Salvados Season 21, Episode 7: Heroin Generation

Alone in the sea

The programme hosted by Gonzo reconstructs the story of Mari Carmen Fernández, who worked as a waitress during an expedition aboard a CSIC ship and disappeared. Her body was never found, only her personal diary. A diary to which the programme has had access and which, together with the WhatsApp messages she sent to her family, documents the hell that Mari lived through for too long.

58 min

Txakurras

‘Salvados’ addresses the important role of bodyguards in the Basque Country during the period of ETA’s activity. Gonzo talks to four bodyguards, who recount their experiences, from their arrival in the region to their relationship with their protégés and the lack of recognition for their work after the years of violence. In the mid-1990s, ETA changed its strategy and began what was known as the “socialisation of pain”. No one who opposed the terrorist group was safe. Top politicians, town councillors, judges, businessmen, journalists and civil servants all became part of its blacklist.

Welcome to the North

In Irún, Gonzo meets several volunteers from the Irungo Harrera Sarea network. He accompanies one of them to meet a group of migrants who arrive at night in the city on one of the buses that come from different cities on the peninsula. The volunteer informs them of the places where they can spend the night and, while she accompanies them in her own car, gives them clues about the steps to follow the next day. For her, helping migrants “is a form of resistance” and she believes that “if we see migrants as a problem, we are the ones who have the problem.” In the main square of Irún and already in broad daylight, Gonzo accompanies another group of volunteers who inform the migrants of the points where they can cross the border and the problems they may face, such as pushbacks. There Gonzo speaks with some migrants who have already tried, so far without success, to cross the border. They will try again until they succeed.

The crazy women of the dock

Gonzo speaks to four affected women who tell their story of pain and struggle they have faced after having the contraceptive spring implanted. Gynecologist Enriqueta Barranco admits on ‘Salvados’ that she recommended the ‘Essure Method’ due to ignorance and denounces that many women were disqualified as “the Essure crazy ones” when they tried to tell their suffering. In Spain there are more than 80,000 women affected by this method and a million worldwide, a contraceptive promoted as a quick alternative to tubal ligation, which has caused serious consequences. In 2017, the marketing of Essure was stopped, but the legal battle continues, with a pioneering trial in Spain that seeks to do justice and hold the pharmaceutical companies involved accountable.

Social media: the factory of terror (Part 1)

An engineer and former Facebook executive who put the founder of Facebook on the ropes in the eyes of the whole world with his testimony in the US Senate. His name is Arturo Béjar and he was hired by Mark Zuckerberg to design Facebook's user protection tools. Three years ago, this former senior official became a nightmare for Meta, owner of Facebook, but also of Instagram and WhatsApp. After realizing that the company was ignoring the damage it causes to the users of its networks, Béjar decided to tell what he knew and could prove. The result was that Mark Zuckerberg testified before a US Senate committee and was forced to apologize to the victims of his networks.

Social media: the factory of terror (Part 2)

A space full of offices where thousands of people work every day in front of a computer so that, when users turn on their mobile phones, they don't have to see the most perverse, violent and obscene aspects of human beings. They see videos and photos circulating on the networks with content that we would never believe possible. The testimony of these content moderators confirms what Béjar denounces in the first episode: user protection went from being a priority for social networks to becoming an obstacle to earning more money. These workers cannot be identified due to a confidentiality clause in their contracts. But they want to tell what they have experienced because it has changed them forever.

Supersubmarina, One Hundred Ways to Return (I)

Gonzo meets Juancar, Pope, Jaime and José ‘El Chino’, the four members of ‘Supersubmarina’. Through intimate conversations with each of them, he reconstructs the history of the group with his emotional stories. Both the brightest part of their musical success, as well as the trauma that the accident entailed and the path of overcoming and reunion that Navarro’s book triggered.

Supersubmarine, One Hundred Ways to Return (II)

After the terrible traffic accident that kept them off the stage, the members of Supersubmarina talk to Gonzo about their success and how that event radically changed their lives. Gonzo also talks to Ernesto Muñoz, who left his job at Sony Music to become the band's manager and turned it into a benchmark for indie-rock in Spain. Meanwhile, Fernando Navarro says that he approached the band to do a report and ended up writing a four-hundred-page book. He says that what interested him most about the story was "how you rebuild your life after everything you had is cut short in a second," referring to the accident.

Rita Maestre

Gonzo speaks with the spokesperson for Más Madrid and former political and sentimental partner of Íñigo Errejón, days after she published a letter expressing her disappointment after learning of the accusations of harassment and gender-based violence that led to Errejón's resignation. The Madrid politician is "disappointed and furious" with the man who was her political partner since the founding of Podemos and until the last general elections, when Errejón joined the Sumar lists. She claims to have felt "stupor" when she learned of the accusations against the man who was her partner and that she is still digesting what has happened. Why she wrote a public letter, whether her party and the political space to which she belongs knew about this hidden side of Errejón or whether they consciously looked the other way when Errejón was already denounced in June 2023 are emerging in the conversation.

Unforgiven

Dani Benítez has swapped the applause on a football pitch for the simple routine of the fertiliser company where he works. He had everything going for him to succeed. In fact, he ended up playing in the First Division and became an idol for the Granada fans. Until one day, after a match, he tested positive for cocaine and that was when his career was cut short. That was 10 years ago and since that day he continues to see himself singled out in his public life and continues to wonder why there are mistakes that are not forgiven. Julio Alberto feels something similar. The legendary player of Atleti de Madrid, FC Barcelona and the Spanish national team, fell into drugs more than 30 years ago when he had already left football. A few months after leaving the routine of training and matches, a series of bad decisions that almost cost him his life marked him forever in the eyes of fans and the press.

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