Carles Tamayo: "I hope they don't break my face, but it can happen"

BarcelonaCarles Tamayo's ideas are bubbling and he speaks at 1.5x speed. We meet at La Calàndria cinema in El Masnou, his town, which is where the LASAL photography festival, which has invited him to participate, is being held. But the place has more significance: the manager of the hall he used to go to as a child was the protagonist of his most famous documentary, Cómo cazar a un monstruo, in which he shows the arrest of this pedophile. We talk about ethics, his infiltrations in cults, betrayals, the meaning of journalism, and how he only wanted to make children's films.

“You will pay dearly for this!” This is how the pedophile Lluís Gros threatens you at the end of the docuseries Cómo cazar a un monstruo, in which you play a fundamental role in his arrest. Have you had more contact with him?

— No, not a single one. Four years have already passed and it's curious because in the last conversation we had I told him that perhaps it was the last time we would meet. So it was. There is nothing more to say... He is in prison, I am living my life, and that's it. My role is over.

The orthodoxy of the profession says that the journalist observes and that's it. On the other hand, in this documentary you provoked his capture, which had been left in some strange bureaucratic limbo. Did it pose any ethical dilemma for you?

— Well, I have many ethical dilemmas. I had them, for example, with the chapter of Se nos ha ido de las manos in which I talked about the real estate sector. Should I be neutral? From my point of view, it was unfair to do a report giving voice to tenants and owners equally, so I started from a very clear position: against real estate being used as an asset. The same with Monstruo. After getting to know victims for two or three years, I wanted to do my bit to get him into prison. If this is not journalism, then fine, but being equidistant is being unfair, because on the scales not everyone has the same power. Being equidistant is siding with the people who have power, who lie, who misinform.

Before making this kind of video diary documentaries, Wikipedia says you worked at Catalunya Ràdio, Teatre Lliure, Liceu, BBC World News... How did you make the leap to go on your own?

— Oh, this BBC thing, there's a lot of misinformation here, huh?

Illustrate us.

— All these jobs were as a freelance, very precarious... except for the one at Lliure, which went quite well for me making videos for Lluís Pasqual, who now, ahem, has become fashionable! (Laughs). At Catalunya Ràdio I worked doing a video section that paid very little. At the Liceu... well, I recorded a video once and it was very difficult to get paid. A thousand miserable euros for a brutal amount of work that I did. I said never again and, when I got tired of all this, I went to try my luck in London, because a friend of mine had gone there and it went very well for him. I, on the other hand, was there for eight months eating my snot until one night they called me at the last minute to go record something for BBC Radio 2, as a camera operator 5. It was to grab a joystick and little else, to film two ladies dancing to raise money against cancer. So that's it, I returned and opened my YouTube channel.

With a plan to live off this or just for pleasure?

— I was amazed, I guess. When I was in school, I had already created a media outlet, by myself, totally geeky, but people liked it and the feedback from what I did afterwards was positive. I also made videos for weddings, ceremonies, communions. At the time it seemed like the worst job in the world, but now I realize it made me learn a lot. I tried to record it differently each time and, at the same time, not too differently because in the end the family wants all the classic moments. In any case, those who were doing things that caught my attention in the media were people who had followers on social networks. It was when iCat was starting to sign people from the internet. And I said, look, if that's the system... One day, talking about it with two cousins, I told them: I'll open a YouTube channel and within a year I'll have 100,000 followers.

And so it was?

— Yes, yes, I threw myself into it like a psychopath. My cousins told me: “No, man, no, Carles, you won't be able to…” It all sounded very cryptobro... Now they say they encouraged me, my cousins, but at that moment they told me no, that people didn't watch YouTube as much anymore... I went to see my sister to ask her what was being done on YouTube and she showed me videos by AuronPlay. I started to analyze him, not so much his content, because I was clear that I wanted to make my own reports and documentaries, but his style: I wanted to understand why people like him connected with the audience and what audiovisual language he used.

Don't you use YouTube at all?

— No, no: I used to watch Buenafuente, Berto, Jordi Évole and all of El Terrat in general. Wow, a geek. When I analyzed what AuronPlay did, more experiential, and with a series of points I jotted down, I started to hone in on this. My previous videos were more contemplative: one had 10,000 views but the other 52, because it didn't generate a connection. Until I made the video about the Palmar de Troya sect and that exploded.

Did you reach 100,000 in a year?

— In five or six months I already had them. It's a quite unprecedented case, because normally it takes people on YouTube a very, very, very long time. I also think that all the background from the age of fifteen at Ràdio Premià de Mar and all the places where I had filmed videos meant that, in reality, it wasn't really from one day to the next. The most important thing is that I got there doing whatever I wanted. We sell all the projects saying: I'd like to talk about this topic with our own style and people say: okay. I'm a lucky person.

But the big leap in projection you made with Cómo cazar a un monstruo.

— Look, it worked very well within Prime Video, but we went to sell it to other platforms and producers and they told me: “Pedophile documentaries don't sell”. And they added: “Especially not in Catalan”. I tried to make them understand that the story is the least important thing, that it's how it's told, that it hooks you. With the piece about data brokers the same thing happens. The subject can be boring and nobody seems to care too much about what happens to our data. So, it's a challenge on our part to make it fun.

In the documentary, you are seen living on a boat. How did you end up there?

— When I tried to become independent and it wasn't very viable to rent an apartment, I started calling boats, telling them, can I come and live here, like Julio Manrique in Porca Misèria? I had seen the series when I was little and I had found living on a boat really cool. But they quoted me exorbitant prices, 8,000 euros a month, which I couldn't afford. When the pandemic arrived, these same owners called me and said: if you want, we don't have tourists now and you can come for 1,800 euros. But I told them: “I can only afford 450”, it's not even a negotiation, it's what I can afford. And, in the end, I ended up living on a boat for 450 euros a month and it was great. I had four cabins, two bathrooms, a kitchen, the entire upper deck where I could sunbathe in full confinement... much better than the shared shitty apartment I had in Plaça d'Espanya.

Do you often use the hidden camera, which has detractors because they find it dishonest and an invasion of privacy. How do you experience the debate, you?

— It is a debate that I have reflected on many times, and in fact I also talk about it in the book. There is a chapter called I am a traitor. In reality, whenever I can I avoid it: it is not something that makes me feel comfortable. And thinking about the viewer, it is much more attractive to be direct. For an investor to tell me everything they tell me calmly on camera is much funnier and you eliminate the element of deception. Same with Lluís Gros: I am direct the whole time and I think: "To what extent is this guy not really aware of everything that is happening?" But there is information that we would not be able to obtain if it were not for this method.

Another of your obsessions are pseudosciences.

— We went to a program by Xavier Sardà where Víctor Amela and others were, and they started talking about a center for therapies they called complementary, where it was supposed you were given alternative complementary treatments for cancer. On camera, they kept repeating: “We will never tell you to stop chemotherapy here.” We went to the program with a wrong idea and felt deceived. And we suspected that these people say one thing in front of the camera and do another. I remember they disrespected us and insulted us. We decided to go see if we were right or not.

And how did it go?

— We went to this very clinic and they immediately told us: “Don’t tell your family anything about this; don’t do the chemotherapy, it’s poison...”. All of this is recorded with a hidden camera, of course. I know that if I interview them, they will deny wanting to replace conventional treatment. If I give them a voice on camera, it will suddenly be the opinion of one person against what a witness says, and that will be left as a debate. But it’s not a debate, because the victims are real. For me, doing justice is proving that what a victim is saying is not made up.

Television too often falls into falsely equidistant debates.

— When I am invited to a program, I always ask: from what point of view will the topic of pseudotherapies be approached? Will these people be given a voice? If it is to discredit what they do and demonstrate that it is false, I find it good, and in the end, that is what I do. If it is simply for them to give their point of view, I do not find it good and you will not find me there.

Is it a cliché that young people are not interested in politics or news?

— The young people I interact with are very interested in politics. Now, the way these news were consumed before has changed and now you suddenly get informed through other networks like TikTok. What needs to be done is to educate people so they know how to discern fake news from real news. Many times, people talk about media outlets where there is truth and online media where there is disinformation, but it doesn't have to be that way. Can we criticize other media outlets from the ARA newspaper?

Here we have slackers who write daily columns and everything.

— The op-ed of La Vanguardia, frankly. Is this journalism or what is it? How many lies are told per word squared?

Taking a stance makes you a target for criticism, especially in these polarized times. You have been accused of being a transmission belt for Pedro Sánchez because of your program on RTVE.

— We expected them all and they don't pose a problem either. Seeing the reports, it's clear we're not particularly friendly with Pedro Sánchez's party either. What catches my attention is that the episode aired and it took almost two weeks for this wave of hate to arrive. But during the previous days, many were saying: “Damn, I didn't think they would air this on Spanish Television run by socialists”. Because the measures were created by the PP, but the socialists haven't done anything either to remove the tax breaks and all those things.

You are becoming more and more popular. Are you afraid this will prevent you from making new infiltrations?

— So far it hasn't been a problem either. And I don't want to keep infiltrating, but if a topic absolutely requires it, then perhaps someone else will do it.

What is it like to live with the fear of being caught?

— After a year and a half, it happened to me: normal. I had just had an interview in El País and, a week later, a guy comes up behind me and says: "I know who you are, get out." I had freaked out many times before, thinking I had been caught, but in the end it was always a misunderstanding. This time, however, I understood it was for real. And I didn't have much time to think, but by then I had everything planned and was in contact with two people from the National Police who handle this section on Coercive Persuasion Groups, I had a WhatsApp group with people who knew at all times what I was doing and where I was... not much could happen either, beyond them breaking my face.

Home... Are you willing to have your face broken?

— I hope they don't break my face, but it's something that can happen. Maybe one day I'll run into someone in the street and they'll chase me, but hey, I hope it doesn't happen. And if it does, it will be content and that's it, Streisand effect. It will serve so that the next day this will be talked about and more will be said about the topic than this guy wanted to be said. Of course, with the silliness of being chased and all that, I don't know if the cult video already has a million views, and we've made a book with this ending.

Have you received many legal threats?

— I haven't explained this, I think. Someone from IM Academy sued me. Suddenly, my mother receives a criminal complaint, with a request for years in prison, a madness. And my mother: "Damn it, my son is going to jail!" I start reading it and it was very well written, so I thought maybe I had gotten myself into big trouble. But I read it again more calmly and it made no sense. When we went to testify, the judge took it with a laugh, because I suppose she had more important things to do. In the end, it never materializes into anything: with the team I work with, we always gather a dossier with proof of everything we say.

Sometimes I ask content creators and journalists themselves how afraid they are of being canceled. But you deliberately provoked your own cancellation, to explain the mechanisms behind it.

— Exactly. And what do people answer you?

More than once they tell me that they don't care about the cancellation, but, once the recorder is turned off, they admit that all the noise from social media does affect them. That they put on a brave face.

— Of course. I am not a content creator who spends all day exposed: I do it on very specific days each year, or every two years. And the message I send is very well thought out, so I already know where the criticism will come from. On X, especially, there are these neoliberals who say that Pedro Sánchez paid me. Honestly, it doesn't affect me. My goal is to try to reach those people, in fact, and for them to see that it's not what they think. It's complicated for me to make a misstep because I'm not posting things all day.

What do you do when you're not posting?

— Ah, I have suffered this anxiety of having to create content for fear that, if not, people will forget about me! The algorithm makes you notice it a lot. Now not anymore. Everything has gone quite well for me and it hasn't been a problem for me to disappear. Now we will disappear... until the next thing.

The next thing will be on 3Cat, they tell me.

— The next season premieres, it's a more modest series than the one I did for Spanish Television, because it has a small budget, as it's going to digital. I prepared it before Se nos ha ido de las manos and I will talk about pseudosciences, disinformation, psychics, coaching and all these things I've been working on... It will be called Incredible, but false.

In any case, I was referring to what you do not so much when you are absent, preparing material, but when you rest.

— It's been a long time since I've had time. It's the first week I've had free in three years. Nothing, I took the opportunity to go to the beach, play the piano...

Do you still have the dream of wanting to make children's films?

— What I would like to do is make The Goonies, Toy Story, animated movies. At some point I got sidetracked and started talking about pederasts. But, in the end, what I like is audiovisual narrative and how these stories are told through image and sound, and how they are structured. In the end, there are many children's movies that talk about serious and dense topics, and I try all the time to do the same: to deal with a serious and dense topic so that an 11-year-old kid can see it, have a good time, have fun, and also learn something. In a way, I consider myself to be making children's movies, too. Did you see what a strange spiral? (Laughs).