Irene Arcos is Verónica in the series.
the jetty, the new series of Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato (The paper house), was about to be called 27 kilometers. That is the exact distance that separates the city of Valencia from the L'Albufera Natural Park: 27 kilometers. A little walk between two very different worlds.
“L'Albufera was an ideal place to tell the story we were going to tell because of the contrast between steel, asphalt, glass and the modernity of a city like Valencia, which is only 27 kilometers away from a place like L'Albufera”, explains production director Juan López Olivar.
The warmth of the light in L'Albufera.
The story of The Pier (premiere on Movistar + January 18) did not begin with that scenario, although its importance and presence in the plot make it another protagonist. The series begins with the death of Oscar (Alvaro Morte), found in his car drowned in the waters of L'Albufera. Oscar is married to Alejandra (Veronica Sanchez), a successful architect from Valencia, who did not know that her husband had a double life with Verónica ** (Irene Arcos) ** in the Natural Park.
Martínez Lobato defines the series as an “emotional thriller”, Pina adds that it is “a vertebrate journey through sexuality” and feelings. The two spaces the city of Valencia and the Park They represent the two human extremes. "Deep down we are little animals put in boxes, in the cities, and Verónica lives in a place where she is less domesticated", explains Álex Pina.
Water and more water. The pier of the title.
"Going out into the open skies of L'Albufera was a wonderful encounter", Esther adds. “Because the series is emotional, the portrait is emotional, the thriller is emotional and we needed a framework where you are blown away with instincts, with beauty. Alejandra's character leaves the city to breathe, remove prejudices, live and bring out the animal that she carries within her and, in the end, it is nature, water, light”.
The series jumps from the most contemporary Valencia, that of the City of Arts and Sciences, to this rural Valencia, which seems almost trapped in Cañas y barro, by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez –and with some stops in El Saler beach.
In the Natural Park they looked for various locations: the house of Verónica's character, her bar, the Civil Guard barracks and, of course, the pier of the title. The first placed them in the town of the palm tree, Olive account. But, in addition, the first and second seasons shot at the same time are full of images of roads, rice fields. “We shot L’Albufera with drones in its splendor, from the air it is very beautiful and very interesting”, says the production director.
The barracks are the classic constructions.
For the actors, being in that space, breathing that saline air, influenced his work. "The site is absolutely inspiring, I am absolutely urban, I grew up in a town, but I am very much on asphalt, and you arrive at a place like this and you stand in a different way, there is an energy... so much water", explains Álvaro Morte, better known as The Professor of La casa de papel. "Those dry terraces are covered with water, they remain like mirrors, the rice begins to sprout, that rice grows, they become green fields that begin to turn brown, they fall, they get muddy... There are a series of processes that I think occur in L'Albufera and help the relationship between these characters to mature. Just being there already is very inspiring.” Although they say that it was as satisfying as it was hard: it was very hot, or cold, very humid...
Rice fields and where to eat the best rice dishes.
“Eduardo Chapero-Jackson defines the series as telluric”, Morte continues. “Indeed, I think there is a lot going on underneath, a lot of hidden energies, a lot of layers one on top of the other in the story that connects perfectly with the atmosphere of L’Albufera.”
So much water, those open skies give the image an almost dreamlike air, wherever they put the camera they find that horizontal width versus vertical and narrow shapes in which the character of Verónica Sánchez lives and the buildings that she begins designing. "Space is magnetic, I knew very little about it," acknowledges Álex Pina. “We needed that space so anachronistic in front of the city. we wanted it to be like the memory of summers in our childhood”.
Irene Arcos and Verónica Sánchez, the protagonists of 'The Pier'.
And, furthermore, after the global success of La casa de papel, Pina and Martínez Lobato see the greatest potential of L'Albufera and how they are going to rediscover it for a global audience. “Right now in visual narrative we are in a very free moment, it is very open to all cultures, we write series so that they can be seen in any corner, you need them to have an identity… I think that L’Albufera has that identity”, Esther says. “It is like Fariña and Galicia, that thing very attached to the earth, that although it is very general in its subject, it is very controlled in the frame, in the photograph so that the viewer feels very situated”.
And 27km from L'Albufera: this.