Fasten your seatbelts and get comfortable: we’re going on a trip back in time, but in a different way than we usually do on this website. Today, we’ll do it through cinema, music, and television, among other things.
We find ourselves in the 1980s and 1990s. During this period of Grupo Castrosua’s history, we see that as the number of our buses on the roads increased, so did the references to Castrosua bodies in popular culture. Since the mid-80s, Castrosua vehicles have had their moments of fame on our television and in our cinema. Furthermore, they have been and continue to be part of the daily lives of music and sports stars. Shall we take a tour of the best cameos of Castrosua buses in popular culture? Let’s get started!
I Can’t Get Up Today… Without a Master 35
Radio Televisión Española recently aired a report to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the musical group Mecano, which, despite being currently inactive, remains an icon of Spanish pop.
This television piece includes an interview conducted in 1989 with José María Cano, one of Mecano’s members, while he was resting inside a Castrosua bus. The artist was inside the Master 35 coach. As a curiosity, we recall that this body was the first from our group to reach abroad. In addition to its quality construction, the Master 35 vehicle stood out for offering the most innovative technology. You can see it starting at 00:48!
At the time of the interview, Mecano was also doing very well, although José María Cano tells the journalist, resting his head on our then-logo, that it was very difficult for them to get a record deal because their band was so groundbreaking in the early 80s.
This is not the only contact our company has had with musical groups. In 2018, the Coral Castrosúa performed live on ‘Luar’, the successful TVG program hosted by Xosé Ramón Gayoso. Before the performance, the host mentions us as a company that provides the choir with “both promotion and support.”
Honored Guests on ‘¿Qué apostamos?’
You probably remember the TVE program ‘¿Qué apostamos?’, which aired throughout the 90s. In it, various contestants competed to see who could overcome the most difficult challenge and win a larger sum of money.
The Castrosua CS-40 body, one of our most recognized vehicles, appeared on the television program. All thanks to the skill of a driver from the Madrid Municipal Transport Company (EMT), who used our bus to propose (and fulfill?) his bet.
On one occasion, an EMT driver bet that he could park an approximately 11-meter-long Castrosua CS-40 bus in a very tight space (delimited by cones) within a maximum of three minutes. Despite the complexity of the maneuvers, Ramón García (the then-host of the program) ended up shouting: “Achieved!”.
Pau Gasol Getting on a CS-40 NV-City
On another 40th anniversary, this time for basketball player Pau Gasol, the sports newspaper Marca published the photo report ’40 images to celebrate Pau Gasol’s 40 years’.
In one of these photographs, a teenage Gasol is seen getting on the city bus he took daily to train in the province of Barcelona. It is a CS-40 NVCity body with a special MAN front, which served on the L75 line of Baixbus (a line that still connects the areas of Sant Boi de Llobregat and Cornellá de Llobregat today).
The photograph is from the period when the Catalan player was at FC Barcelona, between 1997 and 2001. Before that, the basketball player spent some time at CB Cornellá and, from 2001 onwards, began playing in the NBA. In February 2021, he decided to return to the basketball section of Fútbol Club Barcelona.
We like to think that, by contributing to the improvement of public transport at that time, we somehow helped Pau Gasol become an international sports star.
We also recently recalled on our social media how, in 1996, the name Castrosua was once again seen in the media thanks to another international sports star: the former Brazilian footballer Ronaldo.
At that time, Ronaldo was playing for Barça, a team that on October 12, 1996, won by a landslide (1-5) against S.D. Compostela at the San Lázaro stadium. Behind the goal where Ronaldo scored “the best goal of the 1996-1997 Spanish league” according to commentators, was the logo of our company, Castrosua. We witnessed a play that is still remembered today, although, as a company with Galician roots, we would have preferred a different result for the team coached by Fernando Vázquez. 😉
Castrosua, Also in Cinema and Series
One of the latest and most mainstream appearances of Castrosua in popular culture occurred in 2017, sneaking into the movie ‘Despido Procedente’, a film by director Lucas Figueroa that can be seen on Netflix.
Although this Spanish-Argentine co-production is set in Buenos Aires, it has scenes filmed in both Argentina and Spain. In our country, footage was shot with another CS-40 City body model, powered by CNG (we remind you of a post about CNG).
As reported by the Argentine magazine Colectibibondi (focused on transport news), the bus, provided by the Madrid Municipal Transport Company, was customized for the occasion, posing as a bus (for them, a ‘colectivo’) from the fictional company Tandilense. The bus in the film would be operating for an existing transport line in Buenos Aires: line 152, which connects the La Boca neighborhood with the municipality of Vicente López. In this report, you can see the exterior redesign of our body, combining blue and brick colors with a very Argentine aesthetic.
To see the CS-40 City again, this time driven by the EMT of Madrid and with an Iveco engine), you can turn to another film, to a scene from the famous film ‘Volver’, from 2006 and directed by Pedro Almodóvar.
We have also appeared in series such as Hospital Central or Periodistas again with a CS40 City on an Iveco chassis.
…And in Video Games?
And to conclude this post about Castrosua’s presence in popular culture, we share a special case with you. About a year ago, a Twitter user contacted us to tell us that a bus from the survival-horror video game ‘The Last of Us’ seemed to be inspired by the Castrosua CS-40 body. We don’t know if this is true, but the mere fact that one of our followers thought so, we love it! This makes us aware that our company is present in the lives of many people.
Our group will continue to work hard to contribute to making our road passenger transport as comfortable, safe, and sustainable as possible. In the meantime, we will remain attentive to other star appearances of our bodies in cinema, television, etc. There is no greater pride for a family business like ours than to be part of a country’s popular culture!
You can now unbuckle your seatbelt, did you enjoy the trip? 🙂 Do you remember any other stellar appearances? Share them with us!
