From Braveheart to 'Vaig Fort': The accidental Mallorcan parody that became a cult phenomenon

One of those who took part has gone on to become a Disney animator

MDB DigitalPere Serra25/03/2025 10:42

Twenty years ago, in the heart of Mallorca, William Wallace became a peasant of socarrel in 'Vaig Fort', a delirious parody in which the Scots defended their land in bloody battles filmed in fast motion to the rhythm of Benny Hill's music. Expressions such as 'cristo en pel taronges nàvel' remained forever in the collective imagination, not only of the island, but also of spectators all over Spain who didn't quite know what was going on. And they were not the only ones. Even the two creators of the work, comic book artist Pau and his friend José Miguel, literally let the subject slip through their fingers. Two decades later, we bring them together in a forest in Mallorca, armed with trinxets, sobrassades and pink katiuskas, to recall this delirious version of Braveheart, which came into being by pure chance.

Pau explains that 'at first it was a video for internal consumption only, but I don't know what happened and it started to spread around the net'. 'I do know,' interrupts José Miguel, adding mysteriously: 'But I can't explain everything. I had it all inside the computer and it was impossible for this to get out if it wasn't for a person I like very much and whom I don't blame, quite the contrary, because it was thanks to him that everything that happened, happened. He asked me to give him a VHS copy and I did it. Shortly afterwards I discovered, as if it were the Resident Evil virus, that this had spread all over the place'.

While Pau recorded most of the vocals, José Miguel was in charge of the technical part, editing a mess in which (only on the first day) a group of colleagues participated during a meal. 'The first day we got five or six friends together to do different voices that we recorded the first 15 minutes. In fact, one of those who took part has gone on to become a Disney animator (at the time he was not yet a Disney animator). One played a bird, another a horse, a third just says 'jo tinc faaaam',' he explains.

The legacy

'We have been congratulated a lot but we have also been criticised and even received death threats, imagine that. We haven't found a severed horse's head in bed, but in one forum someone said 'I would kill these people'. It was a Catalanist group that was upset that the Catalans were the bad guys in the film', recalls Pau with a surrealism that sometimes surpasses the film itself.

The contrast between the epic nature of Mel Gibson's film and the 'Ossifarian' humour turned it into a social phenomenon that led them to perform live, dubbing the voices and being guests on a late-night show hosted by Dani Mateo and, most importantly, as Pau says, 'thanks to Vaig Fort I met my wife. That's the only practical use the film has had for me'.