In 2004, after a past as a war correspondent for TV3 and with several books halfway written, Carles Porta (Vila-sana, Lleida, 60 years old) and his production company gave cameras to 12 teenagers to record their lives. The Mirall effect has received awards worldwide. And he expected the series of dystopias that would find their way into series and novels. He then went bankrupt to produce Mecanoscrit del segon origin, the novel by Manuel de Pedrolo that Bigas Luna was to direct and which he eventually made into a film when the director of Jamón, Jamón, died the day before filming began. He tells it in an apartment in the center of Girona, where he has set up his production company on the Ter river. He explains that he doesn't have a dishwasher because he enjoys the time it gives him to do the dishes. Go to the market too. Although the comedy show TV3 Poland turned him into a character, he finds it difficult because they recognize him. “If I stop walking, I lose contact with the street,” he emphasizes in his typical Ilerda voice. The director, producer, screenwriter and narrator of Crims (TV3) and Light in the Darkness (Movistar Plus+) admits that blood sells. Also that prisons are full of mistakes.
Why do we kill?
Why do we love? There are those who would only kill under extreme threat and those who kill for pleasure or lack of education. Many don't even know why. A crime is a global failure. There is someone responsible, but with him the entire social chain fails.
How did you learn to look?
Observe with empathy and tell from a distance. To look, you have to get closer. But to tell you, you have to distance yourself, because closeness breeds empathy.
How can you ensure that the experience is not distorted?
Avoid prejudices. I learned it in Santo Domingo. I gave my sneakers to a guide who was wearing flip flops. He asked: Why do I want sneakers when I have freedom in my feet and you have a prison? He was right. It's one thing to look with your own eyes and another to see what the person who did it saw.
Look with your eyes and not with experience.
Of course: prejudices, automatic thoughts… It is important to return to the moment of action and not to look from the present moment. Books have been published that move Winston Churchill to action. OK. But how did he use the tools he had? Nobody objects to a historical review because it is based on current criteria and findings. The major research errors arise from prejudices. Who sees a bruise and writes, “He was hit by…” instead of “He was probably hit by.” This adverb keeps one open-minded. There are inductive investigations that start from an idea and attempt to demonstrate it. But the good ones are deductive: they start from the facts. Reality is insurmountable. But when it is manipulated, society collapses.
Is the press distorting?
Think of the Rocío Wanninkhof case. Dolores Vázquez was convicted by a jury without a single piece of evidence. The portrait of our society's dark moments is as often the trial as the crime.
Where is the justice system?
It is an exception that an innocent person goes to prison. When it happens now, he questions everything. It's like wearing a pristine white shirt and staining it. Death sells. We believe that if we talk about death for hours, we will reach a larger audience. And that is not healthy for a society.
Then why was he approaching death?
Blood spots are often present, but this does not help identify a good case. I don't discuss. I tell court cases. And we are not extending it. Data-driven event journalism is necessary because we all want to know what happened.
Why who is telling it?
A motive is not always known. The most difficult crimes to solve are those that involve an element of chance. Why did a serial killer kill four people? What connects these dead? The killer in the deck was difficult to find because there were no patterns or matches.
Carles Porta.Jordi Adrià
Cold-blooded showed the senselessness behind cruel crimes.
The most important thing is Truman Capote's way of telling it. He read a short article in the New York Times. It was a small thing for a newspaper with worldwide circulation, but he made it a universal classic. I read it three times. It achieves what I want: to tell the entire film.
What makes someone want to talk?
The first case we did for the Light in the Dark series involved someone posing as a woman online. The men went to Los Monegros and robbed and beat them. They killed one. We managed to talk to one, Julián. Why did you accept? The day we premiered the episode at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, he went on stage and said: “I saw myself. “I didn't feel attacked.” He was locked up at home for four years.
crime It also tells the case of the Dan Air plane that crashed in Montseny in 1970.
It was almost a state crime. It was hidden because aviation in Spain was controlled by the military. Had it been known, Spain's fate as a tourist country could have changed.
Why did you want to cover wars?
To see the most important news up close.
He worked in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda… A death in war is epic and a murder in an apartment is psychological?
While writing local news journalism for the Segre newspaper, I learned that one day I would be talking about someone I knew. He had to treat every crime with a clear conscience. Then I traveled with TV3 to Rwanda, Haiti or Israel… There you see an industrialized death. Right now in Gaza, Ukraine, human life is worthless. What we call the international community is marketing at large. Here we are annoyed by a red light. In Sarajevo, 9 out of 10 deaths were children. You know why? Because they were the first to lose their fear and return to the streets. One day while I was talking to my three-year-old daughter, the connection was interrupted by a bomb. I decided to stay home and watch her grow up. When someone dies in war, we consider it a merit. But if a journalist dies in an accident on the way to the next town, we don't give him credit.
Can you see a war up close today?
You can see human dramas. I did what I think we journalists should do: put myself in the shoes of those who are suffering so that our leaders and decision-makers are ashamed.
Given what we see in Gaza, are there any politicians left who can do something?
At the end of the 1990s there were major fires in Catalonia that destroyed 25,000 hectares. The president of a forestry defense group, Josep Duocastella, burned 80% of his body. I asked him how to fight fires. He replied – and this applies to Gaza -: “When all the fires start, they are small.” Then you have to put them out. I try to apply it to my life.
To personal fires?
Because of overwork and my bad head, I broke up my marriage. If you look at it in perspective, you can see where you went wrong. Work took me away. But if we don't do our job well, the financial reward is poor. In the end it will harm us.
Wrote Thortranslated into several languages, about the division of a mountain between 13 families.
Francino sent me to do a three-minute report for Telenotícies and I came back with a novel. I spent three months there. So you could do that. I allow my screenwriters, I give them time.
He didn't give up on this story.
I've been with her for 27 years. It consists of two parts: the murder of Sansa, who was declared the owner of the mountain in 1995 after 100 years of discussions, and what happens to the heirs, who hate each other again. Hate is a plant that grows alone. You don't even need to water it. On the other hand, love must be cultivated with enormous sensitivity. If you go too far, you suffocate it, and if you go too short, you dry it out. If there is a death, they call me. That made me feel important. But my job is not to put people in prison. It offers data to the viewer.
Were you afraid?
Never. They threaten to defend themselves. They want me to keep my mouth shut. But I never felt like I was investigating the danger I experienced when there was shooting in Bosnia.
Analyzes famous cases: Marta del Castillo, the pharmacist from Olot, Anabel Segura, Quini…
If we looked more closely at the circumstances of our crimes, we would better understand our society and be able to correct them at the source. We need to invest less in prisons and police and more in education and social welfare.
He has a company that thrives on crime.
We thrive on telling well-told stories, which in this case are crimes. We remember that evil exists. I like to think that well-informed people are less afraid.
Don't they create social alarm?
In Spain you have a much greater chance of winning the lottery than of being involved in a crime.
Is there an ethicometer?
There are boundaries that cannot be crossed. Curiosity, yes. Morbid, no. We don't want to drag out a topic, we want to shed light on it.
They dedicated a program to Mario Biondo…
Due to the great applause of the population. For me there is no case. It is based on the negligence in the removal of the body and the initial autopsy. If it had been done well… then that is it. The victim's family has the right to know the truth. And when the truth is not based on evidence, they look for their own. Another thing is not to accept the truth. This happens when you are drunk or, as in this case, when you are not given the correct answers.
The widow Raquel Sánchez Silva was a public figure…
Television is a multiplier of good and evil. The first justifies its existence. Multiplying by the second is harmful. That's why you have to be demanding at the beginning. But… what's more spectacular than a mother asking for justice for her son, who was allegedly murdered by a famous woman? There is nothing true except the mother's pain.
Are there people who live better in prison than outside?
There are people who didn't learn not to steal bikes as children. He went to prison and ended up killing. It's the same as abuse of women: it's inherited.
Does a murderer wake up and hate himself?
He's probably not happy. A crime is a lawsuit against another. A prosecutor said the majority was resolved in a span of time: back-to-back.
Were you drawn to crime as a child?
I had a quiet childhood in Vila-sana, a town in Lleida with 400 inhabitants. My family just worked. They were farmers and ranchers. My brothers continued raising pigs and calves. I often got up at five in the morning, when the ground was soft, to pick onions.
Did he escape?
About the hardness of this work: The animals eat every day. My father helped me. He said, “Go see the world. The earth will not move.” And that was this.
And his brothers?
The three stayed. The second manages the farms. The little guy has done some engineering and is converting pig shit into energy.
Carles Porta is director, producer, screenwriter and narrator of “Crims” (TV3) and “Luz en laDarkness” (Movistar Plus+). Jordi Adria
Have your parents seen your success?
Seeing your satisfaction makes me the happiest. That's why when I do something, I don't think about the economic benefits. It seems more important to me that my children and everyone who works with me are proud of their work. We are successful because we are not stained with blood. We tell crime stories. But we talk more about life than crime.
Do we have to tell the truth?
The truth sets us free, right?
Unsolved crimes create helplessness. Madeleine McCann has become a ghost.
Clear. But in order to process a case, we need to have access to all the information. And that's full of lies. It is difficult to distinguish noise from information. Investigating missing person cases is not our job. Police, prosecutors and judges must do this. Although there are great stories behind these crimes that I would like to tell.
How is it possible that murderers continue to carry their cell phones?
In most investigations there are two basic elements: DNA and motif. Leaving your phone at home has been shown to be a clue to blaming yourself. Why have you been carrying your phone with you for 20 years and not this day? This changes your behavior pattern. The cell phone is watching us.
Will the search continue for the beautiful missing women?
I can't confirm it, but that possibility is sad. And it portrays us. If Rosa Peral hadn't been such an attractive woman, would she have had such an influence? She is a woman in love with herself. Narcissism always hurts. We are social animals. If you do anything just to make yourself look good in the mirror, you have a problem. When you don't trust yourself, you also make your life very complicated.
Is fear a form of social control?
Definitely. There are interests that must inspire fear. In politics, in sports, in relationships… it makes us vulnerable. If a child is told, “If you don’t do this, the bogeyman will come,” he or she should respond, “I’m calling the police.”
Are there more murderers than murderers?
Yes, men are less intelligent and we resort to violence to correct deficiencies. Women commit more sophisticated, less bloody and more calculated crimes.
Did you understand a murderer?
They understand a person's circumstances when they see their life or that of a loved one in danger. I asked myself what I would have done in his situation. And maybe I would have done the same.
He visited Santiago Mainar in prison 70 times.
And to his sister, 200. I can understand what he did if he did it. But I can't condone it. Although understanding is a way to agree… Nothing should be solved with murder. But, as I said, you have to act when the fire is small.
How do you live after you kill?
It's a huge question. Do we forgive or not?
Or do you forgive yourself?
I think Fago's book is one of the best I've written. The key is not the murder, the key is the sister Marisa Mainar. That's why the subtitle is: When they tell you your brother is a murderer. She defends him. But he also asks: “What do I do?” “Do I stop loving him?” He is still his brother. He's the one who tells him: Don't go to prison again. Mainar could be out today. But he wants to serve the entire sentence.
Could this be a confession?
Jesus Christ allowed himself to be crucified. This is what Amparo, his wife, said. Why can't we understand why he pleaded guilty to keep the peace in the city?
Does it have anything to do with the hours spent investigating cases that some people are believed more than others?
There is a dangerous phase of empathy. I empathize with Mainar, but the data raises doubts about his innocence. I don't know if he did it or not. I know that if I had been on a popular jury, I would not have convicted him with this evidence. What is the truth? The judges have the authority to make the official decision. How often does it not match reality?
How far can you doubt?
You always have to doubt. Another thing is to disassemble the system. The justice system and the police function. I feel calm. Criminal justice is a guarantee.
Could we kill everyone?
Secure. But a priori everyone will say no.