'La Sagrada Familia': power, ambition and the dark secret that destroyed Jordi Pujol's legacy

• TV The series and movies coming to HBO Max in November 2022

Between 1996 and 1998, the Catalan public television promoted by the

of the Generalitat, Jordi Pujol, broadcast one of his most remembered and followed soap operas:

(lineage of power).

.

It had nothing to do then with the heirs of that president, but 25 years later their turn has come.

Again, a series portrays a family with secrets, power and greed.

Only in this case, reality is stranger than fiction.

HBO Max premieres today

, the first documentary about the Pujol-Ferrusola clan

.

"We have tried to provide context, offer a global vision of the character and keep a very open gaze," explains Ferrerons, who defines Pujol as a figure of "extensive, extraordinary and multifaceted dimension, full of nooks, edges and complexities."

The Sagrada Familia

begins with

's confession , on July 25, 2014, about his undeclared fortune in Andorra that was revealed by information published in EL MUNDO.

And that starting point allows the character to be basted in all its magnitude.

That revelation was "

: the great political and even moral reference point of Catalan society for the last 35 years publicly admitted that he had a double life," Ferrerons stresses.

"The

was transversal for all sectors, both for his followers and for his detractors."

The former president's confession was a transversal 'shock' for supporters and detractors: he had a double life

Fifty politicians, such as former presidents

, journalists, businessmen or

, who tried Pujol for the Banca Catalana case, go before the cameras of Trueba and Ferrerons to report of the events have marked 60 years of history.

From Catalonia and Spain.

The closest entourage of the former

also participates in this portrait divided into four one-hour chapters.

His son

, but so has

, Pujol's right-hand man during his two decades at the helm of the Generalitat.

The production that HBO Max premieres does not avoid the statements of the people who uncovered the alleged family corruption, still under judicial investigation, such as

, the first-born of the Catalan president and for whom the Prosecutor's Office requests a highest jail term: 29 years.

Ferrerons considers it "indisputable" that it was Jordi Pujol who "raised the Catalan self-government institutions as we know them today, who fostered the stability of the governments of Spain, both the PSOE and the PP, who helped anchor Spain in Europe and who He built an imaginary for Catalonia that, to a large extent, is still valid».

However, as of July 25, 2014, he became

: "For some time, perhaps years, it will not be possible to make a rigorous assessment of his legacy," he assures.

For the director, the fall of the former

was intrinsically related to the maneuvers of the State to jeopardize the independence process: "It is very possible that without that dirty operation in the sewers of the State, that confession would never have taken place."

Until a few years from now it will not be possible to make a rigorous balance of his legacy

Jordi Pujol faces nine years in prison for the crimes of illicit association and money laundering, since tax fraud has prescribed.

The judicial investigation indicates that there are indications of

from the autonomous power.

But the documentary goes much further and situates Pujol not only in space but also in time, as a man of his time with

, according to Ferrerons.

The former president “was a key figure in the Transition at a time when everything was yet to be built”, and in this process “many shortcuts were taken and practices crystallized that no one was able to reverse later.

For example, the financing of political parties.

The Sagrada Família

also narrates

, which landed him in prison, and his commitment to Catalonia since then, factors that not only explain the importance of his political career but also lay the foundations of his public figure «It is very difficult to extrapolate those facts to the present time, not very distant in time but technologically, politically and socially”, explains Ferrerons.

The series describes the descent into hell of the family clan of Jordi Pujol, 92, who went from being an anti-Franco hero to working as a banker before founding the Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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