How 'Love is forever' became a television icon

There are already 2,499 afternoons in the company of

in

.

This Monday there will be 2,500.

But if you add the afternoons of

, before the series jumped from La 1 to Antena 3, there are already more than 4,200 days in the company of Manolita, Marcelino and Pelayo.

They and the bar they run, El Asturiano, are the soul of

, a title that has transcended its category of daily series to become a brand, almost an institution, a true television icon.

“It is already a tradition like the siesta”, summarizes Itziar Miranda.

When it began in 2005, the plot was set in 1936. Now, 17 years later, the plot already takes place in 1981. Meanwhile, it has reviewed 45 years of Spanish history through characters who are already part of the family for their viewers.

“This series is the gift of a lifetime,” says Itziar Miranda, half dressed as Manolita, half Itziar, sitting on the sofa in a dressing room that she has now made her second home.

Although she says it ironically, she is one of the stars of the series along with Manu Baqueiro (Marcelino) and José Antonio Sayagués (Pelayo).

“When we started, nobody talked about that Spain, about the two, three or four Spains that there are.

It is a transversal series on an ideological level”, continues Miranda during a break from filming at the beginning of October.

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The luxury trident plays in the Plaza de los Frutos

So much time working together has made

form a family behind his cameras.

The technical and creative team repeats it and it shows when he walks among the sets and the different departments of the series on a set that recently borders another of the classics of current Spanish television,

.

“I have a thirty-something-year-old son and I've ever told him, 'let's see, Marcelino,'” says José Antonio Sayagués.

"Here we have spent together births, deaths, hard and very difficult moments where we have supported each other, we have understood each other, we have cried," he adds.

A moment between shots during filming in the fictitious Plaza de los Frutos of 'Amar es para siempre'. INMA FLORES

The production of Diagonal is already the Spanish series with the most episodes in history if its two stages are added (the Basque

, with 21 seasons between 1994 and 2015, ended with 3,707 episodes).

That in a daily, where a little more than one episode per day is recorded, is only achieved when everything works like a precision clock and turning the routine into the best of virtues, as explained by Eduardo Casanova, director of this fiction since its first season.

"The routines allow you to have an order and a series of these characteristics has to be something very ordered," says the also executive producer.

This routine forces the actors to get up every day shortly after five in the morning, as José Antonio Sayagués describes: “I get up at 5:15, like the bakers.

I take a shower, have a very powerful breakfast, they pick me up at 6.45 or so and I'm already fresh as if it were 10 in the morning.

You arrive, you change, you put on the bullfighter's suit, they put on makeup, you go up,

you review a bit, you wait to go downstairs, you rehearse, you record and at 5:30 p.m., you go home”.

“We have a schedule that no other production has.

I know that I leave at half past five every day, and for our profession, where everything is chaotic and intermittent, having a routine is a pleasure.

Uncertainty is a terrible thing and it creates a lot of fear and stress.

Also, I love getting up early, getting up at five in the morning, being alone, nobody bothers you…”, completes Miranda.

More narrative rhythm

In these 17 years, the series has been adapting to the changes that have taken place in the audiovisual panorama.

“When we started in 2005, we made the bibles [a document prior to writing the script that includes all the basic information for its development] for an entire season.

For several years, we decided to do them by four-month periods.

We realized that the narrative rhythm and the audiovisual culture of the people have changed a lot and the viewer demanded more rhythm and more fireworks, and a year-long bible made you move slowly and be a slave to what you had written for a while. year before”, explains Casanova, who also points out other changes such as more exteriors (this season the filming outside the set has quadrupled) to gain more appeal.

A make-up artist retouches an actress on the terrace of 'El Asturiano'.

INMA FLOWERS

Much of the weight of the series still being alive so many years later falls on its writers.

A total of 17 people, divided into two teams, are in charge of writing the stories and dialogues of

.

Seven work on the structure and plot, with Beatriz Duque as coordinator, and another seven write the dialogues, coordinated by Ángel Agudo.

Verónica Viñé, plot director and in the series since 2014, is in charge of supervising everything and helping where necessary.

Three of the scriptwriters, Julia Altares, Mercedes Cruz and Macu Tejera, have been around since

, and Viñé describes them as "the historical memory of the series, our

They are the ones that have brought us here.”

Viñé explains how they have adapted the script to the new times.

“Before there were fewer plots, fewer things happened.

Now the public asks for new things to happen all the time because otherwise people get bored, that's how the world is now”.

To do this, they include more episodic characters —who appear in one or a few chapters alone— and more plots that are resolved in a few episodes to lighten the story.

The writing team isn't the only one that has grown over time.

The staff working in other departments has also increased due to the needs of the series.

But a good part of it is maintained from the beginning.

"Since these have been difficult years in the profession and it was very cold outside, people did not move, it was a sure value," explains Casanova.

“And then, we've grown in age.

I have had two daughters here”, says Itziar Miranda.

“For a long time we have been saying about bringing together the children of

in a book ”, the director suddenly recalls about a project that was left unfinished.

“When we started we were single and young.

My daughters call him 'the grandfather of TV', says Miranda, pointing to Sayagués.

Jorge Bosch prepares to record a sequence in 'Amar es para siempre'. INMA FLORES

Could

survive without

?

“It wouldn't be

”, says Viñé.

“The essence of the series is this small family to which we have been attached for 17 years.

We are very interested in what happens to them, that is why every season we try to get all the children out.

This year with Ciriaco we don't have any more left, but we will take the grandchildren out”, says the screenwriter.

“I feel like I make a new series every year.

It is called in the same way, because

It is a brand that we can boast of and the Asturians are its logo, but every year I start a new series, with a new cast, I spend three months casting the best of the profession, we build sets, plots... And all with the privilege of having the same technical team, we don't have the inconveniences of a start-up”, says Casanova.

Since its move to Antena 3, more than 1,500 actors and 27,000 extras have already gone through this production, 285 sets have been built and 37,500 sequences have been recorded for more than 150,000 minutes of broadcast.

The pull that it continues to have is evidenced by its audience data: so far this year it averages a 12.3% share of the screen, around 1.2 million daily viewers.

And the actors, haven't they already run out of Manolita and Pelayo?

“My character has eaten me alive, a lot of things I say or do seem to be in character.

He has enriched me, at work and vitally, he keeps me alive and young.

I am a better person thanks to him”, says Sayagués.

“When I started in this profession and they asked me what female character I would like to play, I would go to

, by Olivia de Havilland, or things like that.

Now I would say without a doubt that Manolita, that no one take it from me ”, continues Itziar Miranda.

“Once I had a nightmare, someone played Manolita for me, and I was very annoyed.

Ugh, how horrible."

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