The night is quiet in Bilbao. A young woman calmly walks through the deserted twilight streets. Listen to music, even hum. And suddenly... Two bodies, one after another, rain down from the sky. The start of El silencio, the new miniseries by Aitor Gabilondo for Netflix, advances that we are facing a classic thriller. What the viewer who looks at the life of Sergio Ciscar does not know is that behind the story of the parricide minor who is reintegrated into society after six years in prison there are bitter reflections on our life, that of all, whether or not we have killed the father.

Sergio observes from the balcony the two corpses lying on the ground, floors below, the skulls burst against the asphalt. Impassive, he turns and enters the house. There is blood, a lot of blood, he himself is covered with it. Broken glass on the floor, shattered family photographs. Sergio will take years to utter a single word again and, in part, that adds mystery to the matter. At times it generates affection, at times restlessness. Did he effectively kill his parents? We are not allowed to make spoilers. We have signed it.

I'm not one of many words either, so with the character of Sergio I've felt quite comfortable.

Arón Piper, protagonist

Arón Piper, star of Elite at the height of his career, says that the character resembles him, especially in the muteness: "I am not of many words so I have felt quite comfortable. I think a lot of times I communicate better without saying anything." Piper is here, once again, the troubled but inevitably attractive, hugg-like teenager. He doesn't want to be pigeonholed, although he wouldn't dare with romantic comedy either. His characters, yes, are getting older: "The change is taking place to more adult profiles and I like that a lot, but yes, I see the appeal of the drama."

Sergio, in the reconstruction of the murder of his parents. NETFLIX

In an era of constant binge series, of very long productions that accumulate seasons and seasons, Aitor Gabilondo, author of the acclaimed Patria, has opted for El silencio for the miniseries. "It's the format I like the most because it allows me to concentrate the story," he acknowledges, and stresses: "I like to know how things end." We will not talk about how the new Netflix thriller ends, contract obliges, but we will reveal that Gabilondo works his creations from the end: "When I start, I always know where I want to go."

We have said that silence begins with murder. And yet, as we announced, that is only the beginning. To devise a plot halfway between Black Mirror and a true crime Gabilondo has been soaked in events. Of parricides, to be exact. Its protagonist leaves prison after six years of conviction for the murder of his parents. It is then when an exhaustive follow-up starts by a team of psychiatrists and police through hidden cameras in the young man's home, but with access to all the security equipment that monitors the streets from shops, lampposts and ATMs. The result is a 24-hour Big Brother that seeks to determine if Sergio is still a danger.

A team led by psychiatrist Ana Dussel monitors 24 hours a parricide Sergio.NETFLIX

"All these types of cases have a similar pattern, I have been studying them for years and I was striking, beyond the crime, how minors are reintegrated into society and how society observes them: with anguish, with fear, with uncertainty, not to mention the people who admire them and send them letters to jail," Ensures. And here, "post crime" is sold as a necessary evil for the safety of society, but is there anything else?

I was interested, beyond crime, in how teenage killers are reintegrated into society, how we observe them.

Aitor Gabilondo, creator of 'El silencio'

"It is also interesting the control that the screens themselves exert on us," says Gabilondo, "as the series progresses we learn more from those who observe than from who is observed, their behaviors, their reactions, as if the camera were turning around. And we know that game well, we all live tied to what we see and draw conclusions from ten-second videos."

Sergio, already reintegrated into society, looks out onto the balcony through which his parents fell. NETFLIX

Of this biased vision knows something who suffered a real earthquake by the Patria cartel, in which the drama of an ETA murder was put in parallel with a terrorist suspect tortured in an interrogation room. Better to move away from politically sensitive subjects and indulge in pure and hard thrillers? "Not at all, politics interests me a lot and I will return, now I am vaccinated," he replies, "it is a bit sad that any debate is polarized in this instantaneous way and that we are unable to use a fiction to debate, that we use it to entrench ourselves even more. "

Entertainment does not have to be vacuous, it is not about numbing the population but about agitating it.

Aitor Gabilondo

"Entertainment does not have to be vacuous and stupid, it is important that the fiction that reaches so many people introduces topics of interest," he stresses, "it is not about numbing the population but about agitating it and making it think." At the moment, if he thought that with The silence the puddles were over, he was wrong. The parricide Sergio Ciscar, as the murderer of the katana already did, comes out of his confinement with renewed faith, but his redeemer, a preacher who employs ex-inmates in greenhouses, has a darker side, perhaps, than himself, corruption of minors included.

-With the Church we have come across...

"Well, it's life, isn't it?" We didn't invent it, we just told it.

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