Cabronazi… first we take the internet

I’m in a shopping mall in Barcelona waiting for the creators of Cabronazi, a Facebook humor page that has gone viral in Spain. I don’t have their phone numbers but they have mine, and they’ve just sent me a WhatsApp message. Eventually they arrive, and we make our way out to a terrace bar to begin the interview. After insisting that they remain anonymous, the pair then proceed to sit in silence, looking at each other. They ask for the tape recorder to be turned off. The second question I had prepared, which will now be the first, is: “Why are you so guarded about your identity?” The answer is revealed at the beginning of the interview, and then repeated in different ways throughout the next couple of hours I spend with them.

Within a month Cabronazi had 35,000 followers, which has since increased to 1.7 million

Although only two make it to the interview, Cabronazi consists of three men and two women, aged between 22 and 35. The two explain that the idea for the page came after one of the group’s Facebook page, filled with jokes, news items, and videos, became so popular with people outside his circle of friends that in February of this year, he decided to set up a kind of comedy central. Within a month Cabronazi had 35,000 followers, which has since increased to 1.7 million, and it continues to grow. People have adopted the name on the social networks, they date through the threads on the site, and they fight to be the first to get their comment in.

The page is now the most popular humor site in Spain, as well as attracting huge numbers of followers in Latin America.

This may have been one of the reasons why a record company offered them a considerable sum of money to post a music video featuring a well-known reggaeton artist on the site, which they politely turned down. The reason? After having ridiculed reggaeton for months, they felt that taking money to promote it would be a sell out to the fans, many of whom have even proposed marriage to Cabronazi’s team (only one is unattached). For the moment, they say they don’t want to feature advertising on the Facebook page: “We don’t want to take advantage of our fans,” says one.

“Obviously, when we had to hire a professional web server to avoid the continual crashes in those first day, we found ourselves with monthly running costs that we can cover with some advertising, and that only appears on smartphones,” he adds.

But why would a group of people so in love with their fans be so determined to hide their identities from them? When the project started their name – cabronazo, a common Spanish insult that literally means the big goat, which they had adapted so that Facebook wouldn’t close the site –  and their logo – a drawing of Adolf Hitler with goat’s horns – prompted a lot of hostility online. The hostility dwindled when people realized that the site was harmless, but they say they have been careful since then. On the one hand, the fact that the five of them, like their fans – who send them material to be published – were part of the project, led them to decide to be a collective, with no names, to be the anonymous that takes over the internet through gag competitions. You can put this camaraderie to the test by sending a private message, and they will reply, like they reply to everybody who gets in touch with them.

The site has already sparked controversy: on one occasion, they had to withdraw an image of people with physical deformities when they realized that it was not computer generated but of real individuals; recently they were asked by a young man who appeared on reality show El Diario de Patricia three years earlier to discuss his difficult relationship with his mother to take the clip down.

At the same time, the troupe say they like to stir things up – for example during the recent San Fermín festivities in Pamplona. “We published a lot of material related to the fiestas. We went over the top, because here at Cabronazi we are very much against bullfighting, particularly one of us,” they say. And their stance has proved popular with users of the site.

The site has already sparked controversy: on one occasion, they had to withdraw an image of people with physical deformities

Reflecting this serious side to their humor, the group also organizes a weekly crowdfunding session to help an individual or a cause through the social networks. They recently raised money toward the costs of treatment for a boy suffering from a very rare disease, prompting a letter of thanks from his mother.

For the moment, the team says they intend to keep on growing: their next endeavour, after ending a project working with a page called Pornonazi, will be Cabrogamer, which will focus on videogames. In the short term, in the time it’s taken you to read this, they will already have posted three new publications, and if they have time, to – heil Cabronazi – invade Poland.