Catalan Socialist Party Does R-Rated Nora Ephron Send-Up

This reminded me of When Harry Met Sally...

The story's at BBC and Memeorandum:

But seriously, these cats went further, much further:

Apparently desperate to pique the interest of young voters ahead of local elections in Catalonia scheduled for later this month, political parties in the Spanish region are engaged in what is starting to seem like a race to see which of them can get their entire campaign banned for excessive use of sex, violence or porn film soundtracks.

The first blow was struck by the new Catalan Solidarity for Independence Party, which recruited a porn star named María Lapiedra to appear at its campaign rallies.

Not to be outdone, the conservative Popular Party posted a video game on its Web site this week starring an animated version of its local leader, Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, flying through the air on a white seagull, bombing illegal immigrants and Catalan nationalists.

As the Spanish newspaper El País reported, on Tuesday afternoon, after the game was posted online, the Popular Party’s Web site crashed under the traffic of thousands of eager players. Hours later, the game was withdrawn and the party claimed that the game’s developer had deviated from instructions to have the candidate’s avatar attack not immigrants but the people-traffickers who smuggle them into Spain.

The same day, another candidate, Montse Nebrera, who leads her own party, appeared on camera wearing just a towel at the end of a highly suggestive ad that interspersed statistics about corruption and government waste with what looked and sounded like outtakes from a porn film.

By week’s end, though, politicians across the political spectrum were weighing in on another steamy ad that topped them all, in which a young actress was shown simulating an orgasm as she cast her vote for Spain’s Socialist Party. The ad, which was produced by the Young Socialists of Catalonia — to illustrate their slogan, “Voting is a pleasure” — would certainly earn an R-rating in the United States and makes a similar scene in the movie “When Harry Met Sally” look quite tame by comparison. So far it has been viewed on YouTube more than 70,000 times, which, for a local election video, comes close to qualifying as a viral hit.

Still more at the link, and also Memeorandum.