HBO Spain TV channel to launch soon

HBO is the darling of the streamed TV world, and is now coming to Spain.

Spaniards and TV: an odd combination if ever there was one!

Take a country filled to the brim with beautiful mountains, beaches, cities and people, mix with wonderful weather and a culture that beckons you outdoors at all hours, and chuck in a dash of… wait for it: television. You know, the gogglebox, the telly, that attention-seeking corner of the lounge that compels you to draw the blinds, stay inside and ‘curl up’…

In the wet and windy UK, TV makes sense, and thus Brits have some excellent TV channels and shows as a result.

Spaniards, on the other hand, never really needed TV – they’ve got, well, Spain as their entertainment. And if a Spaniard ever dared to switch the telly on, they soon regretted it – for many, Spanish TV has been uniformly awful since its inception.

But this has all changed in recent years with the rise of on-demand internet TV services such as Netflix, Sky Go and Amazon Now. Today, Spaniards can enjoy the very best programmes from around the world, and the uptake in such services has been rapid indeed.

Which is what has probably tempted HBO (the US Home Box Office TV network) to announce the launch of HBO España. Exact details are scant at this time, but the network responsible for such excellent shows like True Detective, Girls and Game of Thrones recently tweeted that the platform will be “coming very soon”, with Game of Thrones actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reiterating this message while filming season seven – which actually happens to be located in Spain.

The service will be offered as a streaming platform with Vodafone and will be priced at €7.99 per month, and non-Vodafone customers can also sign up to the channel, which will launch in Spain with 3,000 titles ranging from Hollywood movies to documentaries and children’s TV.