The Alcántara family bid farewell tonight to the audience to enter definitively in the collective memory of Spanish society. After 23 seasons and 413 episodes, Cuéntame cómo pasó puts an end to a long career that started just two days after the attacks of 11-S in the United States, which will precisely be the guiding thread of this expected final chapter .
The world has changed a lot since then and many are the vicissitudes that the members of this television family have gone through that have turned Cuéntame into the “most awarded, most watched and longest-running” Spanish prime time series, boasts RTVE.
Today’s episode closes a final season that has only had seven episodes, each dedicated to one of its protagonists: Antonio (Imanol Arias), Mercedes (Ana Duato), Herminia (María Galiana), Inés (Irene Visedo ), Toni (Pablo Rivero), María (Carmen Climent) and Carlos (Ricardo Gómez). The last episode revolves precisely around the latter, in which, absent since season 19 with Karina (Elena Rivera), he returns to the series to reunite the whole family and put the icing on the cake.
It all began on Thursday, September 13, 2001. For the first time, the voice-over of the actor Carlos Hipólito was heard embodying the memory of a child who remembered the arrival of the first television in his home, on the eve of the triumph of Massiel at Eurovision. “In 1968 I was eight years old. Now they say that 1968 was a revolutionary year, and it was, at least not for me…”, were the first words of Carlitos and the beginning of a series that had originally been titled provisional Nuestro yesterday.
Created by Miguel Ángel Bernardeau, the series produced by RTVE in collaboration with Grupo Ganga has been telling in parallel the life of the Alcántara and the history of Spain from 1968 to 2001, although in season 21 ( the first to be issued after the covid pandemic) there were some time jumps to 2020-2021. Those episodes had some outstanding symbolic gesture, such as seeing the voice of Carlos Hipólito finally giving life to his character in flesh and blood, but also some enormous shock for the followers of the series, such as the death of Antonio Alcántara.
Those time jumps were a bold and risky decision by the writers that unsettled some fans of the series who might have been betting that this would be the final season. Because knowing what the future of the protagonists was, the series lost its appeal and, coincidence or not, the audience resented it.
That season, number 21, narrowly exceeded two million viewers on average, with a 12.1% share, and the following one already dropped to less than one and a half million and 10.9%. Data very far from those obtained in the first season, with five million viewers and an average share of 33%. Or the third, in which the series broke its record: 6.5 million and a 40% share.
Those in charge of RTVE began to think that maybe it was time to end the series, although, fortunately for its fans, it was decided not to cut it dry, but to put the closure on it with a short season of seven episodes. A season that also started with a small leap into the future to see the Alcántara reunited at Herminia’s funeral in 2001 in Sagrillas, the fictitious town where the family was born.
After saying goodbye to Herminia, viewers discovered that the relationship between the family members was practically broken. Minutes later it was revealed, after jumping to 1994, that the decision of Antonio and Mercedes to distribute their inheritance during their lifetime caused divisions and it will be seen today to what extent it has affected them.
RTVE will say goodbye to the series with a special night that will start with Cuéntame cómo fue (9:55 p.m.), presented by Imanol Arias and Ana Duato, with actors who have played the members of the Alcántara family, which will collect testimonies, anecdotes and memories of its protagonists. And after the broadcast of the final chapter, two of its most emblematic episodes will be rebroadcast: El retorno del fugitivo, the first of fiction, and Tocando fondo, number 60, broadcast in July 2003 and which holds the record for audience of Cuéntame, with seven million viewers and a 51% share.
The series will end in 2001 to experience from the inside the attacks on the Twin Towers, which will alter the family’s plans to meet again. Two days later, perhaps the Alcántaras will sit on the sofa in their home in the also fictitious Madrid neighborhood of San Genaro to watch the premiere of a new series on La 1 that will be the most familiar to them. A series that, in addition, will end up being part of the history of television in Spain.
