Clans It is not the first Spanish series set in Galicia with a drug trafficking background. Flour, Living without permission or Operation Black Tide They already did it before. But the series that Netflix is releasing this Friday, the 21st, tries to differentiate itself through realism. “If you analyse all the series and films that have been made in Galicia, maybe 2% of them deal with drug trafficking. This is like what they say about Spanish cinema and the Civil War. First, drug trafficking is an attractive subject, no doubt, and a subgenre in itself. And then, some of the productions set in drug trafficking are very commercial and very successful. But, in addition, drug trafficking is one of the things that has defined Galicia in the last 30 years, that is a reality. The drug trafficking that exists in Galicia has not existed in Murcia or Cantabria,” says the Galician producer Emma Lustres, from the company Vaca Films, responsible for the series.
In ClansClara Lago plays Ana, a lawyer who leaves a renowned law firm in Madrid to move to Cambados, start from scratch and try to understand a part of her father’s life that she didn’t know about. There she will cross paths with Daniel Padín (actor Tamar Novas), son of an important drug trafficker now in prison and who tries to take over his father’s business. The plot combines Ana’s desire for revenge, the incipient love relationship between lawyer and drug trafficker and, above all, the business of the Padín clan, who are on the heels of the police.
Created by screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría, the series has its roots in the film He who kills with iron (2019), directed by Paco Plaza and in which Guerricaechevarria also participated in the script and Lustres in the production. It is another story of drug traffickers also set in Cambados. The scriptwriter and producer spent a lot of time in this Galician town getting to know the environment and the people. “I was surprised by the type of characters I found, which has nothing to do with what we are used to seeing in a series about drug traffickers. They were people from the town who were involved in something very, very strange but at the same time they were also collecting clams or growing vines on a piece of land next door,” explains Guerriacaechevarría.Flour represented a very specific and well-known moment, the nineties and the Operation Crab. We wanted to come up with something original, different, and at the same time try to do something very realistic,” adds Lustres. Originally from O Grove, very close to Cambados, she knows the place well: “It is a rich area, because it is an area of fishing industry, canning, seafood, tourism, Albariño, the heart of the Rías Baixas… and also, a cradle of drug trafficking, that too.”
The screenwriter and producer boast of the series’ plausibility. “We believe that this story could very well be happening in Cambados,” says Lustres. Although both the characters and the plot are fictitious, those involved and the stories are inspired by what drug traffickers, ex-drug traffickers, police officers, prosecutors and lawyers told them. In the seven chapters of the series, events taken from these testimonies appear, such as the search for a significant amount of money buried in the field or a threat that gets out of hand with concrete involved. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I think that Galician drug traffickers will like this series, because they will see themselves reflected,” says Emma Lustres in a video call interview.
The series shows the peculiarities of Galician drug trafficking, “very genuine, peculiar and particular”, in the words of the Galician producer. They are criminals who are different from those in foreign series and films and even different from the Galician drug traffickers of years ago. In the production, as Guerricaechevarría explains, the old-fashioned drug traffickers are reflected, with Padín Sr. as their representative. “Now what they have learned is that you have to go unnoticed,” says the scriptwriter. “You don’t buy a country house, you don’t buy a football team, you don’t show off. You have your money, you look for ways with your lawyers to put it in tax havens… They have learned to hide in that landscape, not to be as obvious as before. They are more independent, they don’t have that cult of big bosses. The only thing they can’t avoid, because it is stronger than them, is that they are crazy about cars,” he adds.
Clans It talks about drug dealers who make their living in the village and don’t want to leave their roots, or meet up with friends to play a game in the bar of a lifetime. “We liked the feeling of making a story about people from the village, where everyone knows each other and knows their secrets, with stories that go back many years and where, at the same time, they are involved in this and the money is coming out of their ears,” says Guerricaechevarría.
In addition to Cambados, the series was filmed in places in Galicia such as Vilanova, Vilagarcía, A Illa, Sanxenxo, A Coruña, Ferrol, Ares and Malpica, and also in Malaga, Gibraltar, Algeciras, Madrid, Oporto and Senegal. According to Lustres, the biggest challenge of the shoot was the recording of a chase through the estuaries, for which they used the film as a reference. The boyby Daniel Monzón. “We wanted to try to make a boat chase that was very realistic, to do it live and to make it as spectacular as possible.” The search for spectacularity meant that they had to leave plausibility aside a little, because these chases are not so common in the estuaries. In order to bring it to the stage, they had to count on the collaboration of the Judicial Police, Civil Guard, Customs Police, and Tax Agency to obtain permission to use requisitioned boats and to be able to navigate with other boats built in the estuary.
According to Guerricaechevarría and Lustres, with the Galician drug traffickers there is no danger of falling into the glamorization of the characters or the profession, a danger that lurks in any production that has criminals as protagonists. The creator of the series gives an example: “One of them told us that on a trip to Marbella they went to a nightclub and he saw the Russians with those champagne bottles with flares and he was shocked: ‘and then they don’t drink them, they leave them there!’” Emma Lustres recognizes that the character played by Tamar Novas is more carefully cared for: “He is an attractive guy, not only because of his physique, but also because of what he does and his ways. But there are some who are like that. I don’t think they have been treated like rock stars or heroes.”
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