Soaps Sending Spain Down Drain? : Television: Millions wile away their long lunch hours with serials from Latin America. Some sociologists are worried about the demise of Spanish culture.

Sociologists in Spain are worried about a new Spanish addiction: Millions of Spaniards are mesmerized by the Latin-American soap operas that dominate television these days during the long Spanish lunch break.

“The plague of Latin-American soap operas,” warns the weekly newsmagazine Cambio 16, “is contaminating Spanish culture.”

Their popularity, in the view of some intellectuals, does not reflect well on the taste of Spaniards. “We are paying the price,” said sociologist Martin Espinosa, “of educating two generations of Spaniards with comic books, television and rock ‘n’ roll. . . . And now our people have the mentality of a child of 10 years and the sensitivity of sandpaper.”

“I lived in Venezuela for some time and saw the birth of these soap operas,” said painter Jose Ramon Sanchez. “I used to tell myself that Venezuela, after all, had an illiterate and miserable population that lived below the level of material and spiritual subsistence. But how do I explain why Spain, a prosperous country at the doors of the 21st Century, is enjoying this kind of garbage?”

It is a recent phenomenon. The main government television channel introduced Latin-American soaps less than two years ago. Expectations were low. Most television executives found the episodes laughable.

But the audiences did not. The first Latin soap to attract nationwide attention--the Venezuelan series “Cristal,” written by Cuban exile Delia Fiallo in Miami--was so popular that its viewing time was changed twice to make it available to larger audiences. It finally became a fixture at 3:30--the daylight spot regarded as prime time in Spain, for most Spaniards are eating lunch at home then.

“Cristal” recounted the adventures of a poor, unwed mother (played by Jeannette Rodriguez) who abandons her child--fathered by a priest--and then makes a fortune as head of a fashion empire, a position that finally reunites her with the daughter, now a beautiful model. At its height, “Cristal” had 11 million viewers, a little more than a third of the total audience in Spain.

After Spanish television finished showing the 260 episodes of “Cristal,” another Venezuelan soap by Delia Fiallo, “The Rose Lady,” starring Rodriguez again, took its place. The 228 episodes told the story of an impotent young businessman who has a brief affair with a young girl who then plots revenge against him and his wife.

There are now 14 soaps on Spanish television from Venezuela, Brazil, Puerto Rico and the rest of Latin America.

There is an irony in these exports from Latin America. For years, Latin nationalists fretted over the harm to their culture from the inundation of imported television from the United States. While that is still true in many countries, it is also true that Latin America is flooding other cultures with its own television. In fact, Brazil’s O Globo, now the fourth-largest network in the world, produces more than 70% of its own programming and exports its shows to 90 countries, including China.

“When I visited China,” Brazilian Consul General Lauro Moreira said in Barcelona recently, “I discovered that the Brazilian (serial) ‘Isaura, the Slave’ had an audience there of 350 million people. I suddenly realized that the heroine, Lucelia Santos, has probably been seen by more people than any other actress in the world including Hollywood stars. And ‘Isaura, the Slave’ isn’t even a very good ( telenovela .)”

The soaps--known as telenovelas or culebrones in Latin America--derive from the old American radio soap operas that made a huge impact throughout the hemisphere many years ago. In the hands of Latin writers, however, this genre in radio and later in television took on a lachrymose life of its own, replete with great sentimental moralizing.

The Cuban soap writer Felix Caignet once revealed the secret of his success to Colombian Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez who, like a number of other Latin-American intellectuals, has been fascinated by the soap as an authentic art form.

“I always try to make the public cry,” Caignet said, “because the public loves to cry.”

The Latin soaps are a bargain for Spanish television stations. They can buy an episode for perhaps a couple thousand dollars and take in 20 times as much in revenue from commercials. But it is not cost alone that accounts for their success. The soaps have reached Spain at a time when many Spaniards seem in the mood for nostalgia and sentimentality. Old-fashioned singers of ballads about unrequited love, for example, are back in vogue.

For Spanish television, the popularity of the Latin-American soap is another reflection of its feeble national content. Despite the renaissance of the Spanish film industry in the last two decades, public and private television channels compete to show myriad American movies dubbed into Spanish. The most popular cartoons for children are made in Japan. And even some of the locally made productions are obvious imitations of the most puerile American and Italian game shows.

Unlike many other countries, Spain does not limit the foreign content of its television programming. It lets the market and the public taste rule. And the public obviously has a taste for foreign productions, no matter how lowbrow, like the Latin-American soap.