Netflix Controversy surrounding the Netflix documentary on the crime of the Urban Police: "It is complicit in bringing post-truth to justice"

Days before the premiere, controversy, even judicial, loomed over the fiction. However, just over a week after coming to light, it is the documentary that is in the spotlight. Netflix’s clever maneuver on September 8 to release The Body on Fire and The Rosa Peral Tapes at the same time continues to generate headlines, and it shows little sign of stopping.

If the protagonist of both stories, Rosa Peral, convicted along with her lover Albert López for the murder of her partner, Pedro Rodríguez, all of them members of the Urban Police, tried to stop the premiere of the fiction series starring Úrsula Corberó, Now it is the prosecutor of the case who revolts against the true crime in which he participates and who gives the deceased, for the first time and from prison, the leading voice.

“I feel very disappointed that I was not told what the intention was and that I had the freedom to decide whether to participate under the conditions under which it was done,” Félix Martín complained last Thursday on the Cadena Ser program Si amanece we are leaving, of whom he is a regular collaborator, “it was not consciously told to me because they knew that if they had told me I would not have participated.”

The jurist then goes on to describe the conversation that led him to get involved in the production, according to him, a manipulation that led to a documentary that, for him, has a terrible consequence: “We flirt or we are complicit in bringing post-truth to justice, and that is very serious.”

After a first refusal, according to prosecutor Martín’s account, one of the directors of the documentary contacted him directly: “Very kind, he tried to convince me by all means and claimed that he was going to try to give a new perspective to the matter.” focused on the way in which legal operators prepare these matters, and that this was good for society to understand what our work consists of. “At no time was I told that only one of the condemned people was going to be given a voice,” he reiterates.

Not only the prosecutor has denounced manipulation in the management of the documentary. Two of the journalists who followed the case, and who give their testimony in the film, Mayka Navarro and Toni Muñoz, the latter author of Only you will have me, the book about the case that inspired The Body on Fire, have also said deceived by the team of the production company Brutal Media, with which EL MUNDO has contacted but which has declined to make statements. Netflix has also declined any communication regarding the controversy.

The director of The Tapes of Rosa Peral, Carles Vidal, did speak, one day after the prosecutor’s demonstrations, on TV3. “We told them that we wanted to add together all the stories that had been made with the protagonists and the prosecutor. Specifically, we did not tell them that Rosa Peral was going to participate,” Vidal acknowledged in the Planta Baixa program, “of course, there was no obligation and Furthermore, it is common that we do not reveal all the people we will tell. At that moment we were already talking with Rosa and we thought that for the sake of the documentary it was important that they could maintain the story they had maintained until that moment. We were afraid that knowing that Rosa participating could modify her story.

The explanations have only fueled the anger of the dissatisfied participants: “Talking about combating the hegemonic narrative by ignoring the key evidence of the trial and manipulating part of the interrogations is a shame,” Muñoz tweeted. “I would not have participated in a documentary that tries to question the case, denouncing that there was sexist treatment of Rosa,” Navarro alleged.

The creative executive producer of The Tapes of Rosa Peral Carlos Agulló, who served as spokesperson in promoting the documentary series, explained to this newspaper before the premiere that his main objective was to analyze “the role that the press played” in the case. “This woman was called a murderer before entering a trial, there were psychologists on television programs who had never treated this person and who began to give psychological profiles, graphologists,” he stated, “I had never seen her give her opinion. point of view. The meaning of this documentary is that now we are going to know what she has to say.”

And he defended the point of view now branded as “one-sided”: “The important thing is that we were clear that there is a judicial truth that we do not want to question: judicial truth,” he assured, and stressed: “This series would not exist without Rosa Peral, but it would not exist without the prosecutor and the private prosecution.”

For its part, on Friday, the Barcelona Court ordered the seizure of any income that Rosa Peral and Albert López may collect from Netflix for their image rights in the broadcast of the fiction series El cuerpo en llamas. The controversy surrounding the crime committed by the Urban Police promises great audiovisual success, but it sows important ethical doubts along the way.

“To construct a documentary that ignores the victim and the other convicted person, that does not present the existing evidence but rather blows chosen by that woman, who does not take advantage of her presence to ask her about the evidence, for me is very, very striking,” the prosecutor argued. , and he asked himself: “Is it enough for a convicted person to insist on his innocence to justify a new approach to a matter? For me, with all due respect, absolutely not.”