Jordi Évole, in the Orson Welles style, breaks records with his 'mockumentary' on 23-F

With his mockumentary, 'Operación Palace', Jordi Évole achieves more than 5.2 million viewers and a share of 23.9%. Jordi Évole's work on Antonio Tejero's attempted coup d'état is the most watched non-sports broadcast in the history of LaSexta.

Following in the wake of the experiences that Orson Welles, in War of the worlds (1938), in radio version; The true history of cinema / Forgotten Silver (1995), by Peter Jackson and Costa Botes u Operation Moon, (Operation Moon o Dark side of the Moon, 2002) among other works, Jordi Évole took a new step in the fake documentary genre with the broadcast of Operación Palace.

This mockumentary or fake documentary focused on the coup attempt of February 23, 1981, attracted 5,229,000 viewers. 23.9% of the audience followed the special broadcast by LaSexta, constituting the most watched non-sports broadcast in the network's history. With this broadcast, which gives a new twist to creativity on television, LaSexta and Atresmedia Televisión are once again betting on innovation.
This program signed by Évole, which is an exercise in debate about the power of the media and its capacity to influence, surpassed the premiere of “Travelling with Chester” on Cuatro by +14.4 points, which was seen by 9.5% of the public and 2 million viewers.

During its 52 minutes of broadcast, the special was the absolute leader among all audiences and areas, with 28.1% in Target Comercial. Thus, it achieved 22.6% in young people, 28.2% in those aged 25-34 years, 26% in those aged 35 to 44 years, 25.1% in those aged 45 to 54 years, 28.8% in those aged 55 to 64 years and 19.7% in those aged over 65 years.

In terms of areas, it registered 19.3% in Andalusia, 27% in Catalonia, 26.5% in the Basque Country, 22.7% in Galicia, 29.7% in Madrid, 26.4% in Valencia, 20.3% in Castilla-La Mancha, 19.1% in the Canary Islands, 33.4% in Aragón, 18% in Asturias, 21.9% in the Balearic Islands, 19.5% in Murcia, 23.2% in Castilla y León and 15.8% in the so-called Rest.

Social networks were also not indifferent to the broadcast of Operación Palace, since it was the leader in social share with more than 267,000 comments, which represents an average of about 1,500 per minute and 107,980 social viewers, according to data from tuitele.tv. Likewise, it obtained peaks of 72% on Twitter and a total of 13 trending topics: 9 National: (#HoyNoche23F, #OperacionPalace, 23-F. Garci, Évole, Fernando Ónega, Tejero, Kubrik, Orson Welles) and 4 World Cups (#OperacionPalace, Garci, Évole, Tejero, 23F).

The subsequent debate, followed by 4 million viewers

Afterwards, the debate that Jordi Évole moderated on the coup d'état between the journalist Iñaki Gabilondo, the former Minister of Defense, Eduardo Serra and the president of the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country, Garbiñe Biurrun, on LaSexta was the leader of its slot and the second most watched broadcast of the entire weekend with nearly 4 million viewers (3,991,000) and 18.8% share.

Night 23F: The Debate It reached a 20.4% share in the Target Comercial and led in viewers aged 35 to 44 (18.2%) and in those over 55 years old. It was also the most viewed in Catalonia (25.1%), the Basque Country (22.7%), Galicia (19.3%), Madrid (24.3%), Valencia (19.2%) and Aragon (25.1%).

With these data, LaSexta absolutely led Prime Time on Sunday with a 16.4% screen share and scored a 9.4% share on the day, its best data in both cases since May 2, 2012.

Thus, he was +1.7 points ahead of his competitor on the day and +9.1 points in the star slot.

The development

In Operation Palace, Jordi Évole plots a story about what 23F could have been using as a starting point the unusual Oscar that filmmaker José Luis Garci received in 1982 for the film “Start Again,” very poorly received by Spanish critics but awarded in the United States for the best non-English speaking film.

The journalists Iñaki Gabilondo, who at that time was the news director of Televisión Española, Luis María Anson, head of the EFE agency, and Fernando Ónega, director of the news of Cadena Ser and regular scriptwriter of Suárez's speeches. Deputies who were in Congress that day and witnessed what happened, such as Felipe Alcaraz, Joseba Azkárraga or Alejandro Rojas Marcos; as well as other prominent politicians in the political course of the moment: Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Joaquín Leguina, Jorge Vestrynge and Iñaki Anasagasti. Andreu Mayayo, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Barcelona, also adds the cherry on top of the historical context. And José Luis Garci participates in the documentary as stage director of the coup d'état, agreed upon by the instigators of the operation.

The documentary seeks to explain the international recognition of the film and from there emerges the script for Operación Palace: the political groups that at that moment are trying to establish the foundations of Spanish democracy, given the fragility of the system and the turbulent environment that exists, decide to hatch a plan to fake a coup d'état out of fear that a real one could occur. They call it Operación Palace and the stage director is José Luis Garci.

To maintain the feeling of realism and credibility, one of the distinctive features of the mockumentary, Operation Palace It has the testimony of people who experienced the coup d'état firsthand and who have been closely linked to this historical event.

The mockumentary is a format that requires having an active and critical viewer in front of the screen with what they are seeing and the objective of this genre is to take advantage of documentary language to make an ironic criticism, in the case of Operation Palace, about what was the coup attempt on 23F.