'Galgos' does not want to be the Spanish 'Succession'

It's the elephant in the room.

Those responsible for

, the new dramatic series that Movistar Plus+ is preparing, have assumed it and that is why the answer is very clear:

will not be the Spanish

.

“From minute one it was what was on the table.

The approach was: let's make a family saga, but not like

”, says Curro Novallas, executive producer of

.

There were only three days left to finish filming for this Buendía Estudios production when EL PAÍS attended the recording at the Fuentemilanos aerodrome (Segovia) in mid-December.

Outside the shelter, cold, wind and the plane in which one of the characters travels.

Because the Somarriba family, the protagonist of this story, moves in circles in which it is normal to travel in private planes or get married in 19th century palaces.

Pablo Remón, Lucía Carballal, Clara Roquet and Francisco Kosterlitz sign the scripts for this story about the tensions within the clan that owns a pastry, chocolate and baby food company.

Susana Herreras, another of the producers of the series, recalls its origins: “Someone read in an article that 80% of Spanish family businesses did not survive to the third generation.

Either the company or the family survive, but not both.

The potential for conflict generated by the fact that you are celebrating a baptism in the same place where you are negotiating is enormous”.

"It's as if Christmas Eve dinner and a meeting took place at the same table," describes Carlos López, another of the series' producers.

To the problems, grudges and pending accounts within the family,

The director Félix Viscarret (left) directs a scene with Adriana Ozores and Patricia López Arnaiz. Manuel Román

The plot quickly refers to

, the multi-award winning HBO series about a billionaire family that owns a media conglomerate and the fight for succession in the family business.

One of the main differences with

will lie in the tone.

“The idea was to be naturalists, to be very vigilant of the truth, to meddle with the cameras in the lives of this family in a way rarely seen,” says Novallas.

To do this, they invested a lot of work and time in achieving scripts with which they were satisfied and that reflected the balance they sought between family and business tension.

_

It's a satire that borders on the grotesque, you look at the characters from the outside and it's hard to get attached to them because if you do, the next minute you want to kill them.

We look at the characters with compassion, we approach them although without sanctifying anyone”, continues Novallas.

Adriana Ozores, Óscar Martínez, Marcel Borràs, Patricia López Arnaiz and María Pedraza play some of the members of this dysfunctional family, a cast to whom director Félix Viscarret proposed a different way of working than usual to continue along this naturalist line.

“We wanted to gravitate towards the characters, not make the classic marks or condition the interpretation of the actors by planning.

The characters are swimming trying to get their heads out of the water in a family and professional whirlwind, and that translates into a staging in which we are a lot with the characters, in the first person, ”he explains.

A moment from the filming of the sixth episode of 'Galgos'. Manuel Román

greyhounds

It has been shot in more than 80 different locations in Madrid, Cantabria and Brussels.

"If we were talking about people who have a lot of money, one of the ways to tell it without putting it in the viewer's nose was for the series to move, to see many locations," says Curro Novallas.

In Cantabria, the team recorded for three weeks in Comillas, Cabezón de la Sal and Santander in places such as the Magdalena Palace, the Sobrellano Palace or the Marqués de Valdecilla estate.

“They are places where the characters would be.

You understand not only the economic and social status, but also the vision of life they have”, explains Viscarret.

He has directed four of the six episodes of the series, and Nely Reguera has been in charge of the other two.

“We were not looking for opulence or portraying that world trying to beautify it, but the other way around,

We want luxury to be portrayed because you are inside it,” says Reguera.

This deployment has forced a level of production that, according to those responsible for it, is above the usual for family sagas shot in Spain.

The director Félix Viscarret and the actor Marcel Borràs, at the Sobrellano Palace.

Manuel Roman

Nothing is accidental in this series, nor is the choice of the field in which the family works, the bakery, as Susana Herreras explains.

“After researching and testing many options, Lucía [Carballal] and Pablo [Remón] proposed this as the first option due to the number of possibilities it offered when it came to dealing with interesting topics.

Health, the change in diet, politics, regulation… In addition, there are references in Spain to well-known candy factories and people feel it very much from here”, says the producer.

Carlos López agrees with that feeling of closeness: “As a spectator, when they talk to you about

or technological assets you don't really know what it is, this is very accessible and easy to understand and even offers very interesting aesthetic contrasts”.

Novallas adds that the subject has allowed them to open spaces for comedy, "a black, acid humor that is present in life and fits into the naturalism we are talking about."

Patricia López Arnaiz and Adriana Ozores, on the set of 'Galgos'. Manuel Román

Not just

.

Family sagas have been feeding television for decades.

Successful titles in the eighties such as

or

already embraced the drama of being rich and working with your own family.

In Spain, stories like

or

they also slipped into the bowels of struggling family clans.

"This series tells that the rich also cry," says Adriana Ozores as she tries to warm up during a break from filming.

“You start to see those little people who have the same problems, the same things happen to them emotionally, they suffer the same way.

It is democratic in a sense”, adds the actress.

"Seeing that contrast between abundance and lack is dramatic and comical at the same time," completes Patricia López Arnaiz, who plays her daughter in fiction, as well as María Pedraza, who believes that the appeal of these stories it is in the possibility of empathizing with what happens to the characters.

"Not because you are rich you have to feel different things, the problems are different but it feels the same," she says.

For Susana Herreras,

“Family sagas portray all the light and all the darkness at the same time that your father or your mother are your bosses.

In the same context you can explore the family and the business, and the insecurities that this generates.

Life is often about setting limits, in the family and at work, and if everything is mixed up it is much more difficult to do so”.

María Pedraza, during the filming of 'Galgos'. Emilio Pereda

You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on