Seven episodes, seven years and seven characters saying goodbye to their audience. Cuéntame said goodbye on Sunday by screening the first chapter of its short final season at the San Sebastián Festival. A large portion of the cast and creators traveled to the Victoria Eugenia Theater where the preview or, depending on how you look at it, the funeral of the series took place. As the lights came on, there were tears and applause in the seats occupied by a handful of the millions of supporters who have watched Spain’s future through that of a family often very similar to their own for more than 20 years.
The fiction spans four decades of social change, such as the promotion of women’s rights and freedom of expression. But for María Galiana, Alcántara’s grandmother, Cuéntame has achieved a very difficult synthesis: that the family represents a balance. “Conservatives saw us as extremely progressive and progressives saw us as very conservative. We showed a tangible reality, the mess in which we are all involved,” says the Andalusian actress, who worked for years as a history teacher, shortly before meeting the public. In the end, all viewers felt identified, he analyzes. “There is a generation that saw what they experienced in the series and another that saw exactly what they did not experience. “That was the key to our success.”
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This final batch of episodes will be shown on La 1 between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. The plot will deal in particular with the years 1994 to 2001, i.e. the exact moment when the fiction began to be broadcast on the public broadcaster. In fact, the film premiered in New York two days after the September 11 attacks. The character Carlitos’ move to the Big Apple allows the series to continually reference the Twin Towers in the remaining chapters of a season that will be an ongoing metareferential game. And this has led Ricardo Gómez, who has recently devoted himself to other projects, to return to the place from which an entire country watched him grow up.
Each episode will focus farewell on one of its main characters, the members of the Alcántara: the couple Mercedes and Antonio, the grandmother Herminia and the children Toni, Inés, Carlos and María. The first, entitled “Mercedes: La Fuerza,” immerses the family in a high level of tension and drama from the very first moment, which will continue to develop in the remaining six parts, which deal with a funeral and an inheritance conflict. The focus is on the mother of the family, “representative of female strength, intelligence, the ability for self-improvement and the generosity of so many women.” She started as a wife who comes from the village to support her husband with a fair education . But in the end, she studies a career, starts her own business and comes to terms with something that women still have to deal with today: balancing family and work,” says Ana Duato, who plays her on screen. This ending, divided into seven parts, is also the portrait of three generations of women: “Herminia, Mercedes’ mother, serves as her ally and her daughter Inés, a revolutionary, is the one who opens her eyes to the world and social changes ..”, comments the protagonist.
They are chapters intended to please fans of the series, whose director Óscar Aibar appears before the audience in San Sebastián. From the melody to the final selection of great moments of the main character, each part is a tribute to the story of this fiction. In addition to the farewell of the Alcántaras, in these final scenes a second reading is perceived, namely the farewell of some actors to their alter ego and the companions with whom they were part of an interpretive family, comments Pablo Rivero, who played in this period eldest son of the saga plays the role. “The screenwriters know us very well as actors, they have taken a journey with each character and pressed the right buttons,” he argues.
Part of the cast of “Cuéntame”, with Imanol Airas in the foreground and Maria Galiana in the middle, at one point in the first episode of the last season.
After more than 400 recorded episodes, María Galiana realizes that there were strips of scripts that she considers weak. “Sometimes we had to force ourselves into it,” he admits without hesitation. “We did seasons with more than 20 episodes, while now the series have 8 or 13 at most,” comes Rivero to the rescue. “But this season is one of those inspired moments from the writers and actors,” she admits. The cast celebrates that Cuéntame has not said goodbye to the Frenchwoman, as TVE has finally given her the opportunity to imagine an ending for each of its protagonists. “The audience that has accompanied us for so many years deserves a worthy ending,” says Duato.
The young Carmen Climent, the last to join the cast and playing María, the youngest daughter of the clan, has learned part of Spain’s history by recreating it in the series. In these final chapters, the plot is linked to the murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco in 1997, when the Basque actress was just over a year old. She explains that her parents told her what they had experienced in those days.
Much more than Francoism
As is often remembered, the script for the first pilot of Cuéntame hung in Spanish television drawers for years. Ironically, the series had difficulty finding a broadcaster because the directors could not imagine that viewers in hyper-partisan Spain would be interested in watching a series dealing with the Franco regime. They believed that it was an issue far removed from the concerns of the average citizen. “We told them that the project was about much more than just remembering the Franco regime,” says Cristina Lago from Ganga, the series producer.
As in all families, there were controversies and discussions during this time, especially involving the actors. The final end of Cuéntame means, at least for now, the conclusion of a long stage that, once completed, has left no gap in Ana Duato. “The day after the recording ended I felt very full; “I am satisfied with the work done,” she defends.
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