A decade ago, the adventures of an unknown Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias hit the press. Suddenly, upon being arrested, Fran (as he is known in his closest circle) became a Little Nicholass, and his life in material worthy of a movie. The young man, barely 20 years old, had known how to move among Madrid’s posh youth and among the bases of the PP in the capital to build a fable that allowed him access to circles of influence and high purchasing power. But the fiction that he had fed to unattainable limits – which led him to present himself as a Government advisor, CNI agent and liaison to the Royal Family – exploded when he posed as an emissary of Felipe VI and arranged a lunch with the president of Alsa, Jorge Cosmen, in a restaurant in the Ribadeo marina (Lugo), where he arrived with a delegation of bodyguards from the Local Police after deceiving the City Council. Now, when he is waiting to see if the sentences of more than 12 years in prison that he already has are confirmed, which would force him to go to prison, Netflix premieres a docuseries about him.
Just start (P)ícaro, journalist Mateo Balín puts on the table the big question that gives meaning to this documentary. And to which no one, yet, is able to answer with a sufficiently convincing answer, that clears up all the doubts that hang over this character: “How is it possible that Francisco Nicolás arrived in five years to where he arrived, out of 15 at 20 years old?” How is it possible that he falsified his ID at a police station without the police officer who attended him realizing it? How is it possible that a boyish teenager would date businessmen in restaurants? How is it possible that he attended the proclamation of King Felipe VI? How is it possible that he had the mobile numbers of extremely important people (including Juan Carlos I)? How is it possible that he deceived so many people? How is it possible that he did it without help?
Because, really, those shadows that fly over are the ones that, still today, sustain and nourish the legend around Little Nicolás. Justice itself recently admitted it: “In 2014, due to circumstances that have not yet been clarified, Gómez Iglesias maintained relationships with important businessmen, politicians and authorities,” wrote Judge Caridad Hernández in November 2022, in the sentence that sentenced him for the third time to jail. Some areas of darkness that always remain in every judicial process, and that feed conspiracy theories (as has happened in other media cases).
Therefore, by not being able to go beyond offering contradictory versions, the Netflix series is right by not going into every detail. He is right not to get lost in the insinuations that the protagonist tries to push them toward —“In Genoa no strings were pulled. I pulled the strings in the box of the [Real] Madrid”, “A covert operation had to be carried out. And they told me: ‘Lílala as you know how’, or ‘In my life, I have been: or a sugar daddy o one sugar baby“, he blurts out throughout the chapters, like someone who doesn’t want to. But the documentary succeeds, above all, in using journalism as a weapon to dismantle a good part of his story. And that deconstruction of his version portrays that.
Whoever has followed the story of Gómez Iglesias in recent years will not find in (P)ícaro great revelations. Nor does listening to him represent any irresistible novelty. He has given numerous interviews since he burst onto the public scene and has even participated in a reality show as Big Brother (which he uses, again in the series, to encourage the thesis of the plot: he points out that he was expelled from the program first so that he would not say everything he knew, as if he did not have the opportunity to do so in other media).
The documentary first focuses on presenting Gómez Iglesias as a teenager who wanted to get closer to power from a very young age. In this aspect, the unpublished home recordings of his childhood, which are interspersed throughout the chapters, play in favor of the series (one is especially striking: a very small boy, in pajamas, excited because he has been given a tie. ). Little Nicolás’s version, supported by the testimonies of his mother and an anonymous friend “an expert in financial markets”, then acquires excessive prominence, imbued with apparent credibility. But the mirage is revealed when his words are contrasted with demonstrable facts, which is mainly handled by journalist Irene Dorta, one of the investigators of (P)ícaro.
The series thus begins, at that moment, to outline the true portrait of the still twenty-something. He presents him as a smart, ambitious boy, with ease in making contacts and who introduced himself to the PP and the FAES foundation. “The discos light They weren’t my thing. “My thing was power,” he says: “I saw myself as the youngest minister of democracy.” He draws him as a trickster who tells his interlocutor what he wants to hear; that mixes truths with lies and half-truths; and that he makes believe that he knows more than he really knows. “People believe that there are recordings that do not exist, and that gives you power…” says the protagonist. In 2014, when the scandal broke out after his arrest and his figure came to light, Daniel Verdú was already writing about him in these terms: “No one really knew where he came from or who he was friends with. But the majority, just in case something he said was true, went along with it.” Several investigators have also identified him as a kind of “long story” conman (a term used in police jargon).
Throughout the three chapters, his lies, tricks and exaggerations are also evident. Like when Gómez Iglesias compares the deployment of his arrest to an anti-jihadist operation and states that “12 police officers, CNI agents, the entire Internal Affairs unit participated in it.” [de la Policía Nacional]…”. To which Irene Dorta, ironically, immediately adds: “The summary shows that the arrest was made by only two police officers…”. Netflix boasts, precisely, about this exercise in journalistic contrast: “The investigation team has read in detail more than 35,000 pages corresponding to six different proceedings, all already prosecuted. Two journalists dedicated themselves exclusively, for months, to fact-checking,” explains the dossier provided to the press by the platform.
The Trojan horse
The most interesting exercise in the documentary occurs when, at the end, the figure of Little Nicholas is left aside and he is used as a Trojan horse to approach other people who crossed his path (Catalina Hoffman, the businesswoman with whom he entered into the proclamation of Felipe VI, comes out stumbling and his word is questioned). Above all, the trip to the rotten bowels that contaminated the National Police a decade ago, with Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo at the helm, arouses special interest. The agent, now retired and recently sentenced to 19 years in prison for his shady spy business, is another of those masters of manipulation.
It is a shame that the commissioners’ war and the corruption that the Corps experienced appears only out of the corner of the eye. Because, with these, the feeling that the shadows muddy everything returns. It is this opacity that benefits Gómez Iglesias, who takes the opportunity to play his most useful card: insinuation. “I’m the problem? Or is the problem that they let me be me?” or “And who told you that he still hasn’t collaborated with anyone?” So, at the end, the aftertaste that remains is that something else is purposely hidden: Who else is lying? Or, rather, who lies more?
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