"Put themselves in the skin of the victims": the 17-A attacks reach the cinema

Barcelona"What the hell happened?", exclaims, flustered, a police officer with the face of Enric Auquer amidst the confusion of the moments after the Rambla attack on 17-A. It is one of the images from the trailer of Cronos, the thriller about the police operation to capture the perpetrators of the Rambla and Cambrils attacks, which will be released in cinemas on September 4. Directed by Fernando González Molina, responsible for box office hits such as Three Steps Above Heaven, Palm Trees in the Snow, or The Invisible Guardian, it will be the first film to bring the 17-A attacks to the cinema. In fact, it is the first cinematic fiction about terrorist attacks in Catalonia.

Starring Auquer, Mónica López and Diana Gómez, Cronos takes its title from the name of the police operation that was activated in the days following the attack to capture Younes Abouyaaqoub, one of the perpetrators of the Rambla massacre. In the film's director's notes, González Molina points out that during those four days "street police officers, paramedics, political leaders and public administration officials experienced firsthand an almost wartime and extraordinary situation for which they were not prepared." According to the Navarrese director, "the film narrates the journey of a few of these people, symbols of many more, who overcame what had happened to try to find those responsible and reassure the population".

The focus will therefore be on the response team, not on the terrorists or the victims, whose families have not yet seen the film. They will be able to see it, if they wish, on September 2nd in a special screening for them at Cinemes Girona. Coordinating this screening is Roberto Manrique, an activist for the rights of victims of terrorism and a functional advisor to the Unit for Attention and Assessment of Victims of Terrorism (UAVAT), with whom the producer of Cronos (Nostromo Pictures) contacted at the beginning of the production process to explain the project and invite him to the filming. "I haven't been able to see Cronos yet, but I am aware of the interest they have shown in making sure the victims knew this film was being made, and I am very grateful for the empathy they have shown," says Manrique, who from September will be part of a newly created center of the City Council, the Barcelona Terrorism Interpretation Center (CITBAR).

In his meeting with Núria Valls, producer of Cronos, Manrique asked that the film not alter the official account of events and that those responsible put themselves "in the victims' shoes when making certain sequences". The activist would also like the film to reflect "the very clear failures of the police investigation" and to show that "there was no immediate protocol for assisting victims". In any case, that the script – signed by Alberto Marini – is based on an investigation by journalists Nacho Carretero and Arturo Lezcano inspires confidence in Manrique, as Carretero was one of the investigative journalists who shaped 800 metros, the 2022 Netflix-produced documentary miniseries about the 17-A attacks. Manrique considers it "very rigorous work" with which "the victims were very happy".

It is not the first time that an audiovisual producer has contacted Manrique. It already happened when the series Cuéntame dedicated an episode to the 1987 Hipercor bombing, of which he was one of the victims. At that time, they sent him the script and the storyboard to gather his opinion, a gesture he appreciated "very much". The thorn that remains stuck, however, is that a fiction film has never been made about that bombing, the deadliest in ETA's history. An absence in Catalan and Spanish cinema narratives that has, according to Manrique, only one reason: "El Corte Inglés does not want it to be talked about".

A turbulent summer in Ripoll

The attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils are the backdrop to another film that has been shot this year. L’escletxa stars a Muslim teenager with a Catalan mother and Moroccan father who lives in Ripoll, where the young terrorists were also from. Directed by Àlex Lora, who, despite living in New York, experienced 17-A precisely in Ripoll, L’escletxa explores the confusion and prejudices surrounding a boy searching for his identity during a tumultuous summer marked by the shockwaves of the attacks and the proximity of the 1-O referendum. Anna Alarcón, Younes Tisghiti, Walid Zaghdoud, Mourad Ouani, Maia Vila, and Àlex Brendemühl make up the cast of the film, which does not yet have a release date.