Ugly Competition Hits Spain

Apparently the ugly competition in Bilbao has been running since 1978 which is surprising because it sounds like the kind of thing that I would have heard of. Or maybe entered haw haw haw haw (beat you to that rinse there). It’s part of a nine day festival held in Bilbao known as the ‘Aste Nagusia’ up there which roughly translates as ‘The Big Week.’ Kinda stupid calling a nine day long festival the big week because there’s two extra days there, but whatever, I’m pretty stoked on the fact that there’s a festival that keeps going for nine days.

It sounds like a PG-13 kind of festival though, not like it was Boomtown or anything as it’s described as featuring fireworks, concerts and bull fights as well as dancing in the streets and street food BBQ’s. I guess the bullfights is kind of out there but that’s only because I don’t live in Spain. I think in Spain being involved in a bullfight is like the equivalent of going binge drinking over here i.e. people are doing it 24/7 and people tend to get more into the older they get.

But the reason I really think that it’s a PG-13 kind of festival is because it’s centrepiece is an ugly competition which sounds like it’s right out of a Disney movie, or at least a PG-13 movie like Angus or something. Apologies on using PG-13 so much in this article too because I know it’s an American phrase but it makes more sense than using PG and sounds cooler than 12A, and was also more relevant when I was growing up because I could go see cool movies like The Fugitive when I was on holiday with my parents and I couldn’t see them in the UK because I was under 12 and the 12A didn’t exist back then.

But yeah they have an ugly competition where everyone tries to be as ugly as possible, and I guess the ugliest person wins. Unfortunately the ugliest people from all over the world don’t travel to the competition – that really would be something else – but it just involves people trying to look as though they’ve munched about 8 pills (kinda like these drugged up gurners or Bradley Cooper when he tried to be the Elephant Man) and are trying to chew their faces off. Or maybe that they’ve been possessed in some exorcism of Emily Rose kind of shit. Some of them succeed and look really ugly but most of them just look kinda weird and retarded. Which I guess is kind of ugly but I wouldn’t call a retard ugly, you know, they’re just retarded. I guess you can’t really call it a retard competition though huh, although an ugly competition isn’t that much more PC.