The documentary of the Barcelona attacks: "It is a mistake to turn the terrorist into a simple ogre"

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Jean-Claude Carrière commented that he went to the cinema -and, consequently, he wrote it- guided by the maxim of Juan de la Cruz, saint to be exact, which reads: «We do not travel to see, but not to see».

And he insisted: «What is not seen in the film is more important than what is projected on the screen.

Mystery is everything."

the miniseries in three chapters directed by

and with

as a journalist, investigator and in his own way also a character, it is constructed, if you will, as a refutation of the axiom of Buñuel's former screenwriter: from complete transparency, from the cruelest of clarities.

And yet, and there is the paradox, what matters is the shadow, the mystery that hides behind the diaphanous of one of the most ruthless attacks experienced in Spain.

It tells what happened in Barcelona

In Barcelona and shortly after with a second part in Cambrils.

The title mentions the exact route along the Rambla of the van that left 15 bodies in its wake.

The series, already available on

for a week, starts with the most graphic image of all, the most brutal, the one captured by a street camera in which the van stops unable to move forward due to the weight of the bodies, before gross evidence of death.

«The series», comments the director, «works with

It offers adult content for adult viewers.

We had the dilemma of what we could or could not teach, of course, but we soon realized that excessive care leads to condescension.

There is a lot of will not to see, not to know and not to learn.

And against that it is directed precisely 800 meters ».

It is clear.

The truth is that at the moment that the magistrate in charge of the trial that sentenced the only three members of the cell who could be tried to 53, 46 and 8 years decided to make everything public, the debate, so to speak, was annulled.

Just type in Google to see, in effect, everything.

Including the videos that the terrorists recorded themselves while preparing the explosives.

Including each of his insults, threats and rantings.

What 800 meters does is provide

that questions everything, that analyzes everything, that teaches everything.

There are about

The victims speak, the witnesses, the police, the friends of the terrorists, the social workers of Ripoll where the culprits came from, the experts in jihad, the experts in international politics... Everything is exposed in a perfectly intertwined tapestry and tidy.

Everything can be seen and, nevertheless, the doubt remains as the most obvious of the cries: «What had to happen so that some kids who climbed, who played football, who were integrated into the community and who had a future in it did what they did? ”, asks Nacho Carretero.

And with the question, so clear, the shadows.

“It is about building, not humanizing, the person behind the terrorist.

The shocking thing is to show that it is not something terrifying because it is far away, which can even be soothing for the viewer.

The mistake is simply turning the terrorist into an ogre and not trying to understand his story", continues Carretero and Siminiani agrees with him:

And do it, with everything in sight, to find the key to the other, to what cannot be seen.

In short, beyond the surprise of each one of the reconstructions, and aside from the pain of the still perfectly open wounds, what makes the blood run cold is the feeling of incomprehension, the persistence of why despite everything, despite all and each of the explanations.

Again, as is already the rule in the filmmaker that is Siminiani, the will to leave everything in sight includes the very process of building the story.

The journalist, the one who investigates, as happened in the director's previous documentaries

and

, is also part of the plot.

The process itself ends up being the argument.

“What makes this case different is its peculiar distance in time.

He is not as far away as Alcàsser or as close as Asunta.

His place in the middle invites both pain and reflection », he concludes.

Paraphrasing Juan de la Cruz and Carrière: a cloudy and hypnotic journey to see what we don't want to see.

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