RTVE Revolution: Spain’s Public Broadcaster Plows Into Bolder Co-Production & Pick-Ups Leveraging its VOD Service

John Hopewell and Pablo Sandoval
·5 min read
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TOLEDO, Spain — At this month’s Annecy, France’s Canal+, France Télévisions and even Gulli delighted the business by unveiling new production slates which boasted some of the boldest projects being brought to market at the French festival.

At one and the same time, major European broadcasters, the BBC and France Télévisions again, were talking up their streaming services at Annecy.

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These used to be treated as a complement to their linear offering. Now it’s increasingly the other way round.

Annecy, of course, is animation. But could the same market forces be at work in live action TV and in Spain?

More than a hint of a step-by-step revolution at work at RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster, was sensed at an upbeat showcase on Wednesday.

Moderated by José Pastor, RTVE’s director of film and fiction, the show-case, RTVE Co-Productions on Board, featured three shows, “Allende, the Thousand Days,” a RTVE pre-buy; and “This Is Not Sweden,” and “The Last Wolf,” both RTVE co-productions.

From top Chilean fiction house Parox (“Invisible Heroes”), Spain’s Mediterráneo Media Entertainment and Argentina’s Aleph, Mente Colectiva and HD Argentina, “Allende, the Thousand Days” brought to Conecta Fiction what the networking forum loves most: a sneak-peek, here nine minutes presented by Parox co-head Sergio Gándara, of a TV show in the making.

Everybody knows what happened to Salvador Allende, Chile first democratically-elected socialist president, slaughtered on Sept. 11, 1973 by Chilean armed forces’ bombing and shelling of La Casa de la Moneda, which Allende refused to abandon.

But few outside Chile know much about Allende the man, or his political ambitions.

Staring Larraín regular Alfredo Castro, almost unrecognisable under the make-up, “Allende, the Thousand Days” takes the measure of the man, sensed in a medley of excerpts shown at Conecta Fiction which ranged from the mordantly humored to prescient and a corrective to those who feared Allende as a Chilean Lenin.

At one moment in the series, Fidel Castro visits Chile. “You’ve been brave, but blood will not run in Chile: our battlefield will continue being the National Congress,” Allende tells him.

Castro gets into a car with his equivalent, the head of Chile’s armed forces. “Augusto, right?” Castro asks in a friendly enough fashion. “At your orders,” says the man beside him, putting on his dark-rimmed glasses, acquiring the familiar profile of Augusto Pinochet.

Allende sensed his end, a close collaborator says in the series. “He used to repeat a phrase,” the collaborator comments: “‘We are made of destiny.”

“Taking on such a story which is so divisive as a fiction drama has been a large challenge,” Gándara said at Conecta Fiction.

“Allende, the Thousand Days” is open audience premium drama, “This Is Not Sweden” the same. Presented at the Berlinale Series Market, it is created by Aina Clotet and Sergi Cameron and produced by Spain’s Funicular Films and Nanouk Films in a pioneering co-production with Anagram Sweden for RTVE, Scandinavia public broadcasters SVT and YLE and Germany’s NDR.

In it, a Spanish couple moves into a swish neighbourhood in the Barcelona hills to ensure the best upbringing for their children. But tragedy strikes nearby to a Swedish family, rocking the couple, as the series questions certainties of social identity in a modern world.

“The Last Wolf,” another RTVE co-production, here with Portuguese public broadcaster RTP, is a drug lord crime thriller which  won the RTVE Development Award at last year’s Conecta Fiction.

The Conecta Fiction panel underscored a bigger picture. “Historically, we haven’t co-produced a lot,” Pastor said at the RTVE panel. 2022’s noirish crime thriller “Sequía,” (“The Drought”) marked the first co-production ever between RTP and RTVE, for example.

That’s now changing, however. “We’re opening up the model a bit to optimise fiscal incentives and Media and other European funding,” Pastor said.

“With such a demand for content, prices have spiralled and it’s key to remain competitive, he added.

A second gathering sea-change in the last year-and-a-half is streaming services’ pull back from 100% investment, as they look to make originals in co-production, while licensing to third parties,” said Alberto Hernández, head of RTVE Play.

“Language is not so much of a barrier, allowing us to opt with international co-productions.”

Windowing can remain a thorny issue, but Spanish broadcasters are more willing to share rights with platforms than in many major markets in Europe,” said Pastor.

“What co-production can bring is something different,” commented YLE’s Head of Drama Jarmo Lampela about “This Is Not Sweden,” referring to “the style of the camerawork, acting, sets.”

RTVE Play, RTVE’s VOD platform, also provides a ready first window for much, though not all, international co-production. The size of RTVE series bowing on it has escalated. Pastor observed.

That said,  RTVE is still light years from YLE, for example, whose Lampela said on a visit to Madrid that it put its platform first when looking for content, Pastor recalled.

The lion’s share of RTVR budget will still be devoted to daily series, for example, Pastor said. But RTVE is enjoying a new “flexibility,” he concluded.

“We have a lot of international co-production projects. I think there will be more,” he told Variety.

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