After the preview three weeks ago of the chapter dedicated to the Paralympic scam (the Spanish basketball team for people with disabilities won the gold medal in Sydney 2000 but only two of the twelve players had some type of disability), the regular season of Anatomy de… arrives this Sunday at La Sexta at 9:30 p.m. The new Mamen Mendizábal program reconstructs moments that impacted Spanish society in the last 25 years “through three legs: interviews with the protagonists of the stories, archival images and high-quality cinematographic reconstructions.” Three legs that “along with the true crime narrative is the hallmark of our program,” Mendizábal details about this new Atresmedia TV format in collaboration with Producciones del Barrio.
What kind of stories have you revisited in Anatomy of…?
Those that have remained incomplete and of which, although the viewer thinks they know everything that happened, they really only know the headlines. Basically we have formulated the program as the story behind every story. Relevant facts and events that have intrigued Spanish society in our recent history. Some have to do with politics, others with nature, others with human evil…
You started with the Paralympic scam…
Yeah. I think that the passage of time puts things in their place in these stories because many times the facts go through the courts and it can take up to 15 years to have a judicial resolution, which sometimes changes everything, as happened in the case of the paralympics. Also in the story of Ricky Martin, the dog and the jam, the passage of time has rearranged things. Or in the next one we broadcast, the chaos of the air traffic controllers in 2010, after a decade a judicial truth arrived that will surprise those viewers who don’t know it because it gives a twist to history.
What do you have this Sunday about Ricky Martin and the famous story of the Surprise, Surprise program?
How was this hoax built? It is also a story that arose when there was practically no internet or social networks and yet the spread of this hoax was in record time. And it stayed for a long time. We have come to discover where the hoax started from and the route it took. Because this story has two sides: a very funny, television and folkloric part, but also a very serious one, of a very harsh accusation involving a minor with sexual attitudes where even the minor’s prosecutor’s office had to intervene.
What other facts do you address?
The car bomb attack on Aznar, which serves to remind us of what ETA meant for the history of Spain, the Biescas tragedy, which forced a change in the regulations on campsites in Spain, and the theft of the Calixtino Codex.
Why did you choose a ‘true crime’ narrative?
Because it accompanies very well what we want to do in Anatomy of… It is an audiovisual narrative that leads you to the investigation, to the mystery, to gradually layer the stories, to unravel them… This format moves away from journalistic reporting and enters more in that attractive narrative now in fashion because it makes the viewer more complicit and makes them pay close attention.
Does the passage of time sometimes make research difficult?
Time sometimes makes you have to search more because the information is more hidden and more inaccessible. Let it be only on paper! Can you imagine what a nightmare that is (laughs). We are in a world where everything is within reach of a click but when you visit the past you have to make a little more effort: look at papers, talk to people… You have to go back to a more classic journalism.
You’ve been in the profession for two decades. How has the trade changed over the years?
A lot, but more because of the technological revolution than because of the journalistic one. For me, the great challenge is to control the rush to publish the first one on the web or tell it first on the radio or TV. You have to avoid that this leads you to do a bad exercise in journalism and look like social networks. Because deep down our trade has credibility when we do it well, but we can lose it all if we approach the working mechanisms of the networks, where speed and rumor are the basis of construction. In our work there are other bases, very well established, that if we respect them we will have a future.
