A sung version of the traditional 'true crime'

The journalist Mar Abad (Almería, 49 years old) decided to launch the

(El Extraordinario) despite not being a fan of

or musicals.

"I wanted to join two things that I don't like to make one that I really enjoy," she says.

That enjoyment goes through recounting the Spain of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th through some of the most famous murders of the time.

Stories that are not only narrated, but also sung.

In

this sound space recovers the story of Don Pastor, a strange guy who lives with his maid and his cook when he turns up dead.

His story sounds like a cartoon movie.

That of Hildegart Rodríguez, a precocious 18-year-old intellectual who dies at the hands of her mother, sounds like a waltz and 19th-century ballrooms.

The most recent episode to date focuses on Enriqueta Martí and the false myth of the Raval vampire, which also explains many things about our Spanish identity.

"By learning about these murders, we know our history," explains Abad at the beginning of June in a telematic conversation.

“Actually, crime is a hook to talk about issues such as history, language, the narrative of the serial, I castigate it… It's like teleporting to a recent past that we know nothing about.

I am fascinated by journalism and that vision of the world that it gave then, with the good and the bad and the bad that the profession had”, he says.

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In this newly released second season, the stories are divided into two chapters, to tell things in depth without lengthening the duration of each installment.

By giving it a fictional tone, despite the fact that everything that is told is real, the result of many hours in the newspaper library, Abad seeks to play down the matter.

The music, more danceable than dramatic and that she herself selects together with Andreu Quesada —responsible for the sound design of the

, serves to show the murders in a way that does not generate rejection to those who are not fans of the genre, appealing to other feelings.

"There is a very sought after intention of 'I'm going to tell you a terrifying thing, but I want you to enjoy it".

After so many hours investigating the past, Abad has understood what comedians say, that a sense of humor is the result of reality plus time.

And that everything in life is relative.

“Life is made up of looks, versions, remixes… We are subjects and everything is subjective.

I want to remind people to take things easy because there are no immutable truths or eternal ideologies,” he comments.

File of Hildegart Rodríguez, child prodigy and political and social essayist, who began writing books on sexuality and philosophy in adolescence.

She became a lawyer at the age of 18 and entered university at the age of 13. AGA / Ministry of Culture and Sport

When exploring this string of crimes in a past Spain, it is understood that the essence of then and now are very similar in terms of law, journalism and society.

As the creator of

, “only the forms and the narratives change.

It is important to know where we come from.

And that time is our direct heritage.

What Francoism did is create a cursed parenthesis.

If we remove those abominable 40 years, we are children of that Spain of that time”.

Journalism is more protagonist in this second batch of episodes.

Abad recovers the forms and backgrounds of the newspapers of that time without being carried away by prejudice.

"They are newspapers that would not have a good reputation with today's eyes (as if we were not currently living surrounded by hoaxes), but it is fascinating how they hooked the reader through the use of language."

It is the legacy of authors such as José María Carretero Novillo, whose pseudonym was

and Adelardo Fernández Arias (

), great firms of their time, "they were fascists, who wrote like no one else and wrote literary journalism texts spectacular”, recalls Abad.

but the

uses its plot and its dialogues to vindicate pioneering women in journalism, such as Carmen de Burgos.

Mar Abad interviews the journalist Jordi Corominas in Barcelona during the recording of the episode 'Enriqueta Martí: the false vampire of Raval'. Image courtesy of Mar Abad

Abad, with experience mainly in written journalism and founder of an innovative publishing project like Yorokobu, left everything a few years ago to found El Extraordinario, from where she edits

like

and

.

“It was a risky thing because it was about setting up an audio company at the same time that she was learning to make audio,” she says.

“You start working in a new format, but everything you have learned in the press or on television, plus your personal passions, such as fiction and series in my case, helps you get ahead.

What you can bring to audio as an

it is everything you have learned from other branches and that will enrich your way of doing it.

That is what life is about, learning even knowing that you can make a lot of mistakes and also having fun along the way, ”she defends.

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