Between 1954 and 1966 there was a Franco concentration camp in Fuerteventura hidden under the name of Colonia Agrícola Penitenciària de Tefía. It was one of the places where the regime sent those convicted by the law of slackers and criminals and which later included homosexuals. One of the darkest and most unknown episodes in Spain’s recent history that Las noches de Tefía recovers from oblivion, the new series produced by Buendía Producciones with the participation of Atresmedia TV that arrives today on the Atresplayer platform.
Created by playwright, screenwriter and stage director Miguel del Arco, the series adds to this hard and true story an element of fantasy as, in order to survive the harsh conditions of the concentration camp, the prisoners travel at night with their imagination at the El Tindaya cabaret, where their fantasies come true through the alter ego of each one.
Miguel del Arco wanted to remember during the presentation of the series to the media that in Spain “there were many concentration camps, not only during the Civil War, but also throughout the dictatorship”, and pointed out the importance of betting on to publicize these stories “in a country where we still fight for historical memory”.
Las noches de Tefía begins in 2004, when one of the prisoners imprisoned for his homosexuality, Airam Betancor (played by Jorge Perugorría), is forced to remember the 17 months of forced labor he suffered in Tefía when he was barely 20 years old . The investigations of a documentary filmmaker who aims to give voice to the silent history of the penitentiary colony force Airam to this painful exercise.
Marcos Ruiz plays this same character in his young version, when he arrives in Tefía in the sixties, shy and scared, after being denounced for having had homosexual relations. With him also comes Manuel, la Vespa (Patrick Criado), who had been to Tefía before, where he knows all its inmates and is somewhat the soul of the group because of his bravery and because he is able to make humor in any time, no matter how tragic.
More inmates are Charli (Miquel Fernández), locked up for his problems with alcohol, and who is the narrator who invented El Tindaya as an escape valve; la Nisa (Carolina Yuste), attractive and with a prodigious voice, with a halo of mystery that raises passions; Boncho (Raul Prieto), a sexist, vivacious and braggart cinema gallant; La Sissi (Javier Rueda), a woman locked in a man’s body, and La Biga (Roberto Álamo), the strong and violent jailer, especially with homosexuals whom he particularly despises.
One of the major challenges faced by the cast of the series was to follow a strict diet to reflect the subhuman conditions in which the prisoners lived. “For me, the diet meant the connection between my real self and the character”, pointed out Luifer Rodríguez, who gives life to another of the characters, La Pinito.
“Losing 18 kilos in two and a half months makes you feel weaker, like not being able to walk because you get dizzy, and that connected me personally to the potential drama these people could have. Going hungry helped us to put ourselves in the situation and we had to make the commitment that this story was beautiful, but we had to accompany it with going hungry”, the actor wanted to add.
