YMMV / Cuarto Milenio

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Enrique de Vicente is one of the most recognizable guests in the history of the program, but he tends to be very divisive among viewers. Many see him as a mainstay of the show due to his charisma, showmanship and colourful stances, but others consider him a conspiracy-obssessed clown who continuously ruins serious debates. A third camp considers him just sufficiently entertaining to be tolerable.
  • De Vicente's perennial rival José Manuel Nieves also breaks the fanbase with his appearances. While he is liked for his rational approach, fascinating topics and passion for science, there are still many people who find him overbearing and pedantic, especially when debates turn heated. Even those who side with him sometimes admit that he is a bit too irritable to be an entirely good representative of skepticism (which might be why Jiménez stopped putting him in debates unless very occasionally).
  • Jaime "Jaigar" Garrido acts essentially as a serious, even smug version of De Vicente, which makes him a more conventional debater at the cost of lacking all of his partner's charm. Some like him better, while others see him as intensely unpleasant in comparison.
  • Álex N. Lachhein, the program's resident nature expert, is another of its most polarizing figures, especially regarding his critical opinions about modern environmentalism and animalism. While some love him, others actually came to the extent of opening a Change petition to remove him from the show (although it was not very successful, gathering less than 6,000 people).
  • Col. Pedro Baños is also a favorite among many people due to his first-hand knowledge of geopolitics and expressive style, to the point he received his own short-lived spinoff show, La mesa del coronel, thanks to it. However, those who don't agree with his political stances become really fired up every time he shows up.
• Broken Base:
  • The program carries a perpetually rowdy reception in pop culture (there will likely always be people stopping at the "show about ufos and ghosts" label), yet it has also caused what has been described as a true social phenom in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.
  • The note in brackets above has its own debate. People watch Cuarto Milenio for a huge variety of topics, but you can find fans of the classical "mystery" topics clashing against more science-oriented people and vice versa about which field should the show focus more on.
• Critic-Proof: The whole show is an example of this, having been attacked by all sorts of critics, rivals, journalists, politicians and many other people with or without reasons to do so, yet also being easily one of the most sustainedly successful Spanish TV programs ever.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Santiago Camacho was one of the most popular collaborators of Cuarto Milenio, as attested by the success of his podcast Días Extraños since he left the show. Many people lamented the Executive Meddling that led him to depart in the first place.
  • Pablo Fuente became the show's most popular investigator after the COVID-19 Pandemic affair (see below), in some ways taking the place of Camacho. His own departure from the show, this time due to his new job in United States, was similarly lamented.
  • Fernando García Echegoyen, a seaman and naval expert, presents one of the most popular sections.
  • Dr. José Cabrera was already one of the show's most legendary guests before he went to voluntary retirement in 2015, but after his return in 2021, he basically went through the roof, charming the new audiences (and rekindling the love of those who still remembered him) with his tons of knowledge and charisma.
  • The segment since 2021 with writer Juan Soto Ivars about modern censorship became one of the most liked and popular sections in social media every week.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Jiménez was once asked about former members of the show, specifically if he was referring to them when he previously talked about partners who broke up with him in bad terms and for money. While he stated he wasn't talking about "all of them", his wording certainly implies some of them were. Most of the names mentioned in the interview have been jossed, either because they never really left full time or because different reasons for their departures were given, but the cases of Luis Álvarez and Francisco Contreras Gil remain as a possibility.
  • An outlandish theory claims that Pablo Fuente is actually a covert agent of the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (the Spanish secret service) or some foreign intelligence agency, possibly in partnership with Col. Pedro Baños. The hypothesis does make some entertainingly true points, for instance the fact that Fuente was almost unknown before his tenure with Baños or that his surname happens bizarrely to be the Spanish word for "source", but otherwise it is not an especially popular or believable claim. Jiménez and Fuente have both joked about it, with the former even jokingly claiming that Fuente is really a Russian FSB spy named Pablov Fontenko.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Jiménez's fans don't always get along with those of his former mentor J. J. Benítez, who famously repudiated Jiménez after the latter commented on the Mirlo Rojo affair (a controversy happened in Benítez's own TV show, Planeta Encantado, where a crude CGI clip was made to pass as authentic footage). People on both sides have gone to agree that Benítez overreacted, but the rift is still there.
  • Even if there's a lot of overlap between both fandoms, there used to be some rivalry with the radio program La Rosa de los Vientos, which broadcasts in a radio station rival to that of Jiménez's old Milenio 3 and was directed at the time by another mentor of Jiménez, Juan Antonio Cebrián. Ironically, in this case the bad blood didn't extend to the creators themselves, as they remained in good terms until Cebrián's death in 2007. There was some blood with Cebrián's successor Bruno Cardeñosa, a Friend Turned Rival to Jiménez, but the two eventually reconciled years later, assuring that fans had been overstating the intensity of their real beef.
  • The hosts of RTVE science show Órbita Laika tried to invoke a rivalry a couple times, though they mostly failed due to their own show's obscurity.
• Fan Nickname:
  • INAO^note The bookshelf in Jiménez's in-show office features a book apparently titled INAO that becomes especially visible next to his head in close-ups. It's actually an edition of Fernando Jiménez del Oso's El síndrome OVNI ("The UFO Syndrome") that happens to be overturned, but the fans found the resultant word funny and made it famous, often using it in the place of the real term.
  • The Chape^note An intentionally mangled English translation of chapa, Spanish slang for a boring speech or lecture, in this case referring to Jiménez's closing monologues at the end of the show. Fans invented it after Jiménez used the original term to describe his own speeches in a moment of humorous Self-Deprecation.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Cuarto Milenio has quite of a following in rest of the Hispanosphere, with many Latin American viewers watching it online.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • At the beginning of the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic crisis, as soon as January, Jiménez gathered a cadre of science guests who warned that the Spanish government was ill-equipped to manage the virus and that a national catastrophe was surely coming. Spanish press quickly criticized Jiménez and the show for supposedly spreading alarmist nonsense... only for the team's words to turn out completely right. The show and its spinoffs doubled their viewers afterwards, to the point an entirely new series had to be launched, Informe Covid, where Jiménez brings scientists and doctors every week to inform about the pandemic's status.
  • As mentioned above, the guests of science show Órbita Laika used to take potshots at Cuarto Milenio for including ufology between its usual topics. Years later, it became known that Ángel Martín, Órbita Laika's first host, had suffered a psychotic break after his tenure in the show and had passed time in a psychiatric hospital while hallucinating with aliens and ufos of all things. The irony was not lost for some.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2020, the troupe of polarizing comedian David Broncano made fun of Cuarto Milenio's successful prediction of the COVID-19 topic on the saying that a stopped clock is right twice a day, which earned him the ire of many for the perceived inaccuracy and slander of the experts gathered by the program. Another comedian, Héctor de Miguel, then discovered that Broncano had worked under Jiménez in the latter's previous radio program Milenio 3 in 2014, something that Broncano went to claim to have forgotten.
• Memetic Badass: Former member Luis Álvarez became briefly one due to a reportage about Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel, where Álvarez showed up smoking a cigar in a hilariously matter-of-fact way while speaking about the murderer.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Every time really weird stuff (not necessarily paranormal) comes up in Spanish media, chances are that either Jiménez and/or Cuarto Milenio will be namedropped. It spawned an image macro series with Jiménez speaking about mundane oddities. Jiménez himself commented how proud he is of having such a hilarious memery weaved about him.
  • Enrique de Vicente is also parodied with some frequency due to his over-the-top opinions, the favorite meme being him stating "I'm not saying it is a conspiracy... but it is a conspiracy," in parody to Giorgio Tsoukalos's infamous meme about aliens.
  • The brawls between De Vicente and José Manuel Nieves also feature a lot in memes, which often portray them as boxers or Fighting Game characters facing off. After so many years, the joke became an Ascended Meme around 2020, and it was later nicknamed "Tertullian Kombat" after a fan's artwork.
  • A scene with Jiménez stating "more mysterious than this... few... things (are)" is popular as a reaction take in YouTube.
  • "The guy of the ghosts"^note In 2020, Jiménez was interviewed in the podcast Tiempo de Juego COPE about the events covered above in Harsher in Hindsight, specifically asked about how the affair had allowed him to shed his "ghosts and ufos" image and be appreciated as a true divulgation journalist. However, the show's member tasked with introducing Jiménez, Víctor Fernández, had the occurrence to laugh and present him jokingly as "the guy of the ghosts" - exactly the thing which the podcast's episode was being set against. The joke attracted a ton of criticism and attacks, with people calling Fernández an unprofessional idiot and labelling the moment as an Epic Fail for the entire podcast.
  • Iker Jiménez is Shia LaBeouf^note In 2018, Carmen Porter shared an old pic of 14-year-old Iker Jiménez, whom viewers quickly noted to look uncannily like the American actor. Others also compared him to Dustin Hoffman.
    • Iker Jiménez is Bustamante.^note A variation happened in 2022, when Jiménez shared a pic sporting new sunglasses and haircut, which led people to comment how much did they make him look like pop singer David Bustamante.
  • Images of Jiménez holding up a faca (a massive razor knife used in 19th century Spain as a street fighting weapon), especially one in which he looks hilariously fascinated with it, became popular in 2021 after a reportage on the topic. It was photoshopped in plenty and is still posted whenever Jiménez gets critical and/or combative on media.
• Nausea Fuel: The reportage about Spanish bandolero Tragabuches included some delightful stories to revolve the stomach, like that of a bullfighter ripping off his own half-plucked out eye, or that of the title bandit devouring a donkey fetus, with an appropriate recreation featuring actors hamming up the Squick factor.
• Nightmare Fuel: Many of the program's topics can be sinister, morbid or just plain scary, so it has a reputation to be unsafe to watch by impressionable people and/or with the room's lights off (especially back when high-budgeted recreation sequences, the aptly named Diarios del Miedo, were part of the show). Jiménez often comments he must always place the most horrifying contents late into the show's running time in order not to lose any share.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Carmen Porter used to be most disliked member of the team by a wide margin, with fans criticizing her lack of TV skills and accusing of her of being in the show only for being Jiménez's wife. It came to the point that fans often blamed her with literally everything bad that happens in Cuarto Milenio, from members leaving to unpopular decisions being taken, and some even compared her to Yoko Ono of all people. However, her reception improved dramatically over the years thanks to her entertaining onscreen chemistry with Jiménez, eventually becoming able to comfortably replace Jiménez in Horizonte while the latter was ill with COVID in 2022 (she even received her own show around the time, Futura, although it failed to take off due to its niche topics).
• The Scrappy: Clara Tahoces is considered one of the most (if not the most) boring collaborators of the show. It doesn't help that she is a personal friend to Carmen Porter, fueling rumors that the latter pressed to have her in the program.