Flamenco's stars rise up against Spain's fame academy

Spanish musicians and critics are mounting a quixotic campaign against the televised might of manufactured pop stars in a country where, for months on end, 80 per cent of the Top 10 albums bore the brand of Operacion Triunfo, the inspiration for the BBC's Fame Academy.

At a concert in Madrid on Tuesday, organised under the logo 'Otro Timo No' (Not Another Fraud), the audience will be invited to swap an Operacion Triunfo CD 'for a real one'. It is an attempt to highlight what critics see as the crushing of Spain's musical creativity in favour of anodyne covers performed by hopeful amateurs.

The protest, backed by a cross-section of rising stars and veteran performers, brings together singer-songwriters such as Joaquin Sabina, rock icon Enrique Bunbury and younger acts like Ojos de Brujo, who mix flamenco with hip hop and ragamuffin, the rapper Frank T and the flamenco singer Diego el Cigala.

The reality show, now in its second season, has spawned numerous international spin-offs, including the BBC's Fame Academy - won on Friday, with a £1m recording contract, by 24-year-old Glaswegian David Sneddon.

It has also monopolised the limited space available to musicians on Spain's public television stations, winning vast audiences and making a fortune for its producers and broadcaster.

'If this carries on for another year, we can say goodbye to any music that is not from Operacion Triunfo, and that seems horrific to us,' says Ricardo Aguilera, a freelance music journalist who works for the daily El Mundo and Rolling Stone magazine. 'We don't want to stop the show,' he continues, 'but we want to see real music broadcast on public television.'

In Operacion Triunfo, 16 or 17 wannabes enter an academy where they learn to sing, dance and mangle English lyrics, spied on by dozens of television cameras. There is a daily update on TVE-2, the second state channel, a weekly summary on TVE-1 and a Monday night variety performance at which the apprentices' progress is judged by a panel of pop professionals.

The jury nominates four to leave the academy: one can be saved by the academy staff, one by fellow pupils, while the other two are at the mercy of the audience, who vote on premium phone lines.

Given that the OT performers are on prime-time television for around eight hours a week, their success is not surprising.

'Spanish music is going through a very bad moment - it's symptomatic that a programme like Operacion Triunfo, that offers the public amateurs doing cover versions of famous songs as best they can, produces the best-selling records,' laments Aguilera, who helped organise the campaign.

The statistics from the first season are staggering: more than 8.5 million records sold with the OT brand, including 1.9 million CDs of the weekly galas, and around 4 million copies of the various solo albums recorded by all 16 pupils, even the earliest losers.

The first OT gala was watched by a paltry 2.7 million viewers. But as the show progressed, more and more tuned in to watch Rosa Lopez, 'the rose of Spain', as she struggled to lose weight, endured cruel com ments about her teeth, and belted out number after number, finally winning first prize: the right to represent Spain at the Eurovision Song Contest.

That final gala peaked at more than 15 million viewers, with an average of 12.8 million watching the whole programme.

The Eurovision show - Spain was stunned and outraged that Rosa managed only seventh place with 'Europe's Livin' A Celebration' - pulled in more than 80 per cent of the Saturday night audience.

OT made more than 5 million euros in merchandising and premium phone lines for TVE (excluding advertising revenue), while the production company Gestmusic was valued last summer by the Spanish media at 100 million euros.

Concert ticket sales shot up 26 per cent due to the show - once the television series ended, the cast went on a lengthy nationwide tour, and most spent the summer playing solo gigs across the country, to the annoyance of bands who would otherwise have been booked as entertainment at fiestas in towns across Spain.

Even established stars were forced to cancel tours and there was a knock-on effect at record companies, which delayed launch ing new products in the hope of riding out the OT effect.

Operacion Triunfo, says Aguilera, 'shows that Spain has less than zero musical culture, while the institutional support for a commercial venture like this means that the Spanish public has no prime-time access to music of any kind'. Last week's top 10 albums included four with the OT brand.

Only two new acts broke through the OT barrier in Spain last summer: Basque singer Alex Ubago and Las Ketchup, the three Andaluz sisters who scored in Britain with 'The Ketchup Song'. The campaign clearly has a long way to go.