Why Spain’s true crime wave is landing on int’l shores

Light in the Darkness, from Carles Porta, is described as “an evolution” of his acclaimed series Crims

Spanish true crime shows are growing in number and attracting international attention, writes Irene Jiménez, while synergies with scripted crime shows are also now proving increasingly attractive for commissioners of all types.

From established public broadcasters to the most recently launched streamer, buyers in Spain have been seduced by true crime. Whether twisted cases of murder, corruption or sexual abuse, all operators want their piece of success in this genre.

RTVE, Spain’s national public broadcaster, has made true crime one of the differentiating points of its on-demand platform, RTVE Play. “On linear channels we do not offer this genre and that is why we decided to bet on it,” says Alberto Fernández, director of RTVE Play. “True crime is a way of talking about Spanish society at certain moments in history, it is a good genre to explain ourselves.”

Among original productions that the service offers are: The Murderer Of The Deck (Goroka), about a serial killer from 2003; The Theft Of The Codex (Cuarzo Producciones (Banijay Iberia)), about the theft of the Calixtino Codex from the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in 2011; Malay: Secret Operation (Atlantia Media), about the largest case of political and urban corruption in Spain; and Pact Of Silence (in-house production), a miniseries about the mysterious disappearance of a thief, who carried out petty thefts in Madrid in the 1980s after being arrested.

Previously, the service has also produced Lucía En La Telaraña (El Cañonazo, The Facto), about the unsolved murder of a woman in 2008, and Edelweiss (100 Bullets (The Mediapro Studio)), the story of a sect that operated between 1971 and 1984 in Spain.

“I think that the concept of true crime in Spain is more lax and broader compared to the American one,” adds Fernández, who says that part of the reason could be that there is “a certain saturation of the genre in its most classic conceptions”.

Even so, RTVE Play will have two new true crimes about murders in 2024, one of them in co-production with Valencia’s public broadcaster.

“True crime can be something very local and, therefore, it doesn’t always travel. A crime has a lot to do with the society in which it happens, with the collective memory of the country, and that is why its interest at an international level is sometimes limited. In the documentary field, we do have proposals on social issues to work with other countries, but not on true crime,” says Fernández.

This vision is opposite to the experience of Galician company Ficción Producciones, which entered the genre following the fiction series Operación Marea Negra, an Amazon exclusive in which several regional public TV stations in Spain also participate. The story, based on the true events of the first homemade narco-submarine that reached European shores, is distributed internationally by Entertainment One.

“For example, Roku first acquired the drama and then the documentary for its premiere in the US and Mexico. We thought that both Operación Marea Negra and A Historia De Crimes (A History Of Crimes), the second true crime production we have tackled, would only have local distribution, but we have seen that there is appetite outside of Spain,” says Mamen Casal, production and sales coordinator at Ficción Producciones.

Specifically, A Crime Story, another Amazon exclusive with two seasons, has sparked the interest of international buyers as a format.

“We have avoided recreations, so each episode deals with several cases, with testimonies from the victims and contributions from a team of experts who remain in every episode,” he emphasises.

The greatest exponent of true crime in Spain is the journalist Carles Porta and his series Crims premiered on the Catalan public television TV3 in 2020, with three seasons already produced. The show is available nationally through Movistar Plus+ and Netflix.

The Murderer Of The Deck is among the original true crime shows on RTVE Play

“What surprises our customers is that Crims has impeccable quality, both visually and narratively,” says Beatrice Nouh, sales director at Onza Distribution, which is in charge of international sales. Crims has been acquired by ZDF in Germany and by Netflix for Latin America, as well as reaching China. Porta’s prestige has not stopped growing and at the end of 2023 he presented Light In The Darkness, an original Movistar Plus+ production, defined by himself as “the evolution of Crims.”

“We have a bigger budget and we are betting on a more cinematic narrative. For me, true crime starts from journalism, with powerful stories that help us understand things about society, far from just the morbid aspects. I’m very satisfied with Light In The Darkness because the result is very powerful,” says Porta. The journalist is evaluating proposals from European and Latin American countries to make the international leap, “but what we do requires time and calmness, it cannot be done quickly.”

Another Spanish company that has delved into true crime is You First Originals. In 2022, the production company released 11 Tiros FC in co-production with Beta Entertainment Spain, about murders, rapes, suicides, fights, kidnappings and crimes of all kinds that have taken place in the world of football. The eight-episode series was acquired by HBO Max for its premiere in Europe and Latin America, and has also reached the Middle East through Shahid, the MBC Group streamer.

“We are working on other true crime shows focused on areas such as music,” says Javier Martínez, head of original production for You First. The company is also developing other formats in which artificial intelligence plays a key role in investigations.

2023 also marked the first foray into true crime for Atresplayer, Atresmedia’s SVOD platform, and the free-to-air TV channel Cuatro, from Mediaset España.

The former’s Don’t Tell Anyone revolves around the murder of a family near Madrid by a young Brazilian who was narrating the events to a friend on WhatsApp. For its part, Cuatro has premiered the weekly primetime program Code 10 (Producciones Mandarina), the only free-to-air offering in the genre currently in Spain on a national level.

The fiction industry is also benefiting from this explosion of true crime. In 2023, Netflix released The Body On Fire (Arcadia Motion Pictures), a fictional series based on the fascinating “case of the urban guard”, one of the most notable episodes of Crims.

The same platform will launch The Asunta Case in 2024, a fictional miniseries about the murder of a teenager by her adoptive parents in 2013 in Galicia. Bambú Producciones already explored the case in one of the first true crime series on Spanish television, The Asunta Case: Operación Nenúfar, which premiered on Antena 3 in 2017, but with little audience data. Perhaps at that time the genre was not mature enough among the Spanish public.

Another example of synergy between true crime and scripted is El Marqués, a new fiction series from Mediaset España based on the murder of five people in a small town in Seville in 1975. The case will also have its own true crime series, Los Galindos: All The Truth, underlining the growing influence of this fast-growing genre.