Aitor Gabilondo, the Basque producer and scriptwriter who will be lined with 'Patria'

• Series.Polémica with the poster of 'Homeland'

Compared to the Civil War

, the issue of ETA has been little covered in Spanish cinema and much less on television.

There are quite a

titles (

, etc), almost all directed by Basques (Imanol Uribe, Eloy de la Iglesia, Julio Medem, Helena Taberna, Miguel Courtois, Borja Cobeaga , in this order), but none of them have had the same expectations as the adaptation of

,

Fernando Aramburu's

that premieres on HBO next Sunday, September 27, coinciding with the closing of the San Sebastian Festival.

This time it is the

(in

slang

, a person who assumes the dual role of executive producer and main screenwriter) Aitor Gabilondo who,

, takes the reins of this ambitious project that promises to be the audience phenomenon of the season.

For now you can rest assured: the reviews have been very favorable and the work is already considered the most complete and accurate audiovisual portrait of ETA before, during and after the lead years.

A 48-year-old Donostiarra, Gabilondo, creator of successful series such as

, was a visionary when it came to

before it was published in 2016. At that time he already had in mind another production with a similar plot that he quickly abandoned to change for this one.

The subject touches him closely.

He grew up in the Basque Country in the 80's. "I am Basque, I went to the ikastola, my whole family is Basque, I was born in 1972,

, and more than that, ETA at ground level , in the street. And I needed to tell it. And I didn't want to do a series of good guys and bad guys. The phrase that I have repeated to myself has been "pain has no side," he said in an interview with El País.

It refers to the controversy that the Patria cartel caused weeks ago, dedicating the same space to a dead ETA victim on the ground as to an ETA member who was tortured during a police interrogation.

It is therefore not surprising that neither the Civil Guard nor

, where the novel is located, have refused to collaborate with the project.

Even Aramburu, who preferred not to get into the script - although he celebrated the choice of Gabilondo as the adapter of his book - described the poster as "wrong".

Gabilondo's attempt at equidistance is going to cost him a lot of trouble and he knows it: "For the first time I have wondered what they are going to say about me:

Are they going to call me a façade?"

"I had a very dear friend who was killed by ETA. And I have had acquaintances who ended up in ETA. Some of them were related to the death of that friend. I have also had threatened relatives who have had to live with an escort."

Father of two daughters and married to screenwriter

Gabilondo has the need to explain, but what he really wants is to explain to his 14-year-old daughters what really happened.

"Young people don't know what ETA is."

The Basque lives with them in the Chamartín neighborhood of Madrid and spends time in an apartment he has in San Sebastián near Ondarreta beach.

.

Mau works at Alea Media, Gabilondo's production company, in the Research and Development department.

The

has described as "expensive" the production of

, which was initially going to be broadcast on one of the Mediaset channels.

The Vasile emporium, together with Publiespaña, are on the board of directors of Alea Media, which closed the 2019 financial year with losses of almost 700,000 euros despite having had sales of 11 million euros.

It is foreseeable that the producer will recover with

from its negative figures.

Alea Media's latest fiction,

, starring Belén Rueda, has been

Telecinco

(it can also be seen on Amazon Prime) due to the discreet audience result in its premiere.

Hence, her version of Aramburu's novel is her lifeline after this hard year of the covid.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• ETA

• Bildu

• Civil Guard

• Parot doctrine

Basque Country Former ETA member Igor González Sola appears dead in his Martutene cell

SpainBildu establishes the approach of ETA prisoners as a condition to negotiate the Budgets

Basque CountryEH Bildu praises Sánchez's "symbolic step" with ETA and asks for a 'roadmap' for rapprochement

See links of interest

• Last minute

• TV programming

• Spanish translator

• 2020 calendar

• Horoscope today

• Movies Today

• Topics

• Coronavirus news

• Live, 19th stage of the Tour: Bourg en Bresse - Champagnole

• Masters 1,000 of Rome, live: Nadal - Lajovic