El Príncipe (TV series)

History

The project's history goes back to October 27, 2011, when the company Mediaset Spain Communication announced they had in mind a new project based on the detective genre. The statement further explained that the setting would be the fight against drug trafficking; its plot revolves around the presence of a policeman stationed in Ceuta who tries to fight drug trafficking between Spain and Africa, and who is pursuing a Moroccan leader whose younger sister falls in love with him. It was also reported that the main character of the series would be the actor José Coronado, who had starred in the film No Rest for the Wicked in the role of Santos Trinidad as a police inspector - this film was produced by the same company and was a big success at the box office.

Plot

In the troubled neighborhood of El Príncipe, Fran, a veteran police officer, has no doubts about using unorthodox methods to enforce order. This seems to be in danger with the arrival of Morey, a CNI agent, who uses the police station as cover to investigate a suspected police collaboration with a jihadist network. Morey's situation is complicated with the arrival of Fátima, an idealistic Muslim teacher who is looking for her vanished teenage brother, Abdu, while opposing the criminal activities of her other brother, Faruq, one of the biggest drug dealers in the neighborhood. However, Faruq is not the villain of the story. Then everything gets complicated when they become aware of a terrorist gang called Akrab, which blows up young people to terrorize the city. Meanwhile, Morey offers Fátima a chance to go to the peninsula with him, but, as they are about to depart, her brother Abdu returns to Ceuta on a tour bus with a bomb on board. When the police get to know this, they try to talk to him. The bomb does not go off, but Abdu is shot in the head by Morey. This leads into a second season with an impossible love affair between Morey and Fátima.

Cast and characters

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Production

The series is produced by Plano a Plano, under the direction of Aitor Gabilondo and Cesar Benitez as creators, executive producers and writers, who had worked for the channel previously on series including Periodistas and El comisario.

At first there was no fixed end point, but in June 2014 the company and producers agreed that the second season would consist of 16 episodes each divided into eight sections. It is notable that the episodes were shot entirely on location in Ceuta, Granada, Madrid and Malta and later edited. As for the system of writing, the team first thought of the ending for each episode and then worked towards the beginning. For the process of post-production, Stargate Studios Malta was responsible for the visual effects of the series, which meant that through the clever use of vfx techniques a story set in Ceuta could be filmed many miles away in Madrid. The involvement of Stargate Studios Malta was announced by Aitor Gabilondo, executive producer of the series, at a press presentation in May 2013, explaining that Telecinco's new venture in 2014 would mostly be shot in Madrid, and that the Ceuta barrio of El Príncipe Alfonso would be recreated using visual effects.

Filming began in Ceuta on 13 May 2013. Most scenes were not shot in El Principe but in other neighborhoods of the city or in Madrid. The second and final season also made use of digital technology; in addition, some location filming for this stage took place in the cities of Valletta and Granada. Filming for this second season began on 9 June 2014.

Controversy

Several voices denounced the distortion of the image of Ceuta and the stigmatization of the city that it is thought the series would entail, specifically to the neighborhood of El Príncipe, by what they saw as distorted images of the city's reality. The president of the neighborhood denied that the police would turn a blind eye as depicted in the series. It is also disputed that El Príncipe is the most dangerous neighborhood in Spain as indicated in the series, relative to other districts such as Las 3000 Viviendas in Seville.

Yasmina Aidi, a PhD candidate at Princeton University's Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages, argued that the series could distort perceptions of Muslims within the Spanish public.

Episodes and audience figures

The first episode was seen by over 4.4 million viewers and gained a 21.9% audience share, making it the most-watched premiere of any Telecinco television series since the start of Aida in January 2005. Its broadcast every Tuesday night established the series as the most viewed show in prime time and it was named as the program with the largest audience on that day. During the screening of the first episode the audience for that day reached a maximum, with 4,671,000 viewers and a 22.2% share. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the first episode of fiction was aired on a simulcast on six of the channels (Telecinco, Factoría de Ficción, Divinity, Energy, LaSiete and Nueve) operated by Mediaset España, which raised the overall average to 27.7% share and to 5.6 million viewers, while the "golden minute" attracted around 6.1 million viewers. The first airing of the series generated 76,402 mentions on social media by 51,158 users, and it became the leader in social-media impact with several hashtags. The first season ranked as the most watched series of the last two years and the largest audience on Telecinco since 2007-08, as well as achieving the largest impact of 2014 with over 800,000 comments on social networks.