The paper house returns to Netflix on April 3 with a fourth season that could mark a new milestone in television consumption; one more in a production that has not stopped surprising and setting records with each installment. In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, the most viewed non-English speaking series on the platform and winner of the international Emmy for the best dramatic series , will try to meet the expectations generated in the third installment, which posed a new robbery to the Bank of Spain, while dreaming of a Marvel-style universe. That is, as many seasons, derived series and impossible hits as fans demand and its creators, Álex Pina in the lead, are capable of imagining.
« Actually, I have always said that the series has a soul and an identity very typical of comics. And I think it has many possibilities, including spin offs, because all the characters have a possible life outside of heists, "Pina explains to EL MUNDO through a video call. Alba Flores, who plays Nairobi in fiction, is of the same opinion. “If there is imagination and, above all, if there is interest in the public, they will do their best to take advantage of this story and these characters. But in order to maintain the force, they are going to have to make risky decisions ”, warns the actress.
Narratively, Pina recognizes that the main challenge is to continue reinventing himself, because surprising the viewer with a genre as stereotypical as that of theft, maintaining the feeling of novelty with the footage not only of a movie, but of a series, is complicated. But he believes they have succeeded. «After a third season on panic or vertigo, where we have put milestones and constant changes of scenarios, conflicts, genres and, above all, horror of empty space, in the fourth we have managed to modulate it to also speak of the soul of the characters »Says Pina. “We have opened a hole, a climb to a roller coaster where I think the biggest megaton bomb is going to be produced in La casa de papel. What happens in the end is such an explosion that we will probably take all the characters and the viewer to the extreme, ”he says enigmatically.
Forced, like everyone, to be confined, the hyperactive Pina confesses that this break has some meaning in his "runaway" existence. «I, who have a wild acceleration and live in a whirlwind of stress, now I have to learn to live at home. Which is an opportunity for me, ”he says, while acknowledging that this series probably reflects his own adrenaline. «I was a hyperactive child and all that kinetics and that nerve, all that energy is in La casa de papel. It is a hybrid that constantly changes from third, from drama to comedy, action, thriller. And that centrifuge may have something to do with my DNA and that of the entire team, ”he says.
Calmer, Flores is spending the quarantine reading, doing yoga, and reflecting a lot. "It seems that this calls into question the way of life we had and that now we have to think about how we continue from here on out," he says. “The world is unsustainable longer this way. And I would like a less unequal, less authoritarian and more humane world, where identity or border differences were not a problem, "he adds.
From the infinity of possible futures of La casa de papel, Pina rules out taking fiction abroad. “We have been told that we could dock Fort Knox in the United States. But I think the value of the series is the work in Spain, with the Spanish police, the Spanish humor and the Spanish robbers and their emotions. Which are what makes this a perfect heist ", defends the creator. «The great achievement of La casa de papel is that it has transformed an eminently Anglo-Saxon genre and that existed in cinema, which is rationalistic, almost scientific, cold, into something hot, emotional, brutally affective, where emotional plots, love, fraternity, friendship are almost as important as the plot of the robbery itself. What we have done is Latinize and Spanishize this genre, with which, to renounce our DNA would be to renounce what life has given us, ”he says.
At 52, Pina accumulates a television resume that ranges from Los Serrano and Los hombres de Paco to Vis a Vis. Fictions that, however different they may seem, share a black humor "very Spanish, very Berlanguian, close to the classic vaudeville", he points out. “There is even black comedy with a high pejorative load. The character of Santiago in Los Serrano ", played by Jesús Bonilla," was homophobic, usurer, curmudgeon, and yet he liked him. In La casa de papel we continue to do the same with Berlin », embodied by Pedro Alonso,« who cannot be more cruel, misogynistic and narcissistic, and falls, without a doubt, very well ».
In short, Pina does not know (or cannot) talk about the future, but she concludes: «perhaps we will steal all the valuable places that Spain has, but I think that we must defend the Spanish and the Latin above all else because we are seeing that it works. And we must not forget that there are almost as many Spanish-speakers as there are English-speakers. So we have to defend our parameters today.
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