Cucuhouse blog: Chema nos ha dejado

Yesterday, while I was in the gym doing the minimum exercise in order to go asap into the sauna, in the subtitles of the news I read that "Chema", the baker of the Spanish version of Sesame Street (Barrio Sesamo) had died. I thought that as a dedicatory to Chema, at least I should dedicate a few lines again to Espinete, Chema and their friends of Barrio Sesamo.

For the non-Spaniards: Inside the Spanish version of Sesame street, there was a mini-series with a hedgehog called Espinete as the star (see pic below); a friendly, pink, asexual, with female voice, who lived in Barrio sesamo mainly with lots of kids, another strange character called Don pin-pon, a girl whose name I do not remember and of course, Chema, the (dead) baker.

By looking backwards, I think that Espinete was a good character for that kind of TV program. Of undefined nature, all kids liked him (her), and that I think this is not easy. For example, his successor in TV after Barrio sesamo ended was an awful orange alien called Yupi that nobody liked, just as Muzzy, another alien of the time (from a BBC program) who was supposed to teach english to the Spanish children by just saying "Hello, I am Muzzy" all the time!! All the time same sentence: Hello, I am Muzzy...again and again...

Espinete looks quite strange now once we left the childhood, but still I think even though one could accuse him of being a bit of a faggott (just a bit) nowadays, he would have never received the same accusations that falled over that purple teletubby by one famous American conservationist priest some years ago.

I think that with the permission of 'Bola de Cristal', Chema and the barrio sesamo crew were a good program for children. A good point in between the too naive Marco (the guy with the little monkey Amedio), Heidi and the thousands of shitty series and tv programs that children enjoyed in the following years after.

Below: Don Pin Pon, Espinete, Chema, and the girl whose name I do not remember.