The series inspired by 'Temps de silenci' that Antena 3 'rescued' from TVE

Barcelona[Every summer, ARA dedicates a series of Sunday Media articles to reviewing television history. This year, we are bringing back some of the most talked-about channel changes that historical fictions underwent].

Any television channel knows that finding a daytime series that works and draws an audience is like having the Holy Grail. At TV3, they are well aware of the phenomenon with success stories like Nissaga de poder and Com si fos ahir, which will soon become the longest-running series on public television. State channels also have their examples of iconic soap operas, and one of the best known is Amar en tiempos revueltos, a fiction that has a life in two stages, the first on TVE and the second on Antena 3.

Inspired by the Catalan Temps de silenci, with which it shared a producer, Diagonal TV, Amar en tiempos revueltos was set in a fictional neighborhood, Plaza de los Frutos, during the Spanish Civil War and, above all, in the post-war period. The fiction followed the lives of different characters, including the couple formed by Andrea (Ana Turpin) and Antonio (Rodolfo Sancho), in love but from opposite backgrounds – he was the son of the caretakers of the well-off building where she and her family lived. The soap opera, which premiered in 2005, was one of TVE's mainstays for seven years, achieving an average audience in Spain of 2.47 million viewers and a 21% share. In Catalonia, it competed with El cor de la ciutat and, later, with La Riera, both audience leaders. But despite being one of television's great successes, it could not escape the economic and institutional crisis after Alberto Oliart resigned as president in July 2011. In the summer of 2013, TVE was faced with the dilemma of having to cut 200 million euros from its budget, out of a total of approximately 1,200, and one of the containment measures involved cutting back on series. The slowdown affected Águila Roja, Gran reserva, Isabel – also from Diagonal TV – and Amar en tiempos revueltos.

In June 2012, the daily soap opera reached a critical moment. The series' production was halted on June 14, with no news about whether TVE wanted to commission a new season. In other years, approval was given in March. The series had a team that, non-simultaneously, employed nearly 200 people. The director of Diagonal TV, Joan Bas, expressed surprise at the situation: "We don't really know what to do, because there are no interlocutors. We hope that the new team [proposed to Parliament this week and to be appointed around June 20] can make decisions soon." He added that it was unprecedented for a successful series to be left in limbo. "We are not used to a successful series being halted. Nor to seeing a television channel like TVE, which was a leader, left for ten months without the capacity to make decisions," he remarked.

The serial, which had also been broadcast during the summer in all previous years, had to take a forced vacation, and its time slot was replaced by broadcasts of the Tour de France, and then by the Olympic Games and the Vuelta a España. In July, faced with uncertainty, the production company admitted that it was already looking for alternatives to guarantee the series' future, such as the possibility of a spin-off on another channel. Amidst all this process, finally, Amar en tiempos revueltos returned to action on September 10, but two months later it definitively bid farewell to TVE viewers.

Less than 12 hours after the broadcast of the final episode, which was a double episode and was shown in prime time, Antena 3 was already promoting its sequel, Amar es para siempre, a project born from the conversations that Diagonal TV had while TVE decided the fate of the original series. The fiction, also set in Plaza de los Frutos, made a temporal leap from the parent project and was set in the 1960s. The cast included names such as Marc Clotet, Anna Castillo, and Carol Rovira.

Although the series never had the audience figures that Amar en tiempos revueltos achieved, its run on Antena 3 was long and fruitful, as it originated two more fictional series and several books. The series, which bid farewell in March 2024, was on air for 12 seasons, from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, and had an average audience of a share of 12.4% and 1.3 million viewers. If we add up the two life stages of the neighbors of Plaza de los Frutos, the universe of Amar is one of the longest-running in the history of Spanish television: 19 years and 4,545 episodes.