"This series is revenge against the investment fund that evicted us"

Special envoy to BerlinIn 2021, after more than 90 years serving lunches and dinners in Barcelona's Raval, Pol Rodríguez's parents had to close their family restaurant, Can Lluís. They were evicted by the investment fund that owned the building, with whom they had been negotiating to buy the premises for seven years. Rodríguez, who was then writing a film about homeless people, felt that "reality was entering the project" and turned his family's experience into the starting point for a fictional story about the housing conflict, the predatory voracity of capitalism, and the resilience of people who feel betrayed by ineffective laws.

That film project has ended up becoming Ravalejar, the series created by Pol Rodríguez that premiered this Tuesday at the Berlinale, where the first two episodes, directed by Rodríguez and Isaki Lacuesta, were screened; that is, the team responsible for the film Segundo premio. Ravalejar, which is the first series from Spain to participate in the festival's series section, brings together some of the most important names in Catalan cinema in recent years: in front of the camera, Enric Auquer, Maria Rodríguez Soto, Sergi López, and Francesc Orella, among many others, and in the screenplays Edu Solà and Isa Campo.The series raises the question of to what extent a law that does not protect the citizen should be respected,thriller, Ravalejar beats with the lively nerve of the streets of Raval, where a zero-kilometer certified series was filmed. The interaction with the reality of the neighborhood was one of the elements that Enric Auquer enjoyed the most in his work on the series. Ravalejar is not only related to the formal aspects of the series or his acting work, but also to the themes it addresses. expats, and how housing has ceased to be a right and has become a market commodity. I have friends who have left, they can't afford to live here: single, 32 years old, with a salary of €1,400 and they can't live in Barcelona. Not so long ago I was paying €600 for an apartment in Gràcia. In ten years, everything has gone to hell."Ravalejar will be screened this spring on HBO, but does not yet have a release date. Auquer is convinced that it will be "a worldwide success" because Mamífera. "We are a very different couple from that one –points out Auquer. Just as an actor always tries to play different characters, Maria and I try to make the relationships we have on screen different too, that they love each other in another way. As also happened with the siblings in Casa en flames, of course."