“Zorra” actually means “vixen” in Spanish, but is usually used as a derogatory term for “slut”. The uninitiated might think that singer María isn’t particularly popular. But that is not the case. “Zorra” is the name of the song with which the artist duo Nebulossa will represent Spain in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Sweden, on May 11th.
María and Mark admit to being surprised when they received the most votes at the state broadcaster RTVE’s Benidorm Festival in February and thus became Spain’s ESC representatives. Because the two of them actually don’t fit into the youthful, cool image of Eurovision.
Married couple for 20 years
María is 56 years old, Mark is 50. They have been a married couple for 20 years and have two children. They run a hairdressing salon in their tranquil Mediterranean town of Ondara on the Costa Blanca. Mark is also a music producer and runs a small recording studio in the community of 7,000 residents.
From a musical perspective, the duo was practically completely unknown until now. Mark, who looks like a mix of Heino and Dieter Bohlen, plays the keyboard on stage. María sings – but not particularly well. The focus of their stage show is more on the two male dancers with full beards, who show off a lot of butt with over-the-knee stilettos, latex corsets and glitter thongs.
But their retro pop song in the 80s electro style has a catchy, repetitive rhythm and lyrics and is easy to sing along to. Above all, it has a very current message: It’s about strong, emancipated and independent women who don’t owe anyone an explanation. And when such women are called “sluts,” they should be proud of it.
New anthem for the LGBTIQ scene
This was not only well received at the Benidorm Song Festival. “Zorra” quickly became the new anthem of the LGBTIQ scene in Spain and is currently playing up and down on all radio stations and clubs. “We seem to have managed to give the word Zorra a new meaning, and we now want to take this message to Europe,” says singer María again and again in interviews.
“Zorra” as a verbal-feminist liberation? Spain’s feminist movements are more than divided. Just the idea that tens of thousands of young girls in Spain and Europe are being told at the ESC finals that they should proudly call themselves “sluts” in order to neutralize the term as a swear word gets Jana Bravo from the Madrid Association for Women’s Rights (MFM ) the crisis. “The trivialization or appropriation of a macho insult cannot be the way to demand women’s rights and self-realization,” says Jana Bravo in an interview with the APA.
Protest signatures
Within a few hours, the MFM collected more than 1,500 protest signatures, which were presented to the Spanish broadcaster RTVE with a request not to send the “slut” song into the ESC race. However, RTVE only had the word “Zorra” translated as “vixen” for Eurovision, instead of taking the actual meaning “bitch”. Montserrat Boix resigned as equal opportunities officer at RTVE in protest and apologized to the victims of sexist violence.
Several parliamentarians have already said the song is “unacceptable”. Conservative opposition politicians see him as a “disgrace”. Many socialist politicians also spoke out “outraged”, even if their boss, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, recently used the song as an example that feminism can also be “entertaining”.
Hardly any ESC entry has sparked as much debate and criticism in Spain in recent years as “Zorra”. Even the Catholic Church spoke out. Alicante’s Bishop José Ignacio Munilla said he was convinced that it would upset many people with feminist sensibilities if the response to women’s humiliation was to make women accept these humiliations and be proud of them. Let’s see what Europe thinks of the song at the 68th Eurovision Song Contest.
