Rafael Mármol Lebron (Marchena, 1998) grew up listening to his mother talk about the crime of Los Galindos. Rafa’s mother – as everyone calls her – was a magistrate in the courts of Marchena and had in her hands the summary of what, even today, almost 50 years later, remains one of the great unsolved cases in the history of Spain. On July 22, 1975, a multiple murder took place in the Los Galindos farmhouse, located about nine kilometers from their village, in the neighboring town of Paradas. From there is Pablo González Bejarano (1997), another young man who lived during his childhood with the open wounds caused by the tragedy of this small municipality in the Sevillian countryside.
Rafa and Pablo’s paths crossed at the Faculty of Communication of the University of Seville, when they were both studying Audiovisual Communication. The common curiosity for a case that, in one way or another, has accompanied them throughout their lives led them to work together on an audiovisual proposal on the truth of the crime as a final year project (TFG). So, they collected information and testimonies, prepared the filming plan and, just as they were preparing to record it with their own means, the pandemic arrived and they were forced to stop the project.
However, the conviction that they had a “valid” idea in their hands led them to return to it during their master’s degree in audiovisual production that they both did in Madrid. This time, they created the complete Bible – a document that contains the essential information of a series – from a true crime structured in four chapters, which, three years later, materialized in the documentary series “Los Galindos, the whole truth”, created this summer and which became one of the most watched on the Amazon Prime Video platform.
“It’s exactly as we had imagined it,” Rafa Mármol tells the newspaper after fulfilling the dream of every audiovisual communication student: seeing his name reflected in a real project as the creator of the original proposal. But since they defended the idea as master’s students until Mediaset España took over production, these two young people from Seville have lived their own particular series, full of suspense and unexpected twists.
Chapter 1: Knock until a door opens
Rafa and Pablo’s motivation when creating this documentary series was to satisfy their own curiosity. To fill a space that seemed empty in the universe true crime based on rigorous information and real testimonies. “I heard about crimes all my life, but I didn’t really know what happened,” the dealer admits. The young man from Paradas also shared this feeling. His family owned a farm in El Palomar, very close to the one in Los Galindos, and “every time I walked through the door, I thought I would like to see everything that happened there recreated in a film.” They thus conceived their documentary as a space to “bring together all the parties, all the points of view.”
The idea caught the attention of one of the master’s professors who worked at 93Metros, the production company of David Beriain, one of the two journalists murdered in an attack in Burkina Faso in April 2021. After this unfortunate event, the production company stopped its activity. And the two young Sevillians continued to knock on every door that came their way because “we had confidence in the idea and we had nothing to lose.” They were convinced of the potential of the project they had in their hands because it contained all the ingredients to succeed on screen: a story full of mystery, quality sources and a close look at the case. All this was born from the desire of two self-confessed enthusiasts of the audiovisual world.
During his internship at Fénix Media, one of the Telecinco production companies owned by Christian Gálvez, Pablo dared to present the series file to the managers. “It seemed like a project and they told me they were going to propose it to the network,” the young man from Paradas remembers today. So much so that Mediaset España saw the opportunity to approach the media case again with a double strategy: to prepare, at the same time as the documentary, a series entitled The Marquis who adapted into fiction the bloody crime that kept the entire country in suspense in the agony of the Franco regime.
Chapter 2: Special collaboration
From there, Rafa and Pablo joined the film crew of the docuseries, led by director Pepa Sánchez-Biezma and Almudena García Páramo, a journalist specialized in this type of investigation. For this reason, in addition to appearing as authors of the original proposal, their names have the recognition of “special collaboration”, since the presence of the two young people during the development of the project was essential to be able to delve into a case that shook everyone, a city that continues to suffer the effects of its shock wave.
“We did everything we could,” says Pablo, emphasizing that they were “very involved” when it came to contacting family members and professionals who handled the case, among other witnesses. “Without us, we could have released a documentary that reconstructed the case, but it would not have been as personal, with so many testimonies because in the end, we were talking to them as neighbors,” he adds.
This proximity that brings authenticity to the final result was a challenge for the two young people, who approached the work with deep “respect”, because they knew they were going to eliminate a “very sensitive issue that remains rooted in the city.” However, the neighbors were “willing and collaborative” and contributed to the documentary, either through their statements or by sharing photographs. Grateful, Rafa and Pablo set themselves the goal of “contributing in some way” to these neighbors who have been suffering in silence for decades, starting with “placing the victims in a good place.”
Today, they believe that the docuseries brings “rest and justice to the victims” and their families, shedding light on the case by clarifying “aspects that until now had not been fully clarified”, such as the innocence of Manuel Zapata Villanueva, the foreman of the farm to whom paternity of the multiple crime was attributed without foundation. “The documentary cleans that black stain that unjustly fell on the worker and contaminated his family,” explains Rafa. And Pablo completes this idea by emphasizing that “it is described that they were workers from Paradas, that they were good people, inhabitants of a quiet village.”
Chapter 3: Preserving the Essence
In addition to providing that “touch of proximity, of purity of the people”, the mission that Pablo and Rafa assigned to themselves was to “preserve the Andalusian essence” that they expressed in their original proposal. “We in Madrid maintain and recover our accent and the Bible that we had created included a village story, very southern, so it seemed very important to us to preserve these elements both in the aesthetics and in the narration of the documentary”, recalls the Marchenero.
“We wanted to recover the land, capture a story that speaks of Andalusia with the Andalusians and all of that has been maintained and greatly reinforced in the series,” Rafa now rejoices. The countryside landscapes, the wheat fields under a scorching July sun, the horses, the farm… make up this rural universe that they had undertaken to recreate when developing the docuseries. Another essential element is the accent of the witnesses who reconstruct the moments that followed the crime, such as that of Pepe Zapico, the judicial agent who attended the case: “Pepe is the one who tells the story best and speaks with his closed Andalusian,” praises the young man from Marchena.
Those who know Rafa and Pablo know that they are two audiovisual enthusiasts who get involved in every project they have the opportunity to work on. But this one was special. Not only because it is their first professional step as creators of docuseries, but also because of their personal connection with the case. That is why they wanted to share the experience with their family and friends, involving them in the filming, as extras (in the case of Rafa’s father who played the coroner) or giving up their own tractor, as in the case of Rafa’s grandfather, Pablo.
Chapter 4: Keep Dreaming
While remembering everything he experienced up until the day of the premiere, Rafa speaks as if he had not yet awakened from a dream: “We were two children from the city of Madrid, with our accent, and now we have our own project. Both share a sense of pride and gratitude, because they are aware of “how frustrating this world can be in which there are many talented people who never manage to sell their ideas.”
At just 26 years old, they already have a documentary series that bears their signature and identity and that has been distributed by Mediterráneo Mediaset Spain. “We have fulfilled a childhood dream,” confesses Pablo, who remembers that “when we started working on the idea, we had visualized it, but it was all very fanciful.” “That it has already been done after three years of work seems incredible to me,” he adds.
From all this experience, they have seen their work recognized, had the support of their family and friends and have grown personally and professionally during the process. Currently, Rafa continues to assert his Madrid accent by working as a producer on a television show, while Pablo works as a director on the news of Canal Sur. Thus, each in his field, they continue to put into practice the lesson learned: “With effort and perseverance, goals can be achieved.”
