It is filmed... in Elizondo.
“The most mysterious and magical forest that exists. Large oaks, beeches and chestnut trees cover the slopes of the mountains, which, sprinkled with other species, fill them with shades, shapes and contrasts”. This is how the writer defined Dolores Round the Baztan Valley in its bestsellers enjoyed by more than two million readers. That magic and mystery that conquered so many others before, writers and simple walkers. In that valley of changing colors, Redondo placed her protagonist, Inspector Amaia Salazar, forced to return to the place from which she wanted to flee, trapped by its mists, fogs, those rivers, trees and mountains that transform in each season.
Marta Etura in the streets of Elizondo.
“This time we were lucky enough to shoot in the fall”, He says Antón Laguna, production designer of the Baztán Trilogy, the three films that adapt the homonymous novels of the Planeta Dolores Redondo Award. After the success of the invisible guardian (with more than 600,000 viewers), the second part is now released Legacy in the bones (December 5) that were shot at the same time as the third installment, Offering to the storm (premiere April 3). For 18 weeks they filmed all the exteriors in Navarre . “And we did it in those magical weeks when It goes from green to a thousand colors. It was a gift to everyone and to the film. It is a luxury to be at that moment in the Baztán Valley, because it is a spectacle of color”, insists enthusiastically.
Since the publication of the books and encouraged by the premiere of the film The Invisible Guardian, the Baztán, already a popular region for rural tourism, has seen its visitors multiply in search of the locations that appear in the story. "If you go for Elizondo –the town of the protagonist, Marta Etura in the film–, in all stores announce tours or visits of the Trilogy”, Laguna says nothing surprised.
In the caves of Urdax.
On this route, there are essential places such as the Salazar Mantecadas Workshop, actually, the Baztanesa Bakery, that has decided to keep the poster of the film and where you can try the Txantxigorri cake, the protagonist's favorite.
Of course, it is a mandatory stop Tía Engrasi's house, on Braulio Iriarte Street, also in Elizondo, where, in addition, you can stay: they are the Txarrenea Rural Apartments. And also the Txocoto bar, the church, the police station... and enclaves for which Elizondo was already known before this literary-cinéphile fame, such as the dam and its river.
The living nature of the Baztán Valley.
Many of those main scenarios in the script and in the novel and that already appeared in the first film, will be seen again in Legacy in the bones and Offering to the storm, says Laguna. “In the script and in the novel everything happens in the Baztán Valley, in Pamplona, in Navarra. We have shot in many more places: in the Sierra de Urbasa, in Ainhoa (France)…”, enumerate. As we will also re-enter the Urdax Cave, important location in history and that they chose after visiting many caves in the area, such as those of Zugarramurdi.
But there will also be new places. “The city of Pamplona goes out much more this time”, details Anton Laguna. liberty square, the old town, almost Post office (where the character Jonan lives), the ** Café Iruña , the Avenida del Ejército, the Baluarte...** are some of the corners of the Navarran capital that will be recognized in the new film. “We not only wanted to reflect the historic and stately Pamplona, also the most modern: show the contrasts of the city”.
The rain in Navarra is wonderful.
BAZTAN, AGUAS MIL
The mist, the fog, that intermittent drizzle… The climate of Baztán is unique and sometimes torrential. In Legacy in the bones, one of the most impressive sequences was the one of the floods of Elizondo and the valley and in the film they have reproduced it taking the vegetation of the area to Barcelona. “We put the decorations inside pools to reproduce the floods. The pools with motors that moved the water, the actors in the water, the water dyed with chocolate… It is one of the most spectacular things in the film”, assures the production designer. Without subtracting prominence from Baztán, of course.