Telecinco premieres 'El Rey', the first biopic about the figure of Juan Carlos I, produced together with Videomedia

Norberto López Amado directs this fiction in three installments with a script by Antonio Mercero.

After months kept in the drawer, tonight Telecinco will premiere the biopic The King, a miniseries that addresses the complex events that forged the character of Don Juan Carlos I from his childhood until the death of his father in 1993. Fernando Gil, Patrick Criado and Enrique Aragonés, giving life to the sovereign in his maturity, adolescence and childhood, respectively, star in the first biopic about the figure of the monarch, which Telecinco will premiere next Tuesday, October 28 in prime time.

Norberto López Amado (Land of Wolves) directs this fiction in three installments, produced in collaboration with Videomedia (Alfonso, the cursed prince), which also brings together José Luis García-Pérez as Don Juan de Borbón in its cast; Cristina Brondo in the role of Sofia of Greece; Marta Belaustegui in the role of Doña María de las Mercedes; Adriana Torrebejano playing Countess Olghina de Robillant; and Paco Merino as Francisco Franco, among other actors.

Written by Antonio Mercero (The pact, Central Hospital), the biopic begins in 1948, the year in which Juan Carlos travels to Madrid to pursue his studies, and recreates his childhood marked by exile, his training in Spain and abroad, his engagement and marriage to Sofia of Greece and the difficulties on his path to the head of the State. But its narrative axis focuses above all on the intense relationship of the monarch with his father, Don Juan de Borbón, on the difficulties they had to go through until Franco finalized the terms of his succession and on the tension that the uncertainty about the continuity of the dynasty generated between them.

The miniseries has been filmed in real locations and settings in Spain and Portugal such as Vila Giralda in Estoril, El Pardo in Madrid or the Miramar Palace in San Sebastián, where some key events in the sovereign's life took place, and its broadcast on Telecinco will be accompanied by The night of the King, a series of special late night documentaries that will address the life trajectory of Juan Carlos I from his childhood to his abdication.

Fiction scenarios

At only ten years old, Juan Carlos is sent to Madrid by his parents to study in Las Jarillas along with other children of the Spanish aristocracy. Although he wants to be a child like the others, his dynastic obligations prevent him from doing so. This fact constitutes the starting point of this miniseries that narrates the trajectory of the King who returned democracy to Spain and the story of two families that are one and the same: that of Don Juan, who lives in exile in Estoril; and that of Juan Carlos, Sofía and their three children, installed in the Palacio de la Zarzuela in Madrid.

The academic days at the Miramar Palace in San Sebastián and the summers in Estoril with his family mark the young man's adolescence. His training in military barracks and his first loves occurred in his youth, which culminated in his courtship and marriage to Princess Sofia of Greece. The happiness at the birth of his three children will contrast with the tense relationship with his father when Franco designates him as his successor and with the great difficulties during the Spanish Transition to establish a parliamentary monarchy in our country.

One of the main settings of the fiction is Vila Giralda, the villa where the Royal Family resided during their Portuguese exile, which witnessed Don Juan de Borbón's hope that the monarchy would return to Spain. In Estoril, the recording of the biopic has also taken place in the Palacio do Conde de Castro Guimarães, the Cruz de Malta Castle and Tamariz beach, as well as the Muxaxo nightclub, the real setting for some of Don Juan Carlos's youth parties.

Located near the El Pardo mountains, Las Jarillas left behind its purpose as a recreational and hunting farm to become a school in the late 1940s where Juan Carlos de Borbón studied. In it, as well as in the Quinta del Pardo, the first Madrid residence of Juan Carlos and Sofía, and in the Palacio del Pardo, Franco's residence from 1939 to 1975, various situations experienced by the Spanish monarch have been recreated, both indoors and outdoors.

Some sequences of The King They have been filmed in the Miramar Palace in San Sebastián, an English-style mansion built on behalf of the Spanish Royal Family where Juan Carlos and his brother Alfonso studied, as well as in Bilbao, where various scenes linked to El Saltillo have been recreated, a sailboat that in August 1948 was the protagonist of a historic event: the meeting five miles north of San Sebastián between Don Juan de Borbón and General Franco who was sailing in the Azor, in which addressed decisive issues concerning the education of who would be the future King of Spain.

The Madrid settings also include the Fernán Núñez Palace, the Railway Museum, the College of Engineers, the old Puerta de Hierro hospital, El Rincón - the estate of the Marquis of Griñón in the municipality of Aldea del Fresno that has represented the interior of Vila Giralda and the exterior of the Pazo de Meirás - and various places in Cubas de la Sagra and El Escorial.

Puerto Sherry in the Cadiz city of Puerto de Santa María and different enclaves in the province of Toledo complete the locations of The King, whose filming lasted a total of 12 weeks.

Norberto López Amado has highlighted that "the sequences of the miniseries are mostly filmed in real settings where you can feel the weight of history, such as Vila Giralda in Estoril, El Pardo or the Miramar Palace in San Sebastián. In addition to being a great production value, these historical spaces give fiction a unique dimension. What I have enjoyed the most has been with the acting group, more than 125 actors who have allowed me to live one of the best professional experiences of my career. During the filming I could feel the commitment and dedication of each of them. The intuition and chemistry between everyone worked and the result is a biopic that narrates facts that many people believe they know but do not really know, as happened to me on many occasions."

The King has had Juan Molina as director of photography and Henar Montoya as art director.