Cuéntame should be called “Our Yesterday.” Its creators did well to keep the title we know, otherwise it would have had to be renamed “Our Today” in some places in recent seasons, something we have also seen from the Alcántara during the pandemic. But who would have thought when it premiered in September 2001 how long-lasting the series would be? Taking into account the relationship between the time of his fiction – it began in 1968 and is now in the mid-nineties – and his broadcast time – the last 22 years – I hoped that this would be transformed into “You will tell me, a work “ would become nostalgia of consensus, that of the future.
But no, this season, its twenty-third, which began last week, is the last. Seven chapters, each of which focused on one of the main characters: Mercedes, Antonio, Inés, Toni, Carlos, María and Herminia. We started with Merche in an episode that begins (spoiler alert) with her mother’s death in 2001, and in which she and Antonio suffer the scorn of all their children except Carlos. From there we go to 1994 and we sense that the conflict between them stems from the distribution of their inheritance that Merche and Antonio want to make during their lifetime. As with so many families, Cuéntame’s desire has always been to tell the families of Spain and the country’s recent history through their own.
The legacy of Cuéntame hoy goes beyond the enormous value of its contents. In a time of television bulimia, fueled by short throwaway series, the result of a system sponsored by some platforms, the fabulous journey of this fiction has made it a series at the end of its breed. Others will come and tell us, but if the model is maintained it will be almost impossible for them to do so in the time necessary.
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