France Embraces Spanish TV, But for How Long?

Yahoo

15-05-2025

At France's Series Mania in April, now firmly consolidated as Europe's biggest TV festival, Spain scored a historic double, scooping its two top awards, Competition's Grand Prize with 'Querer' and its International Panorama major sidebar with 'Celeste.'
Both 'Querer' and 'Celeste' were produced by Spain's Movistar Plus+, 'Celeste' along with The Mediapro Studio. Since Series Mania launched its International Panorama in 2018, no country, let alone the same company, has won its two biggest prizes in one and the same year.
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In recent dealing, Arte France, the French leg of pan-European public broadcaster Arte, also co-produced Rodrigo Sorogoyen's 'The New Years' and acquired 'Querer' and 'La Mesías,' the biggest series to date from 'Velvet' creators and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo – 'Los Javis.'
'It's the first time that we have so many projects at the same time with the same commissioner and the same program unit of one company or one broadcaster or platform, whatever,' notes Alexandre Piel, Arte France's deputy head of drama.
At 2025's Series Mania's, 'Celeste' lead Carmen Machi also won Panorama's best actress award, while 'Interregnum,' from Spain's Tornasol Media, received its SeriesMakers Beta & Kirch Foundation Award.
'The two major international prizes confirm the prominent place of Spanish series in today's serial landscape,' Series Mania founder and general manager Laurence Herszberg commented, announcing the awards.
Movistar Plus+ and The Mediapro Studio certainly aren't making all Spain's running in France. In early 2018, 'Money Heist' exploded onto the world's TV scene, becoming Netflix's first ever non-English-language global blockbuster. France was one of La Casa de Papel's core markets.
Netflix is still going great guns in Spain. 2025's Series Mania looked to mark another milestone moment, which says a lot about what's happened to Spanish TV and international market trends since.
'There has been massive investment from the global streamers in recent years, in part because of the potential of Spanish-speaking markets, and that has pushed competition, producers and talent and the average quality of shows,' says Francesco Capurro, Series Mania Forum director.
Begun by HBO over 1999-2002, global streamers when they launched aimed to amplify that phenomenon, creating a feeding frenzy for scripted premium TV which many big Spanish groups – Movistar Plus+, The Mediapro Studio, Atresmedia – have responded to with energy.
With no MipTV in Cannes, their executives and titles have flooded Series Mania. A fourth Spanish title selected by the European TV festival was 'Mariliendre,' created by Javier Ferreiro and produced by Los Javis, and described by Variety as Spain's answer to 'La La Land.'
Series Mania was very close to tying down a fifth title, comments Herszberg. As things stood, only France had more series at Series Mania this year than Spain.
Ghislain Barrois at Spain's Mediaset España, RTVE's José Pastor and Movistar Plus+'s Rubén Fernández Loa (Movistar Plus+) served on Forum juries.
Spain's across the board growth is now reaping international market benefits.
Founded in 2010 at Paris' Forum des Images and moving to Lille in 2018, Series Mania has grown as Europe's premier co-production meet. In Europe, in real terms broadcaster budgets in Europe, at both public or commercial networks, are now edging down, according to a European Audiovisual Observatory study presented at Series Mania.
'It's increasingly difficult to make an ambitious series just within your country. Getting outside money already opens up being broadcast elsewhere or accessing a sales agent,' says Herszberg. 'Co-financing and co-production are more relevant than than ever,' agrees Series Mania director Francesco Capurro.
In Arte France, Movistar Plus+ has found a like-minded partner.
The two's now intense title-by-title relationship is knit by what Piel calls 'common editorial guidelines.'
From Alauda Ruíz de Azua, and teaming Movistar Plus+ with Kowalski Films and Feelgood Media, 'Querer' plumbs what must be one of the least explored but most frequent scenarios of rape in the world: marital relationships.
Based on Javier Cercas' acclaimed non-fiction book of the same title, 'Anatomy of a Moment' captures Spain's Feb. 23, 1981 one night coup' d'etat, emphasizing the complexity of events, the fragility of its democracy, the value of its defence and how two men distant on the political spectrum – Spanish prime minister Adolfo Suárez, who came from Spain's Francoist Falange, and Spanish Communist Party leader Santiago Carrillo – came to an intricate understanding which allowed Spain's 1970s passage from dictatorship to democracy.
'It's how to be relevant, accurate, bring something a bit different, taking risk but bringing some nuance in a world which is so polarized, so radical that you just need a little bit of elements to understand or to switch point of views,' says Piel.
'It's a brick of knowledge that we all need in Europe just to understand where Spain is today,' he adds.
'Thanks to Suárez and Carrillo's ability to understand each other's point of view, pact and be flexible, they facilitated Spain's transition,' said Domingo Corral in April, when still Movistar Plus+'s director of fiction and entertainment content.
Co-production brings more money to the table than a simple licensing deal, and pares risk.
Movistar Plus' is a local operator without the magnitude of global services and 'Anatomy of an Instant' is 'an expensive series,' said Corral. 'Having a parter like Arte France allows us a lot at a economic level but also because of its creative vision,' said Corral.
Since it bowed its first shows in 2017, the largest achievement of Movistar Plus+ has been to attract some of Spain's biggest creative talents as many creators in Spain have seized an opportunity to make series of the same level of artistic ambition and cinematographic execution as in cinema. As the Series Mania double suggests, this younger generation is ever more on France's radar. Sorogoyen won France's best foreign film Cesar for 'The Beasts' in 2023. Winning two prizes at last year's Series Mania, Los Javis 'La Mesías' was greeted with rave reviews in France when released last November on Arte: 'One of the most beautiful series of the year,' said Libération.
Two Spanish films – Oliver Laxe's 'Sirat,' Carla Simon's 'Romería' – have now been selected for Cannes competition.
Movistar Plus+ and Arte France now hope to co-develop series together, says Piel. In April, that looked to spell well for the Spanish operator's bottom line and international creative reach.
In late April, however, Corral, the main architect of Movistar Plus+' artistic ambition over the last decade, supported by Sergio Oslé as Movistar Plus president and then CEO of Telefónica España, was dismissed as Movistar Plus+ director of fiction and entertainment content by its parent Telefonica, itself under new management. 150 prominent figures from the Spanish entertainment sector have signed a public letter expressing their gratitude and consternation.
The most obvious way to interpret his Corral's removal is that Movistar Plus+ will now pursue a different production strategy. Other operators remain bullish about Spanish TV talent. It remains to be seen whether Spain's consecration in France now mark halcyon days.
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