To some, it might look like harmless fun to film a stranger who’s clearly had one too many and post it for laughs. But as Málaga’s Feria gets under way this week, Andalucía’s media watchdog says the same ‘papagorda’ clips have already cost one person €10,000, and triggered a criminal investigation in Sevilla.

Why Málaga’s Feria is now in the watchdog’s sights

Málaga’s Feria de Agosto runs from Saturday August 15 to Saturday August 22, drawing crowds estimated at up to 1 million people across its eight days of daytime festivities in the city centre and all-night dancing at the Cortijo de Torres fairground. As the celebrations begin, the Consejo Audiovisual de Andalucía (CAA), the region’s independent media watchdog, has repeated a warning it first issued around Sevilla’s Feria de Abril earlier this year: filming and sharing clips of visibly drunk strangers under the hashtag #papagorda is not a harmless joke, and can carry serious legal consequences.

The €10,000 fine that set the precedent

In 2022, Spain’s data protection agency, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), fined a member of the public €10,000 over a single clip. The one-and-a-half minute video, filmed from a passing car by someone the victim had never met, showed a clearly identifiable person leaning on a litter bin in the early ours of the morning to stay upright. It was then shared across WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. 

The joke hashtag is now facing a criminal investigation

The hashtag itself dates back to Sevilla’s 2019 Feria de Abril, when it began on Twitter, now X, as a way of grouping together clips of drunk fairgoers. According to the CAA’s 2024 analysis of the trend, #papagorda content racked up more than 74 million views on TikTok in Spain in a single year.

This year, however, the joke has escalated into something much more serious. Spain’s Fiscalía de Criminalidad Informática, the cybercrime prosecutor’s office, opened an investigation in April into papagorda videos filmed at Sevilla’s fair, after the city’s Policía Local passed on a report listing the profiles and links involved. Investigators are examining whether some of the posts amount to crimes against moral integrity, with the case now in the hands of the Judicial Police’s technology crimes unit.

Why being in a public place doesn’t just waive your rights

The CAA’s central point is that, just because a person can be filming someone in a public street or at a public event, this doesn’t strip them of their rights. Spanish law still protects a person’s honour, privacy and image, especially once footage becomes identifiable and is shared widely without their consent.

The issue, the watchdog says, is extremely relevant at large-scale events such as the Málaga fair. One can clearly imagine that in a place like a Spanish Feria, there could be a smorgasbord of opportunities for people looking to catch someone out who has maybe had one too many and living la vida loca.

The trend hasn’t completely disappeared yet

Spanish media reports suggest the crackdown is already affecting general behaviour, but not completely getting rid of it. Open posting under the hashtag reportedly fell during this year’s Sevilla fair, with much of the content instead moving to anonymous accounts or being passed around in private WhatsApp and Telegram groups, out of reach of the platforms’ usual moderation.

Anyone who can be identified in a clip, or who believes their image has been used to cause them harm or to laugh at their expense, can still pursue a complaint, whether the video was posted publicly or shared privately among friends.