The Asunta Case: Netflix Series Stars Tristán Ulloa and Candela Peña

2024-05-03 04:51:43

As with those dark themes that impact a society at a certain moment and whose effect returns like a boomerang from time to time, the crime of the girl Asunta Basterra, committed at the hands of her parents on the night of September 21, 2013 in Galicia, continues generating controversy in today’s Spain. On this occasion, because of “The Asunta case”, a miniseries by Bambú Producciones that Netflix has just launched worldwide.

A priori, portraying horror will always generate controversy, but there are ways to lessen the effects of an undertaking of this type. The first thing may be to find a cast according to the demands. AND “The Asunta case” has it. On screen, the girl’s mother (Rosario Porto) is the talented actress Candela Peña, and the father (Alfonso Basterra) is none other than Tristán Ulloa, the remembered Sergeant Darío Castro in the mega production (also by Bambú) “Fariña” (2018).

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Accompanying this pair of protagonists are a series of interesting secondary characters. There is Javier Gutiérrez, who plays the tireless judge Malvar (in real life he is Judge José Antonio Vásquez Tan). Then, María León and the busy Carlos Blanco act as the members of the Civil Guard Cristina Cruces (Begoña Rodríguez) and Ríos (Marcos Martínez). To these we could add the lawyers, key pieces to understand the side of the accused in this plot: Alicia Borrachero plays Basterra’s lawyer and Francesc Orella does the same with Rosario Porto.

Candela Peña and Tristán Ulloa in a scene from “The Asunta Case”. (Photo: Netflix)

At the beginning of this note we said that the crime of Asunta Basterra – played in the series by actress Iris Whu – haunts Spanish society because, not only did it remain to prove a key fact: was Alfonso at the crime scene or not? , but also by a series of events as dark or darker than the murder itself. For example, the father sent a gloomy letter to Ramón Campos, one of the creators of this series, some years ago on the occasion of the broadcast of a documentary linked to the same topic. In the letter, he analyzed what was generated around the criminal act, but also shed light on what he would do when he regains his freedom (his sentence ends in 2031). “My true sentence is not prison, Mr. Campos, but not having been able to help her when she needed me most.“, expresses in the letter distributed by the Iberian press.

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But perhaps the most dramatic fact has to do with the fate of the mother and direct person responsible for the Asunta crime. On November 18, 2020, the woman hanged herself in prison. This, after three failed attempts. We are talking about a mother, a lawyer by profession, who suffered from depression since her youth, and who carried the gaze of an entire country on her shoulders after the event was revealed, without this being a justification, of course. Probably, the best way to imagine what Rosario Porto’s mother was like is through the remarkable work that her interpreter in the series, Candela Peña, has achieved.

“The Asunta case” doesn’t come in with detours. In her first episode we will see how the minor’s parents report her supposed disappearance and then quickly fall into contradictions that will put them on the ropes. Rosario is the first to show that ‘something doesn’t fit’ in the ‘suffering’ of two parents who beg for help because they ‘don’t know’ the whereabouts of their only daughter. It does not require great cunning on the part of the members of the Civil Guard (Cristina and Ríos) to, with the subsequent appearance of the judge in the case, begin to put together evidence and elucubrate alleged responsibilities.

María León and Carlos Blanco in a scene from “The Asunta Case”. (Photo: Netflix)

But the new Netflix series is not just a non-linear description of events. Happily. And Bamboo has a lot to do with that. The production company was responsible for turning Nacho Carretero’s notable book into the mega series that was “Fariña” back in 2018. On screens, even the non-Spanish public was able to learn how Galicia went from smuggling boxes of cigarettes to drugs in a handful of years. In said television project, the majestic settings and the events described were important, but not as important as the interpretations of those smuggling ‘barons’ who from one moment to the next found themselves surpassed with the emergence of an undeniable Sito Miñanco (Javier Rey).

Sito Miñanco, nicknamed by some ‘the Spanish Pablo Escobar, was confronted by Sergeant Darío Castro, played notably by Tristán Ulloa. That actor, now 53 years old, has found himself in front of a character diametrically opposed to that law enforcement officer who risked his life on more than one occasion to stop the rapid growth of drug trafficking in Galicia. In “The Asunta Case”, Ulloa must expose more than behaviors, emotions. In six episodes, we will witness how Alfonso Basterra is revealed as an impulsive, obsessive and blackmailing man, capable of anything to keep the woman he claims to love by his side. Even if this means losing his own freedom.

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In the same line of offering not only a non-linear description of the Asunta crime, the proposal of Netflix unfolds a set of small stories. From a judge who seems to control everything out loud in the search for justice, but who ends up overwhelmed at home while he sees how his sick father cannot take care of himself. On the other hand, officer Cristina investigates the crime of an adopted girl when she in turn faces her own drama: she cannot have children and she must undergo fertility treatments. Finally, in perhaps the weakest personal side of the project, Ríos has dedicated his life (family, personal, marital) to work, hoping that “the next generation will have a better world than the one we lived in.”

To this attempt to draw a series of personal dramas that support the key fact itself (the crime) we could add an admittedly not very deep approach to the work of external agents, such as the judicial, local or entertainment press that – as happens in Spain or any other country—would end up exploiting the case with morbidity and virulence from its revelation until after the reading of the sentence. “The Asunta case” shows, then, reporters harassing the girl’s parents (more Alfonso than Rosario since she quickly falls prey) in many of their errands. The occurrence of recurring leaks in the investigation process carried out by the judge is also exposed. Although beyond that, it does not seem to be the intention of this series to put the press as ‘guilty of something’.

Tristán Ulloa in a scene from “The Asunta Case”. (Photo: Netflix)

And perhaps this responds to the fact that, first of all, this is the story of a drama in which a girl ends up in the middle of a toxic and unhealthy relationship that two adults did not know how to stop, treat or solve at the time. This impossibility of getting out of a hole and its subsequent deadly consequences become the factor capable of challenging viewers who, a decade after the events occurred, are capable of sitting in front of a television to witness the grayest side for almost six hours. of humanity.

THE ASUNTA CASE/NETFLIX

Synopsis: The murder of Asunta Basterra, one of the black chronicle cases that most shocked Spain in 2013, will be received as great news.

List: Tristán Ulloa, Candela Peña, María León, Alicia Borrachero

Episodes: 6

Qualification: 4 out of 5 stars

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