The success of ‘Phenomena’ points to a vein that Netflix is ​​already exploiting: Spain and its history-fiction

With only a week on the platform, ‘phenomena‘ has become one of the most notorious surprises of recent Spanish Netflix productions. It has entered the fifth position of the Global List of Foreign Language Films most views on the platform, with 4,870,000 hours. And of course, it’s in the Top of the most viewed in Spain, as the third most viewed film this week. And its success may provide some lessons about what Netflix can hope for in the future.

Some phenomena. The film tells us about the creation and some cases of the Hepta Group, a paranormal investigation group in which several women especially participated, and which was involved in some events that are difficult to explain. Especially notable was that of an antique store where all kinds of phenomena beyond reason were happening.

One of the great attractions of the series is its cast, primarily female, and where, among others, Belén Rueda, Gracia Olayo, Toni Acosta, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Ivan Massagué and Miren Ibarguren stand out. In addition, at the controls is Carlos Therón, responsible for recent comedy hits such as ‘Operation Shrimp‘, ‘I leave it whenever I want‘, ‘It’s for your own good’ or ‘Brain drain 2’. However, there is an extra attraction to the series: the Hepta group did (and does) really exist.

Heptaphenomenal. The Hepta group was founded at the end of the eighties by the famous and mediatic father Pilon and led by three women. ‘Phenomena’ portrays the most notorious case that these authentic researchers had to face, at the end of the nineties. In fact, the film does not at any time deny its genuine inspiration: one of the women on which the protagonists are based, Paloma Navarrete, died in 2022, and the Netflix film is dedicated to her memory. In addition, among the promotions that the platform has carried out is a curious video in which the two survivors compare the real cases with what we see in the film.

A large part of the film’s charm and perhaps responsible to a large extent for its success is the transparent costumbrismo that it breathes: from the settings that overflow rancid Catholicism to the carding of Belén Rueda, the Hepta group is the most sympathetic face of black Spain, and as such, is one step away from Iberian folk horror. Netflix has discovered that the secret history of our country is attractive to the general public.

Spain as supplier of themes. It is common when the platform lands in a country that begins to produce fiction set in that environment. It ensures recognizable productions and an audience that will immediately respond positively: for example, as soon as he arrived in Spain, he launched ‘cable girls‘. Since then series have followed one another, many of them set in current Spain and more or less realistic, such as ‘the snow girl‘, ‘Elite‘, ‘Privacy‘, ‘The innocent‘, ‘Midas’ Favorites‘ either ‘alpha males‘.

However, he has also experimented with other genres, from Tarantino-style action (‘sky red‘) to thrillers with international projection (when he started his stage in ‘La casa de papel’) or youth dystopias set in Spain as they could be set anywhere else, such as ‘welcome to eden‘. These are just some of the many examples that stand out on a platform that, as it demonstrated with the expansion of its production center near Madrid, knows that it is in its best interest to support national production.

The secret of what fell. It is clear that “what is Spanish” interests Netflix, but there is a very particular vibration of that Spanishness that perhaps the platform could be interested in exploiting. Regardless of its values ​​as a homeland version of ‘Ghostbusters’, there is something of Carandell’s mythical ‘Celtiberia Show’ in the film, and Netflix has known how to vibrate in that tune on very few occasions. Paradoxically, he did it in one of his first Spanish productions, the aforementioned ‘Las chicas del cable’, but in a much more serious and rigorous line. He also did it in the failed ‘Fair‘ and in the glorious ‘Paquita Salas’, although in both cases the setting evaded us, or bathed in irony in the case of Paquita, the lacquer, the gotelé, the crucifixes and the stretcher tables.

But these are all elements of the most recent history of Spain, one that is full of stories to tell in its darkest corners. From the darkest years of the dictatorship to the highly demystifying Transition, going through this turn of the century that ‘Phenomena’ portrays and where all the mud that led us to this mud began to take shape. The public is more than prepared to see the past of Spain portrayed, be it in comedies disguised as Iberian ‘Ghostbusters’ or not. And Netflix has already verified that there are potential successes there.

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