About

San Escobar is a fictional country stemming from a gaffe made by Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski while speaking to reporters about his meeting with the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to discuss Poland's bid for a seat on the U.N. Security Council in January 2017.

Origin

On January 10th, 2017, Poland's foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski spoke to a group of reporters at the U.N. headquarters in New York City about his lobbying efforts to secure a two-year term on the U.N. Security Council as the nonpermanent member nation of Eastern Europe. While giving his statement, Waszczykowski noted that he had meetings with foreign officials of nearly 20 countries, including Caribbean nations like "Belize and San Escobar."





“We have the opportunity to realize nearly 20 meetings with different ministers, with some countries in the Caribbean perhaps for the first time in the history of our diplomacy. For example, countries such as Belize or San Escobar.”

Spread

Shortly after Waszczykowski's interview entered online circulation, many Polish news outlets and people on Twitter pointed out that "San Escobar" is a non-existent country. In response, the Polish Foreign Ministry's spokesperson released a statement explaining that the minister had made a mistake while trying to name Saint Kitts and Nevis, an East Caribbean island nation also referred to as "San Cristóbal y Nieves" in Spanish language.





Despite the official statement, jokes about Waszczykowski's made-up country "San Escobar" began circulating on Twitter and elsewhere in the social media, beginning with the creation of a Twitter account and a Facebook page representing the island nation later that same day, complete with a custom-designed flag (shown below). Within 48 hours of launch, they gained over 4,400 followers and more than 72,000 likes, respectively.





In the following days, many users on Twitter added to the lore of San Escobar using the hashtag #SanEscobar by creating mockup images of its banknotes and promotional flyers for tourism, while others joked that Waszczykowski was probably distracted from watching Narcos, a Netflix crime drama series telling the story of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. By January 12th, Waszczykowski's gaffe had been covered by news outlets in Poland as well as several major English-language news sites, including the BBC, The New York Times, Washington Post.

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