Mossos d'Esquadra speaking German: the curious TV3 series for Sunday afternoons

BarcelonaOn March 30th, TV3 viewers were surprised by a unique, or at least curious, telefilm. The action took place in Barcelona and starred two Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan Police) officers: Inspector Xavi Bonet and Superintendent Fina Valent, who were investigating the murder of Àrsalan Qureixi, an illegal beer can seller and undocumented immigrant. A chance collision with a man on the beach, whose head was hit hard with a bottle, puts them on the trail of a criminal plot. Up to this point, a textbook noir story, but one that was surprising—at least if watched in the original version with the dual-mode system—because the two Mossos d'Esquadra officers, and the rest of the characters, spoke German, matching, in fact, the unmistakable Germanic features of the two protagonists, actors Clemens Schick.

Crimes in Barcelona is, in fact, Barcelona-Krimi, a series of telefilms produced by Das Erste, Germany's main public television channel and the oldest in the country. The first premiered in 2017, and eight have been made so far, the last of which was offered in Germany in 2023. So far, TV3 has offered the first two titles, and the third, titled Stolen girlsIn this story, the Mossos d'Esquadra catch a teenager about to steal a motorcycle and discover—with difficulty because trauma prevents her from speaking—that she has been locked and tied up inside an old refrigerator in an abandoned building. When the officers find the burned bones of two other teenagers, they suspect a dermatologist. The fourth chapter has also been secured. Blood-stained concreteBut there are still no dates for the next four.

The explanation for this curious mix of German TV movie aesthetics with German actors playing characters with Catalan names and plots rooted in Barcelona and Catalonian reality has a first and last name: that of screenwriter Stefanie Kremser, who created the characters and wrote the first one. Born into a German-Bolivian family, she spent her childhood and adolescence in the Brazilian city of São Paulo before moving to Munich to study documentary filmmaking. Her last major geographical change consisted of settling in Barcelona in 2003 with her husband, the writer Jordi Puntí. However, from there she has continued working for German television.

Kremser speaks Portuguese, Spanish, German, English, and Catalan. Several of her books are available in translation into the latter language: Postcard from Copacabana (Club Editor, 2007), Street of the Forgotten (Empúries, 2012) and The day I learned to fly (1984, 2016 Editions) and the memoir If this street were mine (1984, 2020 editions), where she explains precisely her transcontinental moves and the identity crisis that ensued. "When I returned to Germany, I spoke the language and seemed from there, but I didn't feel like I was. I was and wasn't an immigrant," she explained five years ago in an interview with ARA.

Kremser's geographically turbulent life is compounded by an illness she was diagnosed with at the age of 25—a tropical virus—that predicted a life expectancy of five to fifteen years at most. "It was then that I thought I should do something that would stick, although, seen from today, it may seem ridiculous... But I started writing, and the change of language, from Portuguese to German, brought me luck." The writer and screenwriter is now 57 years old.

For the moment, Catalan audiences have bought into this curious German-Barcelona blend. The first episode brought together 217,000 viewers on average and had a 13.7% audience share on a day when TV3 had a 12.3% audience share. share Overall, the TV movie boosted the network's ratings. The same thing happened the following Sunday with the second installment. Although it fell slightly behind (169,000 viewers and 12.2%), it continued to boost the Catalan audience's overall rating, which that day stood at 11.1%.