We know of Sergio that he killed his parents when he was a minor; that he has just left prison after that and that the police have covered the house from which he tries to rehabilitate himself with cameras in case he messes up something bigger. But the guy (Aron Piper) doesn't let go. He speaks only to his spiritual leader, an evangelical pastor. It is the premise of El silencio (Netflix, premiere on Friday), the new Aitor Gabilondo (San Sebastián, 49 years old). The producer, raised with the limited productions of the nineties (Journalists or The Commissioner: "We had to look for pretexts so that the news or the crime were alone to the newsroom or to the police station because there was no money for foreign affairs") is today, thanks to Patria or Entrevías, one of the great Spanish firms of Spanish television in the streaming era.
Question. The silence speaks to the influence of evangelicals in Spanish society. Did you see a massive pulling ingredient there?
Answer. Since the pandemic, people need answers. And when life is gone... Sergio, the protagonist, has few arguments to sustain his own life, so he deviates into magical thinking. And there are a lot of magical thoughts lately.
Q. Didn't you find the protagonist extreme?
A. We spoke to a man who had killed a person when he was a minor. He would tell us, 'Only my wife and parents know what I did.' He has a whole work environment and friendships that knows nothing of his violent past. He reintegrated, he has a life, a son... And they don't know anything. He would like to say it to be at peace but he knows that, if he says it, the look on him will change.
Arón Piper, in an instant of the first episode of 'The silence'. LANDER LARRAÑAGA/NETFLIX (NETFLIX)
Q. In Spain do we reintegrate well?
A. If you don't believe in reintegration, what do you do? I believe in culture, in education, in managing emotions. That's what this character is about. And, well, all men. I, like everyone, am also, as they say, questioning myself.
Q. How?
A. Deconstructing myself, attending to what is said, reviewing your own life.
Q. And what have you discovered?
A. There is a first moment of instinctive self-defense. 'But what have I done?' I think that's logical. You were so calm and suddenly everything is wrong. Once recovered from the fright, you say: 'Well, it's true.' In the world of television, whatever we wear, if you are male, white and heterosexual then you have it easier. It screws you up a little because you think: 'What I've fought with, what it cost me...' But you learn to see the women around you, how complicated they have it, and what are you going to do? Well, assume it and leave space.
Q. Is that why you are producing series by others?
A. Others and others. Also that my series were called Aitor Gabilondo series and, man, I'm not the Danone, I'm a person.
Q. What other stories would you like to see?
A. Of immigrants. People who come from abroad and are in Spain. We are used to seeing them in France or England and here it is true that there are novels but no series or movies. How they experience our reality, what theirs is like, if there are ghettos, if there are none... I would like to see it.
Q. In the end he will be known more as a producer than as a screenwriter.
A. That makes me angry... I would have liked to be a writer and that's it. Staying on the margins, publishing in Impedimenta and defending a super-radical authorship.
Q. What happened??
A. That I had to eat.
Q. And now look at the triumph, who commands him.
A. Success is always suspect. "Well, if it's very successful, it's not very good." You have to assume that they will always say it.
Q. What do you think?
A. That popular success, from certain environments, is undervalued. If you do badly, you have the prestige of the one who does badly. I, especially at the beginning, had some prestige of this.
Aitor Gabilondo poses at the Netflix offices in Madrid, on April 11. Alvaro Garcia
Q. Does success always lead to failure?
A. Whenever you do one thing, you do the opposite. He who invented airplanes also invented air catastrophe.
Q. Today's television is criticized that the number of series has increased but that the increase in quality is another story.
A. We've gone from doing 12 series a year to doing 100; some reach many people and allow them to be made, I do not know, Self-defense, thistle, Self Tape, which I liked a lot and that seven years ago would not have been done. It would have been a short or a movie that 12 people were going to see. Are they still a minority? Yes. But they are being done. There will always be more pizzerias than fancy restaurants.
Q. Does the fact that everything is going so fast make you think that you will be replaced quickly?
A. I'm not an athlete, I don't beat records. And less in this country, where the sport is to throw the goat from above the bell tower. Climbing too high to someone to let them fall. In addition, it is not that someone is going to come to do something, it is that there are already many doing a lot.
Q. Does your last name give you a competitive advantage?
A. I am Gabilondo because of my father, who is a butcher. Only by making more intense series, Patria especially, maybe they associate me more with my uncle [the journalist Iñaki Gabilondo].
Arón Piper, in an instant of the first episode of 'The silence'. LANDER LARRAÑAGA/NETFLIX (NETFLIX)
Q. Was Patria taking time to come out in this interview?
A. In the end it always comes out. It was an emotional and intellectual journey, intense. The normal thing on television is that there are no expectations. With Patria there were even more than the artistic of adaptation: they were ideological and emotional. And that, well, is weighing. It is a backpack from which you can not abstract. I started the series with doubts and ended it with even more doubts about whether it had been worth it.
Q. Why?
A. Because it didn't matter what he did. The serve positions were fixed. That leaves a bad aftertaste.
Q. Have you lost the desire to make committed series?
A. We will have to continue doing them, because if they are done well, even if they have less audience than the commercial ones, they have hooking. We are missing the Spanish Argentina 1985: state terrorism, state torture, an uncomfortable series. It is essential to do it.
Q. Better than a documentary?
A. I think fiction helps to understand reality. You see Chernobyl and you believe it more than the thousands and thousands of articles that have been written on the subject. Because there are emotions, there are characters, there is no obvious discourse, you let the viewer draw conclusions. This makes me think a lot about the responsibility we have.
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