Daniel Calparsoro directs the new Netflix miniseries, ‘Assault on the Central Bank’, where he recreates the robbery that took place in Barcelona on May 23, 1981, three months after Antonio Tejero’s attempted coup d’état, a time that he keeps ” very clear democratic parallels” with current democracy.
“It is a highly topical series because there are very clear democratic parallels between democracy then and now, for example, at the time there was talk of amnesty and now we continue talking about this issue or the extreme right,” he assured. in an interview with Europa Press, on the occasion of the premiere of the series on November 8.
The filmmaker acknowledges that one of the elements that caught his attention to make this series was the “celebration of freedom and the birth of democracy” that hovered over the early years of the 1980s.
“I liked the idea of telling a story about a time that was one of evolution and where everything was changing, with moments of celebration and moments of great risk,” he stated.
Furthermore, he emphasizes that the resemblance to today was what convinced him that it was a “very interesting project” and rejects that it is a story that has fallen into oblivion in Spanish society. “It is a story that is in the newspaper archive, what happens is that now the world and information moves very fast,” he commented.
Calparsoro, born in Barcelona, recalled that that time had a lot of uncertainty, since society could equally be celebrating or fleeing from the bombs. “There was a lot of risk so that everything would not be lost. Now we are in a moment in which many things from then are repeated,” he emphasizes.
Another aspect that the director highlights is that in the robbery the hostages “played a very special role”, which allows it to be played in fiction. In the series, Miguel Herrán plays José Juan Martínez, alias ‘El Rubio’, leader of the thieves who entered the Central Bank.
The actor, who has been able to get to know the criminal up close, assures that he is a “very close” person and that listening to him is like “having a lecture in front of him”, although he recognizes that a “spectacular halo of mystery” surrounds him. “You never quite know what is real and what is not. I think it’s part of his magnetism,” he says before remembering that the real reason for robbing the bank “is only known to him.”
For his part, Herrán affirms that this event “is not told when the kids grow up, even though it helps to know” how democracy begins in Spain. “”It is a story that seems ultramagnetic to me. It is a shame that it is not taught in schools because it explains very well how we have been able to get to the point where we are today,” he added.