The Spanish government launches a campaign to promote the film and television sectors

Spain is going through a difficult time.

If this sounds familiar, it might be because Spain has been going through a difficult time in recent years. The impact came as the government launched the Spain Audiovisual Hub in 2021, offering strategic support to the sector by investing 1.6 billion euros ($1.73 billion) in it.

Over the next three years, Spain made progress in all four of the Hub's main focus areas: attracting foreign investment and opportunities, improving financial and fiscal tools, training talent (especially women), as well as regulatory reforms and the elimination administrative barriers.

Now, Spain has been designated a MIPCOM 2024 Country of Honor, and the Spanish government has launched an ambitious campaign called Spain, Where Talent Ignites, aimed at increasing the global recognition, reputation and marketability of Spanish productions, and increasing commercial opportunities in an increasingly competitive market. landscape.

“The aim of the campaign is to associate the Spanish audiovisual industry with talent, creativity, experience, professionalism and excellence,” says Elisa Carbonell, CEO of ICEX Spain Trade & Investment, a division of the Ministry of Economy, Commerce and Business.

Spain has just been announced as the country to focus on for the upcoming European Film Market (EFM) in its 75th edition^th Berlin Film Festival in 2025. “The Spanish film and media industry has consolidated its reputation and global success to become a European powerhouse thanks to creative excellence, targeted investments and technological innovations, enjoying a strong international presence with high-quality and original content,” says Tanja Meissner, director of Berlinale Pro and EFM THR.

The ICEX campaign aims to showcase exactly these qualities, using an innovative short film as an entry point to discover the country's creative and technical talents. Titled The cause of the accident that caused the fire and hosted alongside a series of talent interviews on the campaign website, the 9-minute short focuses on a nervous young director (Berta Prieto) supervising a packed set. Look for cameos and homages, as well as a variety of arts on display, from effects to choreography to illustrations.

“We believe that the best way to showcase the excellence of the Spanish audiovisual industry is through the industry's own language, telling original and engaging stories in an innovative and carefully crafted way,” explains Carbonell. “Talent exists everywhere, but not all countries appreciate it in the same way.”

Teresa Azcona, general director of the Audiovisual Cluster of Madrid, who defines Spain as “one of the most powerful European producers of content”, underlines the role of Madrid as a center of talent and “engine” of this success. “Spanish production, international productions in Spain, co-production and content made in Spain are successful all over the world and are among the most viewed on the various streamers,” he says.

In fact, four of the ten most-watched non-English films of all time on Netflix come from Spain, as do four of the series. Among these is that of the Spanish director JA Bayona Snow Society, thriller Non-existent place AND The platform, AND teenage romance Through my window (numbers three to six in the list respectively), as well as three seasons of stylish action series Theft of money and its prequel Berlin.

According to a report released Monday at MIPCOM by Parrot Analytics and ICEX, Netflix, Snow Society was the number two biggest contributor to subscriber renewals for the streamer and number four to subscriber acquisition for Netflix in the first quarter of 2024, and Non-existent place he was number one non-English films on Netflix in 2023 by subscriber growth in the first 13 weeks of the year.

And it's not just Netflix. Mystery series Red Queen ranked among Amazon Prime Video's top five new series in 2024 for acquiring and renewing the most subscribers in the first 13 weeks after release, while the Spain-U.S. co-production Land of women ranked in the top 15 for new Apple TV Plus series in 2024 that drove subscriber growth in the first 10 weeks, the report adds.

According to the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), Spain was also the leading producer of fiction titles commissioned by global streamers in Europe in 2022. In the United States, in the first quarter of 2024, Spanish was the foreign language with the largest number of films available on SVOD platforms and the third largest number of shows (after Korean and Japanese), according to Parrot Analytics.

The Parrot-ICEX report states that content originating in Spain generated $5.1 billion over the past four years and estimates it will generate $1.4 billion in global revenue in 2024. “There is no doubt that Spanish audiovisual productions have demonstrated their global reach and universal appeal,” says Carbonell. “This is reflected in festivals and markets, in the demand for streaming platforms and in the increase in international co-productions.”

Bayona, with whom he co-hosted a keynote at MIPCOM Elite Executive producer Diego Betancor Tuesday, is one of many “mid-career or emerging talents” appearing in the short film Where Talent Ignites, produced by Spanish production company Canadá. Others include Karla Sofía Gascón, star of France's international Oscar nomination and double winner at Cannes Emilia PerezMiguel Herrán by Theft of money AND Elite fame and the actress Bárbara Lennie (The crooked lines of God).

Spanish genres in particular demand for series right now, according to executives from some of the more than 50 Spanish companies present at Cannes, include dramas, thrillers, mysteries and historical novels, such as those from RTVE Ena, A six-episode series about the Englishwoman (Kimberly Tell) who became Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain in the early 1900s, which had its world premiere Monday at MIPCOM.

RTVE will also exclusively present an ambitious production Columbus DNAa documentary on the origins of Christopher Columbus, in Cannes and a series of Spanish-German crime thrillers Weiss and Morales as part of an Igniting Global Hits showcase of high-caliber, big-budget co-productions from Spain. Sequoya Studios' Zorrowhich had a special screening at MIPCOM last year and premiered in Amazon's top 10 list, will be featured. MediaPro brings thrillers El Mal invisible AND Celesteas well as the third season of The boss and a box office success The 47among others.

In addition to its profile as an audiovisual hub, Spain also continues to be in high demand as a filming location: “Spain has the greatest diversity of locations of any country in Europe,” says producer Duncan Muggoch, who was the foreign producer in Spain in seasons five to seven of Game of Thrones, considered one of the impetuses behind the current Spanish incentive system and producer of the eighth season. “I'm a big fan of Spain,” he says.

Muggoch is also an executive producer at Netflix The 3-body problemfilmed for a week in Spain in the first season, after four or five weeks of preparation there. An area of ​​Guadalupe represented China in the 1960s. “In northern Spain you could visit the Alps, Scotland and all sorts of things,” he says. “And in southern Spain you could do the desert, you could do beautiful Moorish buildings. The cities are beautiful, the weather is beautiful. It literally has everything.”

According to a study published this fall, between 2019 and 2022, 165 incentivized international productions that filmed in Spain spent at least 1.3 billion euros ($1.41 billion) and generated a minimum estimated gross value of 1 .8 billion euros (1.95 billion dollars) for the Spanish economy. by Olsberg SPI in collaboration with the Spanish production services association Profilm.

The report concluded that 70% of this spending would not have been achieved without Spain's international incentives. These include a 30% discount on the first million euros ($1.08 million) of eligible spend and 25% thereafter, or 50%/45% in the Canary Islands. Starting last year, these incentives have doubled their ceiling to reach 20 million euros (21.66 million dollars) per film or 10 million euros (10.83 million dollars) per episode of the series, not exceeding 50% of production costs.

The higher incentives in the Canary Islands compensate for the fact that it is sometimes necessary to bring in crews and equipment from the mainland, producers say. Other areas are launching their own systems. In parts of the northern Basque Country, for example, incentives offer tax credits of 35 to 70 percent up to 50 to 60 percent of production cost estimates, depending on project characteristics.

However, local service providers insist that incentives must continue to improve to compete internationally with countries with better discounts, no limits or less expensive crews. In addition to the discount cap, Muggoch points to the lack of “good studio space” as a potential competitive challenge for Spain: “It's very difficult to do a full show” there “unless you're completely location-based.” . But, he adds, “Spain is a country you go to for location shooting.”

The increased level of investment in Spain thanks to the Hub is also supporting infrastructure investments, from Madrid Content City (home to Secuoya Studios and Netflix) and the reopening of Alicante's Ciudad de la Luz studios, to new studio projects in Catalonia, Mallorca, Galicia and the Basque region, the Olsberg report notes.

The study identified other challenges for Spain, including the need for further development of the skills and experience of the workforce and a potential simplification of some administrative processes. How the Hub's renewed funding will take shape next year also remains to be made public.

“I like to think that in this new phase we will continue to bet on tax incentives which are fundamental for the audiovisual sector, fundamental for attracting international productions, but also for the development of Spanish productions and co-productions”, stated the Cluster Audiovisual de Lo affirms Azcona of Madrid, adding that long-term financing should continue to support the stability and growth of Spanish companies, allowing them to “undertake increasingly ambitious projects” and provide “greater employment stability” for more talent.

But as Spain's audiovisual sector continues to grow, Carbonell sees a silver lining to any difficulties that may arise: “The challenges will be many,” he says. “We are experiencing a transition phase… However, [these challenges have] it also made us grow. So while this is a time of great challenges, it is also, more than ever, a time of great opportunities.”