In the first chapter of Breathe (Netflix), the president of the Valencian Community —played by Najwa Nimri— discovers that she has cancer. A defender of private management of health, when she asks who she should put herself in the hands of, they explain to her that the best chance of being cured is in the public health system. As life happens, the best oncologist in the country —played by Borja Luna— is also the greatest activist in favor of public health and one of the main promoters of an unprecedented strike against its management. The characters in Breathe They are constantly faced with paradoxes like this. Another: a gynecologist helps a woman who claims she has been sexually abused; the doctor gives her all her help, but everything changes when she discovers that she is very close to the alleged abuser. Breathe (the eight episodes of its first season are now available) poses point-blank questions to the viewer and also forces its characters to speak out: how many members of the healthcare team will support a strike without minimum services in a public hospital?
The new series from the creator of Elite He does not hesitate to take a position. “I am a leftist person who believes in public health above all. But I try to include other points of view and be as little Manichean as possible, even if I take a position. For me it was important to understand Patricia’s character. [la política]why does it want to privatise, to understand that it is a very serious problem and difficult to solve. But then there is a drift in the series which is what I think”, defended on Wednesday the scriptwriter and producer Carlos Montero, sitting in one of the rooms of the two-story set in which Netflix has recreated almost in its entirety, with great detail, the fictional Joaquín Sorolla hospital in Valencia where the action takes place.
Montero had been wanting to make a medical series for some time, a television subgenre of which he is a faithful follower (“I am one of those who have seen the 20 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy”, he confesses). But he wanted to differentiate himself from other similar productions because of the political point of view. In this sense, he cites other medical television fictions that have already brought political-social conflicts to the forefront, such as the British This is going to hurt you or the French one Hippocrates“We are very proud of the healthcare system in our country and it is going through a time of crisis, but we love it very much and we cannot allow it to be dismantled,” Montero claims.
To prepare the series, the team did a thorough research not only on the medical aspect, but also on all the problems affecting public health. The most pressing, precariousness. That is the trigger for the wildcat strike whose prelude, execution and consequences are the backbone of the season. “Not being able to attend to patients properly, the endless waiting lists, the helplessness that they feel knowing that the patient always arrives angry because they are being attended to late and poorly.” Montero reproduces in his statements the main complaints that the doctors conveyed to him. He also adds his own reflection: “We have forced them to be superheroes, when they should not be heroes, they should be good professionals. But they have to work more hours than they should, attend to patients faster but just as well… The system is forcing them to be superheroes that they should not be.”
Although it was clear that the political aspect had to be central to the series, the creator needed a personal drama to convey it. The key was to deal with political and social issues through the characters. “The series begins to come to life when I decide to include sick politics. If I hadn’t thought of making it sick, everything ideological would have been a mess. Also the radical proposal of that strike without minimum services. There you have a magma so that everything comes out naturally without the ideological or social coloring everything artificially,” he explains. Also at the center are the dilemmas that the rest of the characters face, brought to life by a cast full of well-known faces such as Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Blanca Suárez, Manu Ríos or Alfonso Bassave. “All the characters have their dilemma and all have an ideology, and reality puts them in front of a mirror and says, are you going to continue having this ideology or are you going to change it?”
The public will inevitably think of names that could have inspired the character of Najwa Nimri, but Montero clarifies that they did not want to reflect any specific politician. “The examples are clear, but I did not want Najwa to parody anyone. I wanted to create the character, and if she imitated someone specific, whether it was Ayuso, Esperanza Aguirre… it would border on parody and I did not want that. Najwa does something that can remind us of many of them, but no one in particular.” She brought to the character details such as the bracelet she wears with the Spanish flag.
The system is forcing doctors to be superheroes that they shouldn’t be”
Carlos Montero
Will a series so deeply rooted in the conflicts of the Spanish health system be understood outside Spain? After all, Breathe It has been released in the more than 190 countries where Netflix is present. “I think that in Europe it will be very well understood. We have been talking to Latin journalists and they have also understood it, knowing that it is a very Spanish idiosyncrasy, because they have a very special mix between the United States and Europe. And in the United States I don’t know if it will be understood or not, but since it has many layers, I think they can always hold on to something,” says Carlos Montero.
To ensure that the medical universe was reflected in the most realistic way possible, three other advisors were added to the advisors they had during the script phase during filming, all emergency doctors who took turns to be present when operating scenes were being filmed or who could raise questions with the actors. However, the creator of the series warns that, at the end of the day, we are dealing with fiction. “The more research you do, the freer you feel to say, I take this and I don’t take that. Everything is taken to the limit and it is a show series. I know that when the doctors see it, many will say: ‘My God, where have they gone? ’ But many others will think: ‘Well, everything is taken to the limit but it is based on a very real basis. ’ None of the cases we tell is a lie. Sometimes the times are accelerated, things are exaggerated, but there is a very realistic basis,” he insists.
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