For some, the announcement of a France-Spain match evokes football, basketball or handball. For others it is now synonymous with fighting on the Internet. From electronic sports to social networks and now in real life, French and Spanish Internet users are waging a merciless battle.
A rivalry that has lasted for several years but intensified a few months ago, led by leaders determined to win the “Who will own the Internet country?”
E-sport, a trigger
Whether in friendly matches or in international competitions, France and Spain have been competing in e-sports for many years, especially in League of Legends, the most followed game on the Internet. The athletes, however, challenge each other through clubs and not nations. There is no French national League of Legends team and no Spanish team.
However, these clubs, such as Vitality Bee or Karmine Corp, are reunited in the French League of Legends (LFL). Created in 2019, the league now has 10 professional teams. On the Spanish side, the Super League is much more consolidated, with a championship created in 2012 and 12 teams competing each season.
These two leagues, which could be compared to Ligue 1 and the e-sport version of LaLiga, are nowadays extremely publicized and the most coveted by players. Thus, a rivalry was gradually created, helped also by the geographical proximity of the two countries.
Streamers have also gradually become true representatives of each nation. On the French side, we find in particular Kameto, co-founder of Karmine Corp. On the Spanish side, it is Ibai Llanos, followed by almost 12 million people on Twitch, who serves as the head of the Spanish Internet.
The Pixel War, battle 2.0 on an exceptional scale
The rivalry took on another dimension last spring. Pixels that constantly change color, streamers on the verge of a nervous breakdown and in the end an excessive digital work: the Pixel War, or pixel war, caused a sensation on April 1, 2022. Internet users from all over the world united on Reddit to create a cool collaborative pixel art.
The goal, to color the pixels of a gigantic virtual canvas, even if it means invading others. With a strict rule, you could color a single pixel every five minutes, only through collective and coordinated actions could real images appear.
And in the midst of the chaos and the incessant hours trying to seize their little piece of virtual space, two countries collided again without premeditation: France and Spain. French streamers had mobilized in force to try to reclaim as much of the pixelated territory as possible. Thus we were able to discover the Arc de Triomphe, the croissants, the Louvre, Thomas Pesquet but also Zinedine Zidane in this fresco, before the Spanish decided to counterattack.
In fact, Iberian streamers thought that the French were using bots or cheat codes to speed up the modeling of certain graphics. Negotiation attempts were even organized by intermediary Twitch, led by Kameto and Ibai. By dint of strategies and alliances, the other countries participating in the fresco even had to choose their side.
The Spanish serpentine workers ended up having a single obsession: destroying the French constructions, judging that they took up too much space in the work. The battle of the pixels thus became a battle of egos, pitting massively followed Spanish videographers like Rubius (20 million followers on Twitter) against French stars with far fewer followers (662,000 at the time for Kameto). Result: landslide victory for the French.
The second leg in physics
The next pixel war should only take place in five years. But the French and the Spanish have not decided to bury the hatchet while waiting for the deadline. And it is on a soccer field where the return match between the French and Spanish websites will take place. However, it will not be about competing in the FIFA game but in real life, at the Jean Bouin Stadium in Paris, on November 19.
The event, called “Eleven All Stars”, will bring together 21 players from the French team, including Michou, Carlito and Inoxtag. The team will be led in particular by Kameto. And the Hispanic team will be directed by Ibai. It could not be otherwise…
And beyond the Twitch sphere, 19,000 people will be present in the stands of the stadium to support French content creators. Enough to imagine a fervor similar to the one Squeezie created a few weeks ago for his GP Explorer at Le Mans.
The record for views on a French-speaking Twitch channel could well be broken, as the rivalry between France and Spain has become one of the most unifying gags on the internet.
Source: BFM TV
