Movistar Plus+ premieres 'Perejil', an original series about the conflict between Spain and Morocco

The Terrace (The Mediapro Studio) is the partner of Movistar Plus+ in the production of 'Perejil', a new original documentary series of three episodes that, through 40 testimonies, allows us to know in depth the dimension of the conflict between Spain and Morocco.

In three episodes, Parsley reconstructs in the key of thriller politician diplomatic crisis between Spain and Morocco after the capture of the islet of Perejil on July 11, 2002. Specifically, the series analyzes the ten days of maximum tension between both countries, including the secret Spanish military operation and the complex diplomatic negotiations involving the EU, NATO, the US and France.

Tian Riba directs a series with more than 40 testimonies, including the main Spanish political leaders during the conflict: José María Aznar (President of the Government), Federico Trillo (Minister of Defense), Ana Palacio (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Jorge Dezcallar (director of the CNI), Richard Armitage (U.S. Undersecretary of State), senior officials of Spanish, French and Moroccan diplomacy, as well as experts and military personnel from the three countries. The interventions are complemented with cinematic recreations e stock images to offer an “unpublished vision” of what happened.

“The idea of Parsley It was to revisit some events that we remember as an anecdote and with a certain tone of irony due to the size of the island, the great military deployment and Trillo's phrase 'at dawn and with an east wind'. But behind it there was a great geopolitical story. It is the closest that Spain and Morocco have come to a war since the Green March, which would have meant applying Article 5 of NATO. France took the Moroccan side and prevented a joint European Union position. And the United States, in the middle of the war against terror, had to mediate between two allies in a point as delicate as the Strait. This is a story that takes us to today, with two neighbors that still have not closed disputes such as Ceuta and Melilla or the Sahara and that exemplifies how delicate the issues of sovereignty are in international politics," he explains. Riba, who has been accompanied by From Maraña to the direction of photography, Ariane Vegas to production management and Israel of the Holy One to realization.

This is the synopsis complete series, which will premiere on Thursday July 10: "On July 11, 2002, a group of Moroccan gendarmes landed and raised their country's flag on Perejil, a hitherto unknown and uninhabited islet, with an area barely larger than that of a football field, and whose sovereignty was shared by Spain and Morocco. A few days later, the President of the Government of Spain, José María Aznar, sent his three armies to expel the soldiers occupying the island. In the imaginary popular, the Perejil crisis has remained a comical anecdote, a Spanish military overacting in the face of the occupation of an uninhabited rock. But that anecdote was actually the tip of an iceberg: beneath the islet of Perejil was hidden an international crisis of the first magnitude in which the European Union, the UN, the Arab League, France, NATO and the United States were involved.

“¿Por qué un pedazo de tierra aparentemente insignificante provocó un conflicto de semejantes dimensiones? ¿Qué significaba Perejil para que los ejércitos españoles de tierra, mar y aire se movilizaran por primera vez en democracia? ¿Qué alcance tuvo la crisis? ¿Corrió peligro la soberanía de Ceuta y Melilla? ¿Qué sabemos del incidente de Perejil 23 años después?”.