The Spanish series continue breaking barriers | TV

Every year, at the Mipcom, the largest television market in the world held this week in Cannes, Virginia Mouseler, the executive director of the consulting firm The Wit, takes the stage of the Grand Auditorium and in the room there are almost no seats free Its panels, entitled Fresh TV, are mandatory appointments for buyers, distributors and the press in which they select the most viewed titles in some countries and the most interesting titles for originality of content or production. Start the event with the format panel and finish with the fiction one. And this year, in both, Spain had an important role that confirms the visibility of its television production internationally.

"Appearing on Fresh TV positions you," says Pablo Conde, director of Cultural Industries at ICEX. Get new buyers interested in the titles indicated by The Wit. "And getting them to appear on Fresh TV has also been a work in itself, until a few years ago, the market share and the conferences went separately, but we realized that they have to go hand in hand. a turning point when Spain was a guest country in the Mipcom: it was no longer enough to be in the market, it had to be said that you were ".

The work of promotion and communication has been fundamental, but it went hand in hand with a well-armed fabric of production companies that have now given the right keys to tell the stories they want to see today. With the Bamboo series (Gran Hotel, Velvet) as representatives first and now with The paper house as standard-bearer, but "not as a case of timely success," says Conde. "Because if it were, it would be exhausting, because we've been talking about The paper house and this golden moment is maintained. "As an example: the expectations raised by The pier, produced by Atresmedia Studios and broadcast by Movistar +.

All that sum of factors is what has achieved a unique moment in the fiction panel of Virginia Mouseler held in this edition of Mipcom, in which Spain has managed to put four titles, only one less than the United Kingdom, the star country. The first of those who spoke the executive director of The Wit was + of 100 lies, of Atresmedia issued on its Flooxer platform. It served as an example of one of the key trends this year: the production of series written only for digital that, according to The Wit, have grown by 13%.

Another trend observed by The Wit is that 5% of new series around the world are based on foreign ideas, scripts and formats. And in this respect, he used as an example the adaptation that Holland has produced in the series I know who you are, that was seen in Telecinco, distributed by Filmax and that will also have other European versions in Germany and France.

The other two Spanish fictions among the 19 selected around the world have been Live without permission (Telecinco), with its title in English Unauthorized Living, for being the series more seen in Spain in what we take of the season of autumn; Y The victim number 8 (Telemadrid and ETB), highlighted as an example of "original drama of regional channels".

"The interesting step has been for the large audiovisual groups to understand that they had to communicate internationally because until now it was a business that started and ended in Spain," Conde continues. "Now it has gone to not be shy about what is done inside to show it off because the international part is increasingly important in their business model, that change of chip has made them see that they have to communicate and do marketing"All this joint work of a Spain brand has achieved, even before the closure of the Mipcom, calculate an increase of 10% in the activity of meetings with Spanish producers and distributors that go to the market.