Ronny Sianturi
The sixth annual edition of Iberseries & Platino Industria has commenced in Madrid, serving as a premier international hub for the promotion, financing, and co-production of Ibero-American audiovisual content. Among the packed itinerary of industry roundtables, masterclasses, and networking sessions, one of the most anticipated highlights centers on the collaborative initiative between the summit organizers and the Fundación SGAE, Spain’s primary collective management organization for intellectual property rights. On Thursday, Oct. 1, a specialized pitching showcase brought six carefully curated series projects—crafted by seven prominent screenwriters—to the forefront of the global market, presenting them directly to international producers, studio executives, platform buyers, and high-profile financiers.
This strategic pitching event is engineered to bridge the persistent gap between visionary creative talent and the institutional forces capable of bringing complex narratives to global screens. By fostering direct lines of communication between writers and decision-makers, the showcase reinforces the core mission of Iberseries & Platino Industria: to elevate the international reach of Ibero-American fiction, stimulate regional investment, and guarantee that original voices from Spain and Latin America secure the commercial backing necessary to thrive in an increasingly competitive global streaming ecosystem.
Background Context of Iberseries & Platino Industria and Fundación SGAE
Established to solidify the cultural and economic ties within the Ibero-American audiovisual sector, Iberseries & Platino Industria has rapidly evolved into the definitive meeting place for content creators, broadcasters, and film commissioners from Europe and Latin America. The collaboration with Fundación SGAE represents a critical institutional pillar for the event, offering institutional backing, legal mentorship, and development platforms for native writers who might otherwise struggle to pitch high-concept narratives to major studios.
Fundación SGAE, tasked with the defense and promotion of authors’ intellectual property rights across Spain, has increasingly focused its strategic initiatives on incubating pre-production projects that exhibit strong export potential. By selecting these six specific series from a vast pool of submissions, the organization aims to demonstrate that Spanish-language storytelling extends far beyond conventional telenovelas or standard procedural crime dramas, branching into speculative sci-fi, dark social realism, historical satire, and high-concept psychological thrillers.
The Pitching Showcase: Connecting Talent with Capital
The Oct. 1 pitching session was structured to offer each creative team a dedicated platform to present their series bibles, visual mock-ups, and structural arcs to an auditorium filled with key industry stakeholders. In recent years, international buyers have exhibited a voracious appetite for localized, culturally specific narratives with universal themes—a trend amplified by the global success of non-English language hits on platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Max.
Organizers noted that the curated selection reflects the broader evolution of the European writers’ room, where individual creators are increasingly taking charge of intellectual property development from its inception. The projects presented in Madrid span a diverse array of genres, proving that the contemporary Ibero-American creative landscape is willing to take bold narrative and formal risks.
Comprehensive Overview of the Six Featured Projects
The six series projects selected for the Fundación SGAE collaboration at Iberseries & Platino Industria encompass a wide spectrum of narrative styles, historical periods, and speculative futures.
La Librera: Documenting a Cultural and Political Refuge
Authored by Virginia Burgos from Seville and Juan Sánchez from Madrid, La librera transports viewers back to the early 1990s during a transformative era of social and political awakening in Spain. The narrative centers on a pioneering woman who establishes the country’s first dedicated LGBT bookstore. Over the span of several decades, the establishment evolves from a modest retail space into an essential community sanctuary and a clandestine political backroom for marginalized voices.
However, the series takes a poignant turn when societal shifts and urban gentrification lead the very neighborhood she helped build and sustain to turn its back on her. Confronted with isolation, the protagonist is forced to grapple with a devastating existential crisis: what happens to a community pillar when she is no longer needed by the people she sacrificed everything to protect? Industry analysts view La librera as a timely exploration of queer history, urban displacement, and the personal cost of lifelong activism.
Avión: The Socio-Economic Clash of Galician Emigration
Coming from Vigo, creator Miguel Cavadas presents Avión, a socially charged drama rooted in the unique demographic reality of a specific Galician village. Avión serves as a living embodiment of the complex utopian narrative surrounding Galician emigration—the historical phenomenon of leaving a impoverished homeland in search of fortune and eventually returning wealthy.
The series explores a stark seasonal dichotomy: during the cold winter months, Avión mirrors the broader crisis of rural precarity, depopulation, and an aging demographic typical of inland Spain. Yet, in the summer, the village undergoes a dramatic metamorphosis, transforming into a vibrant festival of wealth characterized by ranchera music, Mexican flags, and an influx of transatlantic expatriates. The population quadruples as returning families celebrate their success. This creates an intense socio-cultural friction between two incompatible worlds residing in the same geographic space: community solidarity versus modern individualism, Galicia’s lowest statutory pensions juxtaposed against newly acquired Mexican fortunes, and the persistence of the past colliding with the realities of the present.
El Capricho: Satirical Court Intrigue in 18th-Century Spain
Alberto Grondona brings a sharp comedic and historical lens to the slate with El capricho, a satirical historical comedy set within the corridors of the 18th-century Spanish court. The series tracks the fierce, unrelenting power struggles waged by three extraordinary women: Queen María Luisa of Parma, the charismatic and influential Duchess of Alba, and the progressive, enlightened Duchess of Osuna.
Set against a backdrop of a Spanish monarchy and society hurtling toward structural collapse, their high-stakes battles for political influence, public image, and personal desire are observed, critiqued, and narrated with cutting irony by none other than Francisco de Goya. Operating as an uneasy witness to the decadence of his patrons, the legendary painter turns palace intrigue into a surprisingly contemporary mirror reflecting political corruption, vanity, and the twilight of an empire. Industry insiders have drawn conceptual parallels to a female-led, darkly comedic take on dynastic power struggles, infused with distinct Spanish theatricality.
Teléfonos Fijos: Supernatural Mystery in the Basque Country
Angel Mirou ventures into the realm of the uncanny with Teléfonos Fijos, a psychological mystery set in the modest, working-class Recalde neighborhood of Bilbao. The premise revolves around traditional landline telephones ringing persistently during the dead of night, jolting residents awake in homes that still retain the analog infrastructure. When individuals pick up the receivers, they are met with the distinct voices of relatives, friends, and acquaintances whom they instantly recognize—despite the inconvenient truth that every single caller is dead.
The narrative immediately establishes an atmosphere of acute psychological dread and philosophical inquiry. As the phenomenon spreads, the community becomes fractured between those who view the calls as definitive proof of an afterlife and those convinced they are the victims of an elaborate, technologically sophisticated fraud utilizing cutting-edge artificial intelligence and deepfake audio. The ensuing investigations upend the lives of everyone involved, raising unsettling questions about grief, memory, and technological paranoia in the twenty-first century.
La Edad Menor: A Dystopian Inversion of Care and Obligation
Roberto Osa introduces a chilling speculative dystopia with La edad menor, set in an alternate-reality Madrid where systemic legal codes mandate that children become the legal guardians of their aging parents. The central conflict follows María, a woman who attempts to mount a desperate resistance against state authorities when her mother is admitted into La edad menor—a formalized, irreversible bureaucratic process of state-mandated infantilization.
As María fights the administrative machinery of the state, her brother is caught in a profound moral dilemma, torn between loyalty to his sister and the allure of political compliance and career advancement. Complicating matters further is the unearthing of a devastating family secret that proves neither personal sacrifice nor active resistance may be sufficient to prevent the complete erasure of memory and identity. The project has drawn attention for its allegorical critique of elder care systems, bureaucratic overreach, and the shifting generational contracts of modern urban societies.
Trueque: Domestic Chaos and High-Stakes Parenting Experiments
Rounding out the Fundación SGAE selection is Trueque, created by Pedro Pablo Picazo. Moving away from speculative sci-fi and historical satire, the series dives into domestic comedy and suburban dysfunction. The plot follows three families who share a close, long-standing friendship, though each household faces daily exhaustion trying to manage the complex, rebellious behavior of their respective teenagers.
Convinced that they possess the ideal strategies and parenting techniques to solve the behavioral issues plaguing each other’s homes, the parents arrive at a radically unconventional solution: swapping their teenagers. The series explores the cascading, chaotic, and often disastrous consequences of this domestic experiment, offering a contemporary, character-driven spin on classic high-concept family comedies.
Industry Implications and Future Outlook
The presentation of these six diverse projects at Iberseries & Platino Industria underscores a broader maturation within the Spanish and Ibero-American content sectors. By moving beyond traditional genres and embracing high-concept premises—ranging from supernatural mysteries and dystopian allegories to sharp historical satires and complex social dramas—writers and institutional backers are signaling readiness to compete on the global stage.
As the Madrid summit continues through the week, executives and independent producers will evaluate the commercial viability of these works. For Fundación SGAE, the successful cultivation and pitching of these series validate the ongoing necessity of institutional support systems in safeguarding creative autonomy while opening direct pathways to international financing networks. The ultimate trajectories of La librera, Avión, El capricho, Teléfonos Fijos, La edad menor, and Trueque will serve as an important barometer for the health, ambition, and global export potential of contemporary Ibero-American television in the years ahead.
