The Alcántara family says goodbye to the audience tonight to definitively enter the collective memory of Spanish society. After 23 seasons and 413 episodes, Tell Me How It Happened puts an end to a long career that began just two days after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, which will be precisely the guiding thread of that long-awaited final chapter.
The world has changed a lot since then and the members of this television family have gone through many vicissitudes that have turned Cuéntame into the “most awarded, most watched and longest-running” Spanish prime time series, RTVE boasts.
Today’s episode closes a final season that has consisted of only seven episodes, each one of them 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). Precisely around the latter revolves the last episode in which, absent since season 19 along with Karina (Elena Rivera), he returns to the series to reunite the entire family again and put the finishing touch to the fiction.
It all started on Thursday, September 13, 2001. For the first time, the voice-over of actor Carlos Hipólito was heard, embodying the memory of a child who remembered the arrival of the first television at his house, on the eve of Massiel’s victory in Eurovision. “In 1968 I was eight years old. Now they say that 1968 was a revolutionary year and it was, at least for me…” were Carlitos’ first words and the beginning of a series whose original provisional title was Our 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 broadcast after the pandemic of covid-19) there were some time jumps until 2020-2021.
Those episodes had some notable nods, such as seeing the voice Carlos Hipólito finally giving life to his character in the flesh, but also some enormous shock for the series’ followers, such as the death of Antonio Alcántara.
These time jumps were a daring and risky decision by the writers that disconcerted some followers of the series, who perhaps would have bet on this being the final season. Because knowing what the future of the protagonists was, the series lost incentives and, coincidence or not, the audience suffered.
That season, number 21, barely 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 its 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 40% share.
Those responsible for RTVE began to think that perhaps it was time to end the series although, fortunately for its followers, it was decided not to cut it short but to close it with a short season of seven episodes. A season that also started with a small jump to the future to see the Alcántaras gathered at Herminia’s funeral in 2001 in Sagrillas, the family’s fictitious birthplace.
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 Antonio and Mercedes’ decision 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 begin with Cuéntame como fue (9:55 p.m.), presented by Imanol Arias and Ana Duato, along with the actors who have played the members of the Alcántara family, which will collect testimonies, anecdotes and memories of Their protagonists. And after the broadcast of the final chapter, two of its most emblematic episodes will be rebroadcast: The Return of the Fugitive, the first chapter of the fiction, and Touching Bottom, number 60, broadcast in July 2003 and which holds the audience record for Cuéntame, with seven million viewers and 51% share.
The series will end in 2001 to experience from within the attacks on the Twin Towers, which will alter the family’s plans to reunite again. Two days later, perhaps the Alcántaras will sit on the sofa of their home in the also fictional Madrid neighborhood of San Genaro to watch on their television the premiere of a new series on La 1 that will be extremely familiar to them. A series that will also end up being part of the history of television in Spain.
