Huge mountains with steep slopes and heights of up to 1,700 meters welcome people arriving on the way to Pasiego Valle del Miera (Cantabria). Sleeping colossi dominated from a distance by all sorts of greens with the occasional autumnal patch of red. Along these green mountain ranges, several kilometers apart, mud houses are spread out to withstand the fierce winds. In this idyllic landscape, devoid of elements that could be associated with the 21st century, a large part of Second Death, the new serialized thriller by screenwriter and author Agustín Martínez (The Hunt), has been shot since September.
The Miera takes its name from the river of the same name that flows through it and flows into the Bay of Santander. However, before that it flows through other towns such as Liérganes. In this small town, eight kilometers from the valley and 27 kilometers from the Cantabrian capital, history and mythology coexist: the street where the ovens that were the country’s first arms industry in 1622 are located ends on the river bank with the statue of the Fishman, a local legend. What seems like a summer destination of relaxation is the scene of a crime in the new original production of Movistar Plus+ in collaboration with DLO Producciones, whose premiere is scheduled for the first half of 2024 and whose filming ends these days. Sandra (played by Georgina Amorós) is a police assistant who becomes involved in the discovery of a body that should have already been buried.
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“I wanted to show this contrast of cultures between a modern city and life in Pasiega, which is in danger of extinction. “There are only a few Pasiego shepherds left, who live on the very margins and lead a life that seems almost impossible in today’s world,” argues Martínez, one of the three authors who make up Carmen Mola. The Miera is one of the three valleys of the Pasiega region and was historically inhabited by pastoralists practicing transterminancia, a lesser variant of transhumance. “It’s not a question of distance from the city or even the city, but rather a way of life that involves working seven days a week, having children help with the herd of cows or having constant contact with nature,” he adds. the screenwriter of the series, together with Isa Sánchez (Malaka).
Georgina Amorós as Sandra in one of the huts in the Miera Valley.DEL CERRO FILMS
Sara’s character seeks peace in this environment and wants to leave Liérganes to move into a hut. The peace is interrupted when he discovers a body that shouldn’t be there. A mystery that he has to solve without even trying, because being a police officer is not exactly his calling. In between, he has to resolve personal conflicts: his son’s father is about to be released from prison and his relationship with his own father (Karra Errejalde), a former UCO agent with an impressive character, is becoming increasingly difficult due to the senile dementia from which he suffers and which is largely missing from his daughter’s life.
Landscape and nature play just as important a role in Martínez’s stories as the characters. Be it the melting of the Pyrenees in Monteperdido as a metaphor for a crime that makes the sun shine and melts the masks of a city to reveal its true face; the isolated Mallorcan mountains are intended to represent the unity of a society in the Tramuntana; or the border with Portugal to separate two opposing worlds in Guadiana. In fact, Martínez writes his scripts and deepens them as he gets to know the locations.
“Google Earth is my greatest ally,” reveals the inventor of Feria. He continues: “I write the first chapter and with this material and some ideas for the places I want to perform, we take a trip to the place with the production company. I visit the websites I want to appear on and see whether they are useful or not, or whether I need to add or remove something.” To paint a true picture of the communities’ identities, he walks through public spaces and talks to locals . “It’s very cool because when you go back to the place and people have already seen the show, they tell you, ‘It’s obvious you spent a lot of time here.'”
In Second Death it was important to define the profile of the Pasiegos farmers. They were the ones who rented out some of their huts for production, houses where livestock was kept on a floor below to generate heat and protect themselves from the cold. Wolves, a threat to the community’s livestock, have a symbolic presence in this six-part miniseries.
Karra Elejalde as former UCO agent Tello in “Segunda Muerte.” DEL CERRO FILMS
While the Pasiego Valley represents the poetic part of the story, Liérganes contains its mythical and folkloric character, a constant in Martínez’s stories. On this occasion, the legend of the Fishman creeps into the plot, a young man who disappeared in the Miera River in the 18th century and appeared five years later with a scaly body in the Bay of Cádiz. The only word he uttered was Liérganes. “This magical concept fits very well with the crime story we are telling, because it involves the appearance of a woman who should have been dead for a long time.”.
A little further away, in Torrelavega, is another location where a key scene in the series was filmed over three days: the former Sniace landfill. An industrial archaeological complex covering more than 15,000 square meters that ceased operations in 2011. Its current dismantling, which involves laying out pipes, cables and boxes coming out of the windows, creates the feeling of abandonment typical of the huge places where there was previously a lot of activity.
Environmental sensing guidelines
How can one capture through the lens the vastness of the places where Second Death is created? Directors Óscar Pedraza (“Patria”) and Álex Rodrigo (“La casa de papel”), who each share three episodes of the series, agreed on some basic ideas. “For the landscapes, we suggested the 16:9 panoramic format, which is usually used for westerns. We also used telephoto lenses with long optics because the wide-angle lenses were too short to capture the immensity of the mountains,” Pedraza explains to this medium after filming a scene at the Liérganes Spa, a traditional place where the city’s social relationships take place are established. . As for the colors, he adds that they must be opposite and complementary to the green that saturates the horizon.
For his part, Rodrigo comments: “I don’t like the phrase that the landscape is just another character, because the characters are characters and what surrounds them are emotional catalysts. We are lucky to be able to follow the protagonists’ development with the seasons. We start filming in the summer, with happy colors that represent their emotions, and then darken in the autumn.” The 35-year-old director emphasizes that one of the biggest challenges when filming in Cantabria is the volatile climate changes in a short period of time: “In 20 minutes there is sun, clouds and rain,” so they had effects allowing to create fog, rain or wind and give continuity to the scenes.
Youth and experience
Martínez once again chooses a female police protagonist. But unlike the determined but impulsive Sara Campos (Megan Montaner) from “The Hunt,” Sandra seeks peace with her young son and heals the conflicted relationship with her father, whom she has been caring for for several months. “She has a hidden ability, but she doesn’t really want to be a police officer,” says Georgina Amorós about her role. She says she wasn’t preparing to become a police assistant so much as she was preparing to become a mother: “I had never played a mother before, so I wanted us to get to know the boy who plays my son very well and develop real trust.” because we have very intimate scenes,” emphasizes the 25-year-old actress, who says she is looking for roles that challenge her, such as the film Berenàveu a les fosques (2021), for which she is French had to learn.
One of the directors of “Segunda Muerte”, Óscar Pedraza, gives instructions to Georgina Amorós, characterized as Sandra.DEL CERRO FILMS
Amorós’ raw and untapped talent is complemented by Karra Elejalde’s extensive career. The experienced actor, screenwriter and director once again plays a character with a mental illness, as he did in La vida padre (2022) or Kepler Sexto B (2023). “I have always been a man passionate about altered states of consciousness. I wrote a trilogy about it [Airbag (1997), Año mariano (2000) y Torapia (2004)]. “I have always had a passion for the bad, the damned, and not for the good father who parted his hair on the left,” describes the winner of two Goya prizes. To play the role of a former UCO agent, stubborn, proud, “smug”, he admits that he did not want to get too involved in the world of security officials.
In his enjoyment of bizarre characters, Elejalde reveals that he always wanted to be Don Quixote. “If I have the money for it one day, I’ll do it myself,” he says. At the moment, his hallucinations are not of windmills, but of mountains in a valley anchored in the past and of a mystical city where the Fishman watches over the river.
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