Culture
Spain's Ministry of Digital Transformation Goes Full Shark Tank at San Sebastián
By Bruno Von Falken, . BSN Network. Satire.
SAN SEBASTIÁN, SPAIN. Spain's Ministry for Digital Transformation has a venture capital fund. It is called SETT. It attended a film festival.
This is not, technically, a sentence anyone expected to read in September 2025, and yet here we all are, reading it together, in what must be described as a shared experience.
SETT, which stands for something in Spanish that the Ministry has printed on a lanyard, presented itself this week at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, running September 18 through 26, which is primarily known for premiering prestige cinema and giving Pedro Almodóvar something to do in autumn. The fund's director general, Javier Ponce, and its audiovisual director, María Coronado, arrived carrying what sources close to the buffet table described as "a very thorough deck."
The pitch, delivered with the confidence of two people who have the government behind them and therefore cannot technically lose, positioned SETT as the engine of Spain's audiovisual industry transformation. The word "transformation" appeared eleven times in the first twenty minutes, which is either a record or a ministry requirement, nobody in the room could confirm which.
"We are here to power up companies," Ponce told the assembled film professionals, using the phrase "power up" in a context that had previously been reserved for energy drinks and Nintendo cartridges. "Spain is ready. The ecosystem is ready. The companies are ready." He then paused, in the manner of a man who has practiced the pause, and added: "We are ready."
Coronado, for her part, delivered what one attendee described as "a practical guide," which is the audiovisual industry's way of saying something came with bullet points. The practical guide covered eligibility requirements, application windows, co-investment structures, and at least one slide that was definitely a flowchart, though witnesses disagree on how many boxes it had.
The choice of San Sebastián as the venue for a governmental venture capital announcement has raised what diplomats call "questions of venue logic." The festival, which exists to celebrate cinema as an art form, is perhaps not the first forum that springs to mind when a digital ministry decides to explain term sheets to strangers. It is, however, free to attend if you have a badge, which is more than can be said for most financial roadshows.
Industry observers noted that SETT is part of a broader Spanish governmental push to position the country as a serious audiovisual production hub, which is a legitimate and arguably interesting economic story that would have received approximately forty percent more coverage if it had been announced somewhere that did not also have a midnight screening of a Basque horror film on the same evening.
Netflix, which has spent several years filming things in Spain and telling everyone about it at length, was not available for comment. Neither was Pedro Almodóvar, who has his own relationship with Spanish government funding and has strong opinions about it that he tends to share unprompted.
Attendees who sat through the full SETT presentation described the experience as "informative," "comprehensive," and, from one producer who asked not to be named, "long in the way that things are long when the people presenting them are very certain they are not being long."
The fund is real, the money is real, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation has sent two of its most senior people to the Basque coast in September to make sure everyone knows it. Whether the film industry will respond by becoming more digitally transformed, or by quietly moving to the cocktail reception one floor down, remains, as of press time, an open question.
The flowchart had nine boxes.
The story we are making fun of: https://variety.com/2026/tv/global/sett-javier-ponce-maria-coronado-how-sett-works-and-why-1236869707/