El Hormiguero has managed to turn two ants into stars of Spanish television. Romania has watched the phenomenon closely and has reached a sensible conclusion: we want it all. The ants included.
Pablo Motos unveiled on Monday during the show a few clips from Furnicuțele, Romania’s adaptation of El Hormiguero, and used the moment to celebrate that the format is delivering strong results there.
And it’s not simply an announced international version tucked away in a drawer. The show premiered in Romania last April and is already airing its second season, now led by Cătălin Măruță alongside Scamă and Blană.
The adaptation originated after Antena TV Group officially acquired the rights to the format distributed internationally by Onza. The deal added to the versions that El Hormiguero has had in other markets and confirmed something quite hard to achieve on television: a program so closely tied to Pablo Motos’s personality could travel while remaining recognizable.
Because the video shown on Antena 3 leaves little doubt about where that comes from.
There is the host. There is the desk. There are the guests. There are the challenges. There is that television ecosystem where at any moment someone could end up answering a compromising question, triggering something, singing a song, or discovering that the production department has built a seven-meter machine specifically to scare him.
In short: it’s El Hormiguero.
And then the ants appear.
There’s Something About Those Ants
Scamă and Blană are the Romanian equivalents of Trancas and Barrancas and probably deserve one thing to be made clear before we go on: they seem to be doing their job perfectly.
Another matter entirely is their appearance.
It’s not that they’re ugly. That’s not the descriptor.
They’re odd. Almost “macabre.”
Trancas and Barrancas have spent many years on television and we’ve got their image etched in memory. That’s why seeing Scamă and Blană is jarring. They wear the intensity in their eyes, like two beings who have just returned from a place they’d rather not discuss.
You see them and you immediately want to ask:
«Is everything okay?».
And you know they will answer:
«Yes».
But you won’t quite believe it.
There is something fascinating about them. They seem like two ants who have lived four seasons more than they actually have. As if, between episodes, they don’t stay in a dressing room but head out to settle unfinished business.
They carry an aura that makes you wonder whether they’ll ask the guest a question or present themselves that very night at their home with a consigliere.
And the best part is the contrast.
In Spain we’ve been watching Trancas and Barrancas for twenty years and we’ve normalized them completely. They’re two ants who pop up from a table, speak with international celebrities, and this year, to cap it all off, they’ve debuted arms and hands.
But just thirty seconds of the Romanian version is enough for Trancas and Barrancas to suddenly look like George Clooney and Brad Pitt on a red carpet.
It isn’t Scamă and Blană’s fault. They’ve come to work.
I suppose it’s very hard to replicate the aesthetics of the Spanish ants. A tiny variation in material or colors can clash. But in this case, the change is more than evident. They resemble them a lot (which is quite an achievement), but with a more “macabre” aesthetic. They’re a slightly Dantean parody of Trancas and Barrancas.
‘El Hormiguero’ Is Working Very Well in Romania
The gag shouldn’t mask the important news: the Romanian adaptation is finding an audience.
Antena 1 asserts that the first week of the second season clearly improved the slot’s performance versus the same period the previous year. In its urban 21-to-54-year-old target, the network reported increases of 120% in audience share and 73% in rating compared to the first week of September 2025. One episode also reached a 20.3% share in that specific demographic. These figures were released by the network itself based on its Research department’s analysis, so it’s worth reading them in that frame, but the trend is sufficiently notable.
So beware of laughing too hard at the ants because, while we joke, they’re gathering data.
And probably that’s the best news for Pablo Motos, Jorge Salvador and the 7 y Action team.
El Hormiguero isn’t exporting merely the generic idea of seating a celebrity in front of a host. It has achieved something much more complex: turning its universe into a format recognizable outside Spain.
Interviews, humor, games, spectacle and, of course, two ants peeking out from a table.
Now there is only one thing left: an official exchange.
Scamă and Blană visiting Trancas and Barrancas in Madrid.
All four together.
Pablo Motos trying to keep control.
And us finding out, once and for all, what on earth those ants have seen.
