My climatic refuge this summer, the most feared season for those of us who can’t stand the heat, has been the RTVE archive. There, amidst thousands of hours of television, documentaries, and Spanish history, I found the perfect balm. It happened one August morning in a town in Asturias, after the first coffee, with the teenagers asleep, on a sofa that wasn’t mine, when I turned on the computer and traveled back to Vigata, in the province of Montelusa, with Commissioner Montalbano. “Commissioner Montalbano I’m sorry, lady.“I repeated to myself in a very low voice. In these times of bulimic attitude towards series, where not watching everything at once and everywhere takes you out of a lot of conversations, I felt for a few minutes like a rebel, pure resistance, devoted to the series based on the books by Andrea Camilleri. It didn’t last long, but not so the delight in front of a television product that seems old and furiously current at the same time.
Commissioner Montalbano drives a Fiat Tipo, has a mobile phone without internet access, is allergic to commitment and only shows fidelity when it comes to cooking with Adelina, his housekeeper. He is capable of missing a New Year’s Eve in Paris with his long-distance girlfriend, Livia, because he prefers to end the year by having dinner with his friends. arancini of the woman who cleans his house, touching his balls —”break the cabasisi“I also remember when I think of those I dislike—Dr. Pasquano, the local coroner. I like it when he scolds his subordinate Augello—known as Mimi—for his promiscuity, as if Salvo Montalbano had taken a vow of chastity.
It is a series in which there are no ugly women, where everyone oscillates between Loren and Bellucci, whether they are millionaires in palaces that are falling apart or extremely poor.I’m not a normal woman, I’m a talented woman“, both inspectors comment to a suspect. The translation comes out almost automatically. She is a monumental lady, in short. And one, who fights as she can to rid herself of patriarchy, confesses that she gives up and sighs at this type of comment.
Montalbano bathes in the sea every morning, drinks espresso, gets angry when people wake him up by phone, exudes sarcasm and seduction. And in the midst of all this, and with the humid heat of Sicily, each episode talks about illegal immigration, the mafia, human trafficking, abuse of power, corruption of institutions. Topics so current that they are now on the front page of newspapers. And as old as Salvo’s mobile phone without internet.
You can follow EL PAÍS Television on X or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#Summer #Vigata