Converting stories into products is what Balbino does, a "lifelong" shoe brand that she has just become “since yesterday” a product editor after republishing the book Teoría del insulto en Asturias, by José Manuel Vilabella, a work that has served as inspiration to launch the first Insult World Championship in Asturias.
“The idea of the World Cup came up during the process of editing the book. As we read and reread it, we burst out laughing and we debated what is the best insult of Asturias. The debate always got tangled up because we were reading paragraphs and the next one seemed even better than the previous one. Thus, we wanted to ask the Asturians (three of the partners are from here) what is your favorite insult”, says Noelia Pañeda, one of Balbino's partners.
Insult theory in Asturias.
THE WORLD CUP
disputed in the Instagram profile of humorist Joaquín Pajarón (@joaquin_pajaron), The World Cup was developed by rounds in the stories of the social network of the president of the F.I.N.A. (International Federation of Insult in Asturias).
One by one, Pajarón -with that sarcasm, irony and self-confidence that he has "too much"- published the pairings between insults as Asturian as gochu, corn, fato or repunante, so that people could vote. And so, until reaching the final, disputed between Babayu and Faltosu. It was hard-fought, they even held a day of reflection and a fun press conference, but Finally Faltosu was raised as a winning insult.
Surely, if you are not from Asturias, by now you are wondering what it is to be a missing, answer you will find in the book Insult theory in Asturias, for sale only on the web and in the Balbino space: “Our headquarters It's in Oviedo, in an old drapery where we went to buy fabrics and in which we finally stayed sharing the space with its longtime owner. We are four partners who have other jobs and that we dedicate part of our free time to this”, explains Noelia Pañeda.
Definition of Faltosu.
THE BOOK
"The book Insult theory in Asturias It was originally published in 1985. Despite being a great book, it went unnoticed by the general public. 36 years later, in Balbino we recover it to give it the recognition it deserves”, recognizes Noelia, for whom the Asturian insult has a lot of irony and caress.
An irony that its author, the now octogenarian José Manuel Vilabella, knew how to capture like no one else in this work for which he had to do a lot of research: “Jose Antonio Mases had already launched the Asturian and Galician encyclopedias and he wanted to make a collection of simple books, not very long, and he commissioned me this one, which finally It was published by chapters in the New Spain and later it was edited by Alsa”.
Balbino and polyamory.
Noelia reminds us that Insult theory in Asturias is also related to the latest collection of Balbino shoes, called Improper, with models like Fata, Babayu or Repunante, and that on the web is presented together with an endearing phrase taken from the book:
"Life becomes lazy in anonymous couplets, dresses up as Sunday in programmatic statements, sacralizes itself in urbi et orbi messages, sweetens itself in promises of love, prostitutes itself in mercenary flattery, frivolizes itself in rumors. and he gets angry, irritated, pissed off, in the insult, the expletive, in the taco, in the insult, in the grievance, in the insolence. Insults are the limit words, the last words".