Aitor Gabilondo, the man behind the series "Patria" | CNN

All about "Patria", the expected premiere of HBO 3:03

(CNN Spanish) - He

is the man who saw the possibilities of a long Spanish novel written in 2016 by the Basque author Fernando Aramburu.

A novel that became a publishing phenomenon with more than a million copies sold in 30 languages.

His name is Aitor Gabilondo and he is the executive producer of one of HBO Europe's most ambitious productions, the miniseries “Patria”.

WATCH here the special of the series «Homeland»: Two women, one land

Aitor Gabilondo has that tickling that any creator can experience when his work is going to be exposed to the public.

He says it is a tickling “but one of the good ones.

We believe that we have a good series that can connect with the public and we hope that it does.

And we also have the good part.

It is that it can no longer be changed.

It is already done.

Now you can only wait until you like it ”.

Gabilondo tells us by videoconference, after presenting the series at the San Sebastián Film Festival, that he wanted to tell a story through the eyes of two women, Miren and Bittori.

In a market so saturated with excellent series on different platforms, Gabilondo believes that his can find its space because it is “a universal series of very recognizable relationships, but it has the particularity of being from an area of ​​the Basque Country, a very special area, very different, and I think that the way of behaving, of the aesthetics of the place itself, will attract attention ”.

The miniseries was shot in places such as San Sebastián, Soraluze and Elgoibar in the Basque Country, for 22 weeks, with the participation of 110 actors and more than 500 extras.

The series tells in 8 chapters with abundant "flashbacks" the story of two families, 9 people, but especially of these two women, mothers and wives, who are seeing how their close friendship does not support the violence of the terrorist group ETA.

One of them, Bittori, hears the shots in the street that end with the life of her husband, a small transport businessman who cannot pay for the extortion that ETA exercised in the Basque Country for years.

The other, Miren, is dragged by the fanaticism of her son who joins the ranks of ETA until he commits several murders.

The choice of the two actresses, known above all for previous works closer to comedy than drama, was not an arbitrary decision.

It is true that Basque actresses were wanted, but their roles also required another registration.

“I knew them because I had worked with both of them in the past, but when I read the novel and when I was writing the scripts, I could only see them.

And in the first place they were Basque.

They came with all their personal experience, which I think they could, let's say, put that interpretation on as well.

And then they came from comedy.

And I think that gave me security because I thought: well, since they are comical, they are going to take away the solemnity of the German, because the temptation to get very solemn and bombastic was there and then they are actresses with a very great naturalness, and I thought that was a value, ”says Gabilondo.

For Gabilondo, the most important challenge of this series was “the emotional part of telling this story, because, although it is a fictional story, it recalls real passages, passages that one by age has lived without strings.

Facing a subject that was not talked about much and trying to avoid because of the pain it caused and the problems it caused and landing it in a fictional series was really the hardest thing for me ”.

One of the protagonists without faces or phrases is the town where the main characters live and where the murder of "Txato" occurs.

Often during the worst years of ETA's terrorism, a large part of society in the Basque Country was afraid of defining itself on one side or another, and silence was often the answer to this violence.

Gabilondo has his own vision of that time: “Yes, I do believe that this is true, that it is said that there was a thick silence, but it is also true that it lasted many years and that silence, that reality was not the same.

Always throughout thirty years society was changing.

It must be said, and it is so, that in the first years close to Francoism, the ETA movement had great social support that was progressively losing over the years, and I think that society was progressively adapting to that discourse.

It is true that this was the case ”.

Even so, the producer is cautious: “It is also true, and I would not like to fall into the simplification of criticizing society in general as an accomplice of the vast majority of people who lived here.

They had very few opportunities or abilities to say anything.

Normal, simple people on the street had a life, who did not want problems, and I believe that this has been a progressive conquest of society ”.

The series has been produced in a format that is used mainly in the US, where the so-called show runner, or executive producer, is the creator of the series and often the writer of the scripts.

The directors are rather craftsmen who respond to the vision of the creator.

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Bittori hugs her husband killed by ETA in one of the most dramatic scenes of the HBO miniseries "Patria".

(Courtesy HBO)

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Young Joxe Mari prepares to attack in one of the most dramatic scenes in "Patria".

(Courtesy HBO)

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Bittory and Miren are two friends and neighbors who share confidences until tragedy hits them in their small town in the Basque Country.

(Courtesy HBO)

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The miniseries was shot in places such as San Sebastián, Soraluze and Elgoibar in the Basque Country, for 22 weeks, with the participation of 110 actors and more than 500 extras.

(Courtesy HBO)

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The creators of the series have wanted to make a sober product, almost like a documentary, to tell the story of two families destroyed by terrorist violence.

(Courtesy HBO)

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Currently, two hundred ETA inmates are serving sentences in Spanish prisons, some very far from the Basque Country.

Basque nationalist political and social sectors have been asking for years to bring these prisoners closer to their homeland.

(Credit: Getty Images)

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Throughout its almost five decades of existence, ETA caused more than 800 deaths and thousands of injuries in Spain.

(Credit: Getty Images)

“It is a figure imported from the United States that is increasingly settled here.

My previous job was almost two years.

When the directors came, my main task was to convey to them as precisely as possible what we had agreed with HBO and what I wanted to carry it out.

They were hours and hours of conversations, of providing aesthetic references, of sharing and then, effectively, leaving them creative freedom on set, on the set, so that they can execute everything that has been said.

But hey, with a permanent, daily conversation about what was being done, that's how it was ”, explains the creator.

The series is considered one of the most important bets of the HBO subsidiary in Europe.

It was filmed mainly in San Sebastián, Elgoibar and Soraluze, in the province of Guipúzcoa, for 22 weeks, with 110 actors and hundreds of extras for the scenes of demonstrations.

In Soraluze, a town of 2,000 inhabitants, up to a quarter of the population participated in some of the scenes.

The series ends with a hug, sparing, quick, but hopeful, which could help the still open wounds in Basque society begin to heal.

Hopefully it helps.

Let's see it.

I believe that the fact that it can be seen in your home without witnesses, you can see it without having to do a social act of going to a place, in privacy, can help, at least to intimately feel that the need to hug, to that generates good feelings.

From there to reality, we will have to do with the years, and the years and the years.

We'll see ”, concludes the scriptwriter and creator of the series.

What you should know about «Homeland»

• The 8-episode miniseries “Patria” will air as of this Sunday, September 27, the first two episodes can be seen via streaming on HBO Max, and two more will be released every weekend.

• On HBO Latino, the series will be available from September 30.

• Created and written by Aitor Gabilondo

• Directed by Félix Viscarret and Óscar Pedraza

• Based on the novel of the same title by Fernando Aramburu

• Produced by HBO Europe in collaboration with HBO Latin America.

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