El Risitas

Juan Joya Borja (born 1962) is a Spanish comedian and actor known by the stage name El Risitas. He gained widespread popularity in 2015 thanks to a series of parodies from a television interview from June 2007 on Jesús Quintero's show Ratones Coloraos.

Joya was born in Sevilla. He had a number of jobs throughout his life, including cooking and unloading sacks of cement. His first appearance on television was in 2000, on Jesús Quintero's show El Vagamundo, where he interviewed on various life situations with his partner El Peíto, in a comedic tone. He became recognizable for his specific laugh which led to his nickname "El Risitas" (translated to "the giggles" in English). He also appeared in the 2005 film Torrente 3: El protector.

In June 2007, Joya appeared on Jesús Quintero's show Ratones Coloraos and described an incident when he worked as a dishwasher. He describes leaving some paella pans (paelleras) at night in the ocean to soak and clean, and when in the morning he returned to retrieve the pans, they had washed out to sea because of high tide. The original video was uploaded to YouTube on June 25, 2007 and received over a million views over the eight years before the meme became widespread.

In March 2014, footage from the interview was used by the Muslim Brotherhood to parody the President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Other parodies were also produced, usually parodying technology and gaming. The most viewed versions of the video subtitled Joya as the designer of the Nvidia GTX 970 graphic card, a designer of Team Fortress 2, a Valve employee discussing Dota 2, a Canon representative discussing the C300 camera, and a cinematographer describing shooting on a Red camera.

In March 2015, the meme received its most attention after the launch of the 2015 MacBook, where Joya was subtitled as a designer who worked on the prototype. Within a month of its uploading, the video received over five million views on YouTube. The meme's impact has been compared to the one of the parodies of the Downfall movie.

Another popular meme was published in April 2015 paroding a political affair in Slovakia known as Vahostav affair, where Joya was subtitled by popular Slovak stand-up comedy performer Jano Gordulic.

In May of that same year, the meme had another success in criticizing Valve Corporation's decision to monetize modding on its Steam platform, with half a million views. Valve quickly reversed its decision afterward.

Film

• 2005: Torrente 3: El protector

Television

• 2000–2002: El Vagamundo, Canal 2 Andalucía
• 2002–2005: Ratones Coloraos, Canal Sur Televisión
• 2005–2012: El loco de la colina, El Gatopardo