The Spanish Association of Documentary Producers celebrates that this genre has its own weight in the industry

Spain is one of the European countries where the most documentaries are broadcast and consumed. However, it is where the least number of hours are carried out in Europe.

After three years of struggle by the Spanish Association of Documentary Producers (ADN), to include documentary producers in the General Audiovisual Law, the Official State Gazette (BOE) of last Saturday, November 7, included, for the first time in the history of this country, the regulation to be able to produce and broadcast Spanish-owned documentary series.

Spain is one of the European countries where the most documentaries are broadcast and consumed. However, it is the country where the smallest number of documentary hours are produced in all of Europe.

The General Law of Audiovisual Communication established a series of mandatory regulations for the entire audiovisual sector. These are the rules of the game so that all players, both those who use the Spanish electric radio spectrum (that is, television channels) and those who produce European audiovisual work from Spain, (film and television producers) adhere to the European rules of the game both to broadcast and produce audiovisual work.

Well, before last November 7, 2015, in the opinion of the ADN, “Spanish documentary producers could not produce documentary series for television with the same guarantees of broadcast and
legal protection than a film, fiction or TV movie producer. Although it may seem incredible, when a Spanish documentary producer approached a public or private television station to propose a documentary series, both the network and the producer could not approach the project and had serious problems being able to “fit it” into other categories and be able to satisfy their programming and broadcast this genre.”

This situation, according to ADN, meant the flight of talent outside of Spain. "Spanish documentary producers had to go outside their own country so that foreign networks and foreign producers could trust their way of producing and assist them with the legal security of the foreign country. And limit, because this unfair situation and mistreatment of only one genre within the Spanish audiovisual sector, during all the legislatures of both governments, together with the last financial crisis, led Spanish documentary producers to the near extinction as an industry," they say.

From now on, Spanish producers have the tool to be able to propose projects of all types and conditions in documentary series format from Spain.

ADN appreciates the support of networks such as Discovery Max, National Geographic, AMC, FORTA, TVE and FAPAE and their legal departments in all the work of allegations regarding the regulatory development of the Law.