‘Real Facts’, the True Story podcast that equates fiction and reality: "Every story has the potential of a movie"

Esther González is a young woman from Madrid who studies at a high school in Moratalaz. Her life takes an irremediable turn when she meets Israel, a young revolutionary who will mark a before and after in what could have been the career of a normal “petty bourgeois” woman, but in which implacable love led her down other paths.

Now a psychologist, she would love to tell her story to one of her patients, but she knows that it would mean a point of no return when she admits that, some time ago, she was a member of the armed gang GRAPO, carried out one of the most violent attacks of the organization and suffered constant rape by one of the leaders of the command. A shocking testimony that she stars in The therapyone of the episodes of Real factsthe podcast from the True Story company that, despite seeming like a science fiction story, is as raw as the truth itself.

The project was founded by Álvaro de Cózar, a journalist who worked for 14 years at El País and was a special correspondent to cover the Arab Spring, and Pilar Sayáns, a graduate in Business Administration and Management who, after years of working in advertising agencies, fell for True Story. It also features Carola Solé, a correspondent in Latin America, and Eva Lamarca, a renowned reporter who holds the position of Content Director and who worked for four years on the La Sexta program, Savedand another 12 at Vanity Fair, where she was Head of Current Affairs and Content Editor.

In a conversation with elDiario, Álvaro explains that the criteria they follow to select the content to be broadcast on the podcast is based on telling a good story. “What we are looking for is a good story that transmits and connects. Each one has the potential to be a film,” he says, pointing out that the podcast has two production companies behind it that are dedicated to film.

“We want it to be a place where people come to share their stories, something they want to tell and that says something about us or about the country we live in. There are some that haunt you, but many of them are achieved by talking to people, being aware that you live in this world and asking,” Eva Lamarca, the person directly responsible for being able to tell Esther’s life and her experience in the GRAPO, told this newspaper. “It was a story that came easily, I was interested in the life of women in terrorist groups because theoretically being so left-wing, it later turned out that feminism was conspicuous by its absence. We had many contacts, I met her mother and part of her family, everything was developed in the time required so that everything would come out as naturally as possible.”

No story is the same and each elaboration has its times and procedures, in Real facts The same thing happens. “Each episode is different, there are some that can take three weeks, months or even a year to prepare,” explains Álvaro, clarifying that “what differentiates an anecdote from a story is that the latter has a deeper truth.” Eva shares her experience with one of the latest cases, an episode that, between having the idea in her head, talking to people and working on the content, took her since September of last year. “It is one of the episodes that will be released soon, but in the end, between one thing and another, it is almost a year of dedication to the same story.”

The claims of Real facts They are not limited to national borders, but rather aspire to be a place where people can find lives from all over the world. “We started by telling national stories as a letter of introduction, but we will also tell stories from the United States or Latin America, the key is that they are events that are worthwhile,” says Álvaro. This is the case of January 6one of the episodes that tells the life of Aquilino, a migrant in the United States who, after having served in the army of the country that welcomed him into the army, was involved in the assault on the Capitol as a police officer.

“Until relatively recently I lived in the United States and I knew that the assault was one of the topics I wanted to talk about. It just so happened that we contacted Aquilino, who tried to adapt in every way possible to the country and who, on that very day, had to defend the main American institution from those white men who told him that, despite everything, it was not enough,” explains Álvaro.

The stories, while they may seem to be taken from novels, are also rich in diversity. There is no equal. From that of a psychologist who hides a past in the GRAPO, to a migrant policeman in the United States who was present at the assault on the Capitol who had to resign from his job due to the fateful physical and psychological consequences of that day and even two Spaniards who managed to work at NASA thanks to an offer in the newspaper when man set foot on the Moon and who were the first to hear Armstrong’s words.

True Story, the producer of the stories

The podcast is produced by True Story, a company founded in 2021 that has also been responsible for other content such as “Misterio de la Moraleja”, the story that unravels the mystery of the richest neighborhood in the country where the right usually sweeps the elections, however, in the last regional elections a ballot aroused confusion among the neighbors, one of the votes was for Podemos; “Los papeles de Bárcenas”, the development of one of the best-known corruption schemes in Spain that also investigates personal disputes within the Popular Party with fateful outcomes such as betrayals and broken friendships; or “El país de los Demonios”, which narrates the opening of the safe of the most famous of police officers, José Manuel Villarejo, in which recordings are found with journalists, judges, lawyers and politicians who, for 40 years, uncovered the demons and intricacies of power.

“Journalists are like soldiers, we join a platoon and they tell us what to do. I always had the concern that, if I found the story and told it, why not do it on my own?” explains Álvaro, co-founder of True Story. In the end, that is what happened. After three years of the project, he is keeping the ship afloat by telling stories in a different way.

“Real facts “It is our flagship, but we also do other things and we carry advertising for some companies,” explains the co-founder who hopes that his creation “becomes a reference for stories in Spanish.”

The future

Real facts The first season will have 10 episodes, which both Eva and Álvaro assure will continue to be just as interesting as those already released. “In reality, the division into seasons is something more for brands and listeners. Internally, our intention is to continue telling stories and that one day, when we look at some platform, we will see that we have hundreds of them,” says Álvaro.

“One of the ones that has already been broadcast is precisely the one that I said I had been working on for a year. It deals with a very diverse group of people who decide to go to Ukraine in a kind of brigade and, in war, things happen. That’s what I can tell you,” explains Eva, who admits that she had to move around different areas of the country and even take a course, which was the first that accepted her to be on, in order to investigate, speak and be able to tell what the listeners of Real facts you can hear it now.

“We are here to stay, and the project is still ongoing, and we hope to grow as much as possible so that we can continue to dedicate ourselves to telling the best stories possible and that they are worthwhile,” conclude both members of the podcast, who would like to collaborate with media outlets and see these stories grow thanks to cooperation between members of the journalistic profession.