At kilometer 570 of A2, between Barcelona and Lleida, the neon is projected over the parking lot where travelers and transporters have left their vehicles to enjoy a gin and tonic and some Rex cigarettes, before continuing their journey. In front of the bustle of waiters, three dishes combined with fried eggs, potatoes and chistorra and two loin sandwiches with cheese rest on the metal steel bars of the cafeteria. The capacity is almost full, like every day on the 11th of the month, when the Hotel Bruc becomes the meeting point for fans who go up to Montserrat to wait for UFOs and extraterrestrial signals.
This scene has been repeated since the 70s, the attendees change but it maintains its essence, the same one that the directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrosi (Los Javis) have wanted to recover in The Messiah, the series that won the Forqué award for “best fiction series” and that has broken the audience record, making Movistar + the most viewed platform for the first time. ”If the Bruc were in Minnesota, under the Montserrat Falls and David Lynch filmed there, he would become a legend: 'The hotel for alien fans,' exclaims Roger Bellés, art director of the series, with amusement.
In 1977, “a tremendous beam of light that crossed the sky” surprised Luis José Grifol, when he was resting at his home in Barcelona. At only 33 years old, he abandoned teaching and the business world to become “the contactee” and transmit the call of “the higher beings.” Jordi Gili (Igualada, 56 years old) accompanied Grifol to “look at the sky” of Montserrat, from the late 80s until 2010: “The group was irregular, between 20 and 60 of us met and all kinds of people, from even those who came to have fun before going to Bananas, the hotel's nightclub,” he remembers.
The Bruc cafeteria was the starting point towards the Montserrat esplanade where, between marked rocks, Grifol chatted with his followers to create a climate of concentration conducive to the apparitions. “I don't know what its origin is, but I myself have seen those giant lines of light moving from one side to the other, in a zigzag, doing strange pirouettes,” Gili admits.
Experts explain the light phenomena of Montserrat from “piezoelectricity”, electrical reactions produced by the materials and shape of the earth. The writer and researcher Javier Sierra accompanied Grifol after his first contacts and recognizes that the lights are a real phenomenon, “an objective fact that we interpret subjectively, from the perspective of our time,” he points out during a phone call.
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Since the appearance of the Virgin in the Santa Cova, in the 9th century, Montserrat has integrated various mysteries. Its lights were demons for Saint Ignatius of Loyola, they were the origin of the popular Llum of Manresa and they indicated to SS General Heinrich Himmler the place to look for the Holy Grail. The 70s, in the midst of the space race and with the proliferation of extraterrestrial theories, were the perfect breeding ground to transform it into the epicenter of contactism.
The magic of Montserrat changes its meaning depending on the society that views it. In The Messiah, the older brother, Enric (Roger Casamajor), finds there a space to understand life beyond the Catholic religion in which he was raised. And the Hotel Bruc is the portal you go through to immerse yourself in the energy of the mountain.
The art direction of the series goes beyond the utilitarian and opts for “purely mental” decorations, which transmit the feelings of the characters, says Beller. The houses of Enric and Irene (Macarena García) reflect the different perspectives from which the older siblings have faced the emptiness after leaving their home and starting a new life: “Irene's is a catalog of Leroy Merlín, as if he had followed the manual how to make a life”, exemplifies Beller. His world map and state-of-the-art coffee maker contrast with the austerity of Enric's house, without decoration or personal objects.
The team's decisions avoid aesthetics and lean toward spaces in which the viewer feels that “the character is where he or she should be.” The Bruc hotel was not only chosen for being a symbol of ufology in Spain, but for its “personality”: a roadside hotel from the 70s, with dark wallpaper, neon lights and a wooden reception that offers tacky postcards to those who leave their room. That is why the series recovers the Bruc from before the 2012 reform, that of the raves outdoors and the New Year's Eve party. “We didn't disguise the Bruc, we dressed it up, we took a real element and exploited its cinematographic potential. The Messiah It does not betray any space,” says Beller.
Víctor Sandalinas currently manages the Bruc hotel and explains that to return the “retro” look to the reception they had to cover the new installation with a false wooden shelf and green decoration that imitates the one that existed in the 90s. “They also filmed in the cafeteria, which has not changed since it was built in 1979,” says Sandalinas. Enric spent the night in two rooms that escaped renovation, with the touch vintage that they asked for in production and views of Montserrat.
For Enric, a lonely, uprooted man, the Bruc hotel is just another place of passage, a bed that he will forget the next day. But when he meets Alicia (Cecilia Roth), the hotel becomes the doors to a path that promises to finally offer him some inner peace.
Javier Sierra, journalist and writer, explains that human beings, since their origins, have sought a connection with higher beings and Montserrat fulfills that function: being a staircase to heaven, a meeting point between the terrestrial and the celestial. “The meaning of Montserrat energy will change over the years. Looking to the coming years, our overexposure to digital could turn it into a “magical” place due to its proximity to nature and human contact,” he believes.
As for others it was the hall to contact the extraterrestrial, El Bruc opens to Enric the doors of Wonderland, a commune of women who coexist with nature and drink from the telluric energy of Montserrat from all religions. “The Messiah It is precisely about that, about feeling the energies from the absolute flexibility of beliefs,” Beller acknowledges.
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