd think Zapatero 00:02:52.759 --> 00:02:54.259 would just, you know, sit back and enjoy the 00:02:54.259 --> 00:02:57.340 show, let his rival get torn apart. But he doesn't. 00:02:57.340 --> 00:03:00.319 He steps in. Why? And that's such a crucial point. 00:03:00.460 --> 00:03:03.620 It's about statecraft. Zapaterra knew that if 00:03:03.620 --> 00:03:06.240 he let a foreign leader delegitimize his predecessor, 00:03:06.639 --> 00:03:09.500 he was letting him delegitimize the entire Spanish 00:03:09.500 --> 00:03:11.960 democratic process. So it wasn't about defending 00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:14.919 Azar the person? Not at all. It was about defending 00:03:14.919 --> 00:03:17.860 the institutions of Spain. He stood up and said 00:03:17.860 --> 00:03:20.219 Aznar was a legitimate representative of the 00:03:20.219 --> 00:03:23.139 Spanish people. He was drawing a line. But Chavez 00:03:23.139 --> 00:03:25.560 just kept pushing. He did. And there was another 00:03:25.560 --> 00:03:28.580 layer here. Earlier, Zapatero had kind of annoyed 00:03:28.580 --> 00:03:31.400 Chavez by suggesting Latin America needed foreign 00:03:31.400 --> 00:03:33.979 investment to fight poverty. Basically saying 00:03:33.979 --> 00:03:36.759 Chavez policies were scaring investors away. 00:03:36.879 --> 00:03:39.930 Right in front of all his peers. So the room 00:03:39.930 --> 00:03:42.150 is already tense. Zapatero is trying to speak. 00:03:42.270 --> 00:03:44.569 Chavez is shouting over him. The organizers actually 00:03:44.569 --> 00:03:47.689 cut Chavez's microphone. Which should have been 00:03:47.689 --> 00:03:49.710 the end of it. He just kept shouting without 00:03:49.710 --> 00:03:53.430 a mic. It was just chaos. And King Juan Carlos 00:03:53.430 --> 00:03:55.870 is sitting right there watching this whole thing 00:03:55.870 --> 00:03:58.969 unfold. And he, well, he hits his breaking point. 00:03:59.129 --> 00:04:01.710 He's right next to Zapatero. He leans forward, 00:04:01.849 --> 00:04:04.789 turns directly to Chavez and says the line. You 00:04:04.789 --> 00:04:08.360 just have to absorb the gravity of that. Kings 00:04:08.360 --> 00:04:11.520 don't do this. They never do this. They're trained 00:04:11.520 --> 00:04:13.960 their whole lives to be symbols, to stay above 00:04:13.960 --> 00:04:17.860 the political fray. For a monarch to just verbally 00:04:17.860 --> 00:04:21.360 smack down a head of state like that, it was 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:24.220 totally unprecedented. Let's dig into the linguistics, 00:04:24.220 --> 00:04:25.860 because you mentioned the grammar here was a 00:04:25.860 --> 00:04:28.399 big part of the insult. It's huge. It's not just 00:04:28.399 --> 00:04:31.029 that it was informal. In Spanish, you have the 00:04:31.029 --> 00:04:33.850 formal usted and the familiar tú. Like for friends 00:04:33.850 --> 00:04:36.750 or family. Or for children. And that's the sting. 00:04:36.850 --> 00:04:40.290 For a former colonial power, Spain, to address 00:04:40.290 --> 00:04:43.709 a Latin American leader with tú, it carries all 00:04:43.709 --> 00:04:46.310 this historical weight. It can sound like a parent 00:04:46.310 --> 00:04:48.509 scolding a child. So it wasn't just rude. It 00:04:48.509 --> 00:04:52.280 was seen as sort of imperial. Paternalistic. 00:04:52.280 --> 00:04:54.839 Exactly. It fed right into Chavez's whole narrative 00:04:54.839 --> 00:04:57.160 about Spanish arrogance. That one little syllable, 00:04:57.339 --> 00:05:00.319 te, instead of le, changed everything. It's amazing 00:05:00.319 --> 00:05:02.800 how much a single pronoun can carry. And the 00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:05.379 drama wasn't even over. No. A little while later, 00:05:05.480 --> 00:05:07.779 the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, gets 00:05:07.779 --> 00:05:09.939 up and starts criticizing Spain, too. And at 00:05:09.939 --> 00:05:11.699 that point, the king just stands up and walks 00:05:11.699 --> 00:05:14.240 out. He just leaves. That's the diplomatic equivalent 00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:17.060 of flipping the table over. It was. The press 00:05:17.060 --> 00:05:20.560 called it an Anasariblis, a horrible year for 00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:23.519 the royal family's image. It just shattered that 00:05:23.519 --> 00:05:27.220 calm, stoic facade. Okay, so the summit ends. 00:05:27.759 --> 00:05:30.879 Everyone goes home. For Chavez, this must feel 00:05:30.879 --> 00:05:33.879 like a gift. He loves a fight with an imperialist 00:05:33.879 --> 00:05:36.000 power. Oh, he goes on the offensive immediately. 00:05:36.399 --> 00:05:38.819 He starts questioning McKing's democratic legitimacy, 00:05:39.079 --> 00:05:41.480 reminding everyone Juan Carlos was technically 00:05:41.480 --> 00:05:44.100 appointed by the dictator Franco. Wow, poking 00:05:44.100 --> 00:05:46.240 at a very sore spot in Spanish history. A very 00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:48.470 sore spot. And he doubles down on the Empire 00:05:48.470 --> 00:05:51.569 talk? demands an apology he says the spanish 00:05:51.569 --> 00:05:54.670 empire slit our people's throats he frames himself 00:05:54.670 --> 00:05:57.189 as the voice of the resistance against the crown 00:05:57.189 --> 00:05:58.990 and he threatened their wallets too and he did 00:05:58.990 --> 00:06:02.069 he threatened to review the status of huge spanish 00:06:02.069 --> 00:06:05.470 companies in venezuela like the banks banco santander 00:06:05.470 --> 00:06:08.509 and bbva that's in a real chill through the market 00:06:08.509 --> 00:06:11.029 so it's a full -blown crisis the king looks impulsive 00:06:11.029 --> 00:06:13.589 yeah travis is threatening to nationalize banks 00:06:13.589 --> 00:06:15.750 and the media is asking who comes out of this 00:06:15.750 --> 00:06:18.329 looking worse right the los angeles times said 00:06:18.329 --> 00:06:20.600 it was a toss -up between Chavez's boorish lack 00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:23.000 of etiquette and the King's meltdown. But while 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:25.300 all the diplomats are freaking out, something 00:06:25.300 --> 00:06:29.060 else is happening. The public. They're not analyzing 00:06:29.060 --> 00:06:31.920 colonial dynamics. They're laughing. And that 00:06:31.920 --> 00:06:33.819 brings us to the most incredible part of the 00:06:33.819 --> 00:06:36.680 story, the viral explosion. I love the anecdote 00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:39.939 about Zapatero getting home. It's perfect. He 00:06:39.939 --> 00:06:42.040 walks through the door after this incredibly 00:06:42.040 --> 00:06:44.699 stressful summit, and his eldest daughter just 00:06:44.699 --> 00:06:48.939 looks at him and says, And they both just burst 00:06:48.939 --> 00:06:51.319 out laughing. That's the moment it shifts from 00:06:51.319 --> 00:06:53.839 a crisis to a cultural phenomenon. Let's talk 00:06:53.839 --> 00:06:55.459 about the ringtone economy, because this was, 00:06:55.480 --> 00:06:59.699 what, 2007? This is peak crazy frog era. It was, 00:06:59.939 --> 00:07:02.779 but this was on a whole other level. In Spain 00:07:02.779 --> 00:07:05.779 alone, an estimated half a million people downloaded 00:07:05.779 --> 00:07:08.300 the phrase as their ringtone. Half a million. 00:07:08.420 --> 00:07:11.579 People paid money to have the king of Spain tell 00:07:11.579 --> 00:07:13.980 them to shut up every time someone called. Yep. 00:07:14.319 --> 00:07:16.500 And just in the first few weeks, it generated 00:07:16.500 --> 00:07:19.980 about 1 .5 million euros. That's around 2 million 00:07:19.980 --> 00:07:22.240 U .S. dollars at the time. That's staggering. 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:25.370 Who gets the royalties for a royal insult? Mostly 00:07:25.370 --> 00:07:27.790 the mobile companies. To get around any legal 00:07:27.790 --> 00:07:30.430 issues, a lot of them hired actors to do an impression 00:07:30.430 --> 00:07:32.790 of the king's voice. And it went beyond phones. 00:07:33.009 --> 00:07:36.189 Oh yeah. T -shirts, coffee mugs, endless YouTube 00:07:36.189 --> 00:07:39.689 remixes. The domain name porcanotales .com sold 00:07:39.689 --> 00:07:42.790 for thousands of dollars on eBay. I saw a note 00:07:42.790 --> 00:07:45.209 about a Nike parody ad. Yeah, with the soccer 00:07:45.209 --> 00:07:47.910 player Ronaldinho. The slogan was, Juan, do it. 00:07:47.970 --> 00:07:50.870 Just shut up. Juan, do it. That's awful. I love 00:07:50.870 --> 00:07:52.990 it. It's so bad. It's good. But in Venezuela, 00:07:53.170 --> 00:07:55.879 the opposition got s***. serious. They were fighting 00:07:55.879 --> 00:07:58.480 a referendum Chavez was pushing, and they turned 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:02.160 the phrase into a protest slogan. They capitalized 00:08:02.160 --> 00:08:05.839 the no porque no te calas to mean vote no. So 00:08:05.839 --> 00:08:07.839 the king accidentally wrote their campaign slogan. 00:08:08.100 --> 00:08:10.759 In a way, yeah. But here's the thing. We remember 00:08:10.759 --> 00:08:12.879 this as a funny meme, but for someone like Hugo 00:08:12.879 --> 00:08:15.839 Chavez, being laughed at is dangerous. More dangerous 00:08:15.839 --> 00:08:18.740 than being hated. Much more. Strong men run on 00:08:18.740 --> 00:08:21.680 fear and respect. You can't command fear when 00:08:21.680 --> 00:08:24.060 you're a punchline. And if you look at the timeline, 00:08:24.399 --> 00:08:27.100 this incident kicked off a truly disastrous month 00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:30.759 for him. Okay, this is the ripple effect. It 00:08:30.759 --> 00:08:34.080 seems like the king's outburst sort of gave other 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:36.320 leaders permission to push back. It broke the 00:08:36.320 --> 00:08:38.519 spell. A week later, they're at an OPEC summit 00:08:38.519 --> 00:08:41.360 in Riyadh. This should be Chavez's home turf. 00:08:41.460 --> 00:08:43.940 Right. Oil politics. That's his thing. He gets 00:08:43.940 --> 00:08:46.240 up and gives his standard speech about using 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:48.639 oil as a geopolitical weapon against the West. 00:08:48.879 --> 00:08:51.679 Usually people just nod. But this time, King 00:08:51.679 --> 00:08:54.039 Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the most powerful guy 00:08:54.039 --> 00:08:56.659 in the room, publicly rebukes him. Chokes him 00:08:56.659 --> 00:09:00.039 down. Tells him basically that oil is for development, 00:09:00.179 --> 00:09:03.179 not conflict. And the press immediately connected 00:09:03.179 --> 00:09:05.590 it to what happened in Chile. The narrative became 00:09:05.590 --> 00:09:08.149 Chavez is the guy who gets scolded by kings. 00:09:08.330 --> 00:09:11.570 He's gone from revolutionary to a nuisance. Exactly. 00:09:11.570 --> 00:09:14.789 And that loss of respect snowballs. Which brings 00:09:14.789 --> 00:09:17.870 us to the bathroom incident. From the Reuters 00:09:17.870 --> 00:09:20.370 report. Yes. At that same summit, he's surrounded 00:09:20.370 --> 00:09:23.029 by reporters and he says he needs to pee. But 00:09:23.029 --> 00:09:25.070 then he asks them if they want him to pee on 00:09:25.070 --> 00:09:27.830 them. That is not a sign of someone who feels 00:09:27.830 --> 00:09:30.470 in control. Not at all. It just showed him unraveling. 00:09:30.789 --> 00:09:33.649 And then came the real diplomatic hits. This 00:09:33.649 --> 00:09:35.889 is about the FARC guerrillas in Colombia. Right. 00:09:36.009 --> 00:09:38.750 For years, Chavez had positioned himself as the 00:09:38.750 --> 00:09:41.190 essential mediator, the only one who could broker 00:09:41.190 --> 00:09:43.070 peace. It was his biggest source of international 00:09:43.070 --> 00:09:45.710 leverage. He held the keys to peace in the region. 00:09:45.970 --> 00:09:48.409 And right after the summit, Colombia's president, 00:09:48.570 --> 00:09:51.970 Álvaro Uribe, fires him, just cuts him out completely. 00:09:52.289 --> 00:09:55.429 Wow. Says he was bypassing diplomatic channels, 00:09:55.570 --> 00:09:57.870 the same kind of behavior from Santiago. And 00:09:57.870 --> 00:10:00.889 suddenly... He loses his status as the region's 00:10:00.889 --> 00:10:03.110 great peacemaker. It's incredible. It's like 00:10:03.110 --> 00:10:05.769 the king just pulled one loose thread and Chavez's 00:10:05.769 --> 00:10:07.850 whole sweater started to come undone. It really 00:10:07.850 --> 00:10:10.330 was a turning point. It's the moment his very 00:10:10.330 --> 00:10:12.830 confrontational, very loud style of diplomacy 00:10:12.830 --> 00:10:16.029 just slammed into a wall. So before we wrap up, 00:10:16.070 --> 00:10:18.549 let's talk about the legacy. The phrase didn't 00:10:18.549 --> 00:10:21.669 just fade away. Not at all. I mean, years later, 00:10:21.809 --> 00:10:24.990 2010 World Cup, you see fans with scarves that 00:10:24.990 --> 00:10:27.710 say it. It became this universal shorthand. And 00:10:27.710 --> 00:10:29.590 the academics loved it, I'm sure. Oh, of course. 00:10:29.610 --> 00:10:31.950 There are papers on it. But my favorite detail 00:10:31.950 --> 00:10:34.909 is the punctuation debate. There was a punctuation 00:10:34.909 --> 00:10:37.389 debate. There was. The Urgent Spanish Foundation 00:10:37.389 --> 00:10:39.370 and the Chilean Academy of Language actually 00:10:39.370 --> 00:10:42.169 issued guidance on how to write it. Okay, I have 00:10:42.169 --> 00:10:44.460 to know. Question marks or exclamation points? 00:10:44.639 --> 00:10:47.460 They argued that given the force of the delivery, 00:10:47.720 --> 00:10:50.139 it's not really a question. It's a command. So 00:10:50.139 --> 00:10:51.879 it should be written with exclamation points. 00:10:52.039 --> 00:10:55.059 ¿Por qué no te callas? A command disguised as 00:10:55.059 --> 00:10:57.700 a question. Exactly. Or for the real grammar 00:10:57.700 --> 00:10:59.779 nerds, they said you could use an interrobang, 00:10:59.779 --> 00:11:02.639 a mix of both. I love that. Language Academy 00:11:02.639 --> 00:11:04.740 is debating the grammar of a royal outburst. 00:11:04.919 --> 00:11:07.659 It shows how deep it went. So when we zoom out, 00:11:07.779 --> 00:11:10.220 why does this moment still resonate? Why are 00:11:10.220 --> 00:11:12.080 we still talking about it? I think it's because 00:11:12.080 --> 00:11:15.039 it was a moment where the mask of diplomacy just 00:11:15.039 --> 00:11:17.840 completely slipped. All those tensions, the colonial 00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:20.539 history, the ideological fights, the sheer personality 00:11:20.539 --> 00:11:23.500 clashes. It all just burst through in real time. 00:11:23.659 --> 00:11:25.720 A glitch in the matrix of international relations. 00:11:26.120 --> 00:11:28.679 Totally. And it also showed us the future. It 00:11:28.679 --> 00:11:30.940 showed how fast a political gaffe can become 00:11:30.940 --> 00:11:33.759 a commercial product from a crisis to a ringtone 00:11:33.759 --> 00:11:37.620 in like 24 hours. It was the pivot point from 00:11:37.620 --> 00:11:41.379 the TV news era to the viral meme era. Exactly. 00:11:41.379 --> 00:11:43.440 It taught a whole generation of leaders that 00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:46.039 your most unguarded moment is the one you'll 00:11:46.039 --> 00:11:48.639 be remembered for. Well, we've covered the insults, 00:11:48.639 --> 00:11:51.259 the linguistics, the money, the fallout. But 00:11:51.259 --> 00:11:53.159 I want to leave you with one last thought. Go 00:11:53.159 --> 00:11:55.419 for it. I read a commentary in the Washington 00:11:55.419 --> 00:11:58.720 Post at the time that really stuck with me. It 00:11:58.720 --> 00:12:01.759 suggested that in this age of constant political 00:12:01.759 --> 00:12:04.539 noise and shouting, maybe the king asked the 00:12:04.539 --> 00:12:08.129 wrong question. How so? Instead of turning to 00:12:08.129 --> 00:12:10.289 the one loud guy and asking, why don't you shut 00:12:10.289 --> 00:12:13.149 up? Maybe he should have turned to all the other 00:12:13.149 --> 00:12:15.590 leaders sitting there in silence and asked them, 00:12:15.649 --> 00:12:18.250 why don't you speak up? That's a powerful thought. 00:12:18.429 --> 00:12:21.409 The silence of the moderates can be just as deafening 00:12:21.409 --> 00:12:23.450 as the shouting from the extremes. Something 00:12:23.450 --> 00:12:26.429 for you to think about. That's it for this deep 00:12:26.429 --> 00:12:28.149 dive. Thanks for listening. Until next time.