{"id":683106,"date":"2026-03-26T12:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/683106\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T12:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:23:14","slug":"what-it-could-mean-for-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/683106\/","title":{"rendered":"What It Could Mean for Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEarly last May, nearly 150 of the good and great in Spain\u2019s film and TV industries led by Pedro and Agust\u00edn Almod\u00f3var, Javier Bardem, Pen\u00e9lope Cruz, and Alejandro Amen\u00e1bar signed a joint\u00a0 open letter <\/a>expressing their gratitude to Domingo Corral<\/a>,\u00a0 who has just been removed by giant Spanish telco Telef\u00f3nica as the director of fiction and entertainment of Movistar Plus+<\/a>, the biggest Spanish pay TV\/SVOD service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThey also expressed their concern about the future of Movistar Plus+ which under Corral\u2019s groundbreaking creative stewardship came to produce series and films that placed Spain on an international stage scoring just in 2025 the top prize at Series Mania<\/a> \u2013 Alauda Ru\u00edz de Az\u00faa\u2019s \u201cQuerer\u201d \u2013 and a top prize at Cannes \u2013 Oliver Laxe\u2019s Jury Prize laureate\u00a0 \u201cSir\u0101t\u201d which went on to garner two Oscar nominations. Movistar Plus+ won the top plaudit again at September\u2019s San Sebasti\u00e1n \u2013 with \u201cSundays,\u201d once more from Ru\u00edz de Az\u00faa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, nearly 11 months later, Corral is again moving waves. On Tuesday, in some of the biggest news at this year\u2019s Series Mania, \u00a0 HBO Max<\/a> Head of Original Content Sarah Aubrey announced a first-look deal with Corral for \u201cexclusive television services in Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst project up, she said at her Series Mania masterclass, is a series turning on El Nani, a young petty criminal who disappeared in police custody in 1983. The court case involving the Francoist throwback police culprits became a show trial for Spain\u2019s young democracy. The Nani series is written and directed by Alberto Rodr\u00edguez alongside Rafael Cobos<\/a>, who, in another success, are in Series Mania main competition this week with \u201cThe Anatomy of a Moment,\u201d again from Movistar Plus+ under Corral. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder Aubrey, HBO Max is charged with being HBO. Allying with HBO Max, all signs are that Domingo Corral will be able to continue being Domingo Corral.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat are you looking for?\u201d Aubrey was asked at her masterclass. \u201cThe answer always is the best stories from the best creators,\u201d she answered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCorral\u2019s C.V. certainly fits that, having produced Rodrigo Sorogoyen\u2019s \u201cRiot Police\u201d and \u201cThe New Years\u201d \u2013 the later selected for Venice alongside series from Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n, Joe Wright and Thomas Vinterberg <\/a>\u2013 as well as Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo\u2019s \u201cLa Mes\u00edas,\u201d a series which again won at Series Mania and dazzled French critics, being hailed by newspaper Liberation in 2024 as \u201cone of the most beautiful series of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven series which travel internationally, such as \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d Aubrey said at Series Mania, \u201cthere is not the same pressure on a local show to kind of retrofit itself into being a global lead, which is frankly a recipe for disaster. I believe strongly in making a show for its audience and making it specific. And if it is, then it will resonate in success no matter where you watch it,\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the near 10 years when Corral made series at Movistar Plus, they have set out to discover Spain, its settings, styles,\u00a0 concerns, history and talents. At the same time, they celebrate auteurist voices and were made at a budgetary level which proved competitive with production levels in France and Italy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe artistic ambitions of series made by Corral can be stunning. \u00a0 Each episode for instance of \u201cThe Anatomy of a Moment,\u201d co-produced with Arte France, is tinged by a different genre or genres. Episode 1, for example, comes over as a political thriller with horror tropes where Prime Minister Adolfo Sa\u00farez battles in 1976 to persuade \u2013 or bribe \u2013 a Francoist parliament to vote itself out of existence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s not to say that \u201cAnatomy\u201d is high art niche fare. Late last year, it gave Movistar Plus+ the biggest bow of any Movistar Plus+ Original in history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Spanish broadcasters and pay TV operators scrimp on budgets, look ever more to non-fiction or pull out of scripted production entirely \u2013 public broadcaster RTVE \u2013 it may well be that only a global streaming service has the pocket to make the series how Corral wants to make them. That includes deep development. But, as noted in Series Mania\u2019s masterclass, one of the one of the first things Aubrey did in her role was to increase the development budgets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe HBO Max-Corral deal does, however, raise two large questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo far, the Nani series, is well within Rodr\u00edguez and Cobos\u2019 comfort zone. They have spent much of their career as director and writer examining in a highly nuanced fashion the concept of transition in Spanish history: How cops with a Francoist past worked side by side with forward-leaning colleagues well after Spain became a democracy in 1977 (\u201cMarshland\u201d); how Spain could have taken a turn towards modernity but didn\u2019t (\u201cThe Plague\u201d) or did, though democracy came to hang on a\u00a0 thread (\u201cThe Anatomy of a Moment\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, Cobos has just released his first feature as a director, the superbly stylish \u201cGolpes<\/a>,\u201d set in 1982 and spangled with historical doc footage of the period and featuring in its anti-hero Migueli another quinqui like El Nani: marginalized working class criminals who pulled heists in the early \u201880s, driven by a vague sense of desire for freedom and visceral contempt for authority and middle-class convention.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Nani project is more, however, than just one project. It\u2019s the high-profile collaboration of two creatives who gave Movistar Plus+ its first big signature series in the 1580 Seville-set \u201cThe Plague,<\/a>\u201d as well as one of its early Spanish movie hits in \u201cPrison 1977,\u201d a standout episode in innovative lock-down collective series \u201cOffworld\u201d and Movistar Plus+\u2019s second big prize at a French TV festival, in Canneseries\u2019 best short format plaudit for the Cobos\u2019-directed \u201cThe Left-Handed Son,\u201d a touching portrait of a mother and son in Seville, knit by their sense of failure and search for human warmth and respect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo a first question, after this signature collaboration between Rodr\u00edguez, Cobos and Corral, is how many others in Spain\u2019s superb youngish cadre of film and TV creators \u2013 Sorogoyen, Ruiz de Az\u00faa, the Javis and Laxe, to name just a few \u2013 may end up working with Corral.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt just made sense to us that someone with all these deep talent relationships and this great kind of track record and taste would partner with us on looking for new projects,\u201d Aubrey said at her masterclass. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHow many projects Corral can shepherd may depend on a second question, however: Under Paramount ownership via its purchase of WBD, how long will HBO Max go on being HBO? The easy answer to that is nobody knows. The answer, however, will determine part of the future in international of a truly groundbreaking auteur-empowering TV production for which both HBO and Corral have come to be renowned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early last May, nearly 150 of the good and great in Spain\u2019s film and TV industries led by…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":683107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[22212,285715,171,487,14070,286956,253450,173,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-683106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-alberto-rodriguez","9":"tag-domingo-corral","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-hbo-max","12":"tag-movistar-plus","13":"tag-rafael-cobos","14":"tag-series-mania","15":"tag-tv","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116295461647520651","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}