Luis Tosar’s riveting quest: ‘La ley del mar’ captivates viewers globally
Luis Tosar’s riveting quest: ‘La ley del mar’ captivates viewers globally – TVE has premiered a fiction that tells the true story of the Valencian fishing boat that rescued fifty migrants off the coast of Malta.
By Megan Sauer
Spanish Television did not have to wait long in 2024 to find its first success. Unlike other years, in which it was difficult for his series to reach the public, last night he premiered the miniseries ‘The Law of the Sea’ and obtained a good result: it led the night and attracted more than a million and a half viewers to the screen (and can now be seen streaming on RTVE Play).
He did it with a fiction based on real events, with a strong social component and starring Luis Tosar, VÃctor Clavijo, Àlex Monner, and Blanca Portillo, among others.
This is the fictional version of the odyssey experienced by the fishing boat Francisco and Catalina that picked up the passengers of a canoe of 51 immigrants in the waters of the Mediterranean.
The real story on which ‘The Law of the Sea’ is based dates back to July 2006. A Spanish boat, with 11 sailors on board from Santa Pola and
MuxÃa, was fishing near the coast of Malta to fish for shrimp when she spotted a boat full of people in a precarious situation and at risk of sinking.
After assessing the situation, Pepe, the skipper, decides that they should provide humanitarian aid, and they take those people they have found at sea onto their boat, which is barely 25 meters long. With them, they head towards the nearest port, Valletta, to disembark.
But, to their surprise, before touching land, they find a no from a patrol boat. Malta rejects immigrants, and a diplomatic conflict opens over what to do with these people.
“I knew the story, I saw the documentary that was made, and I was very excited when they sent me the project,” Tosar explained at the South Festival a few months ago. “I saw him again and met the real boss, Pepe, who is an immeasurable character.
His dignity and bravery are something that is unusual, facing a reality in which you are alone. It was a very hard moment for the entire crew and the migrants, but he remained at the foot of the canyon with a strength that is not usual as a fisherman.
And he expressed a wish for this project: ‘I would love to think that fiction serves to change reality a little.’
“Pepe is a character from another era, committed to his morals and that caught my attention and I wanted to corroborate it,” confesses Tosar, who met the man on whom his character is based.
My biggest doubt when I spoke to him on the phone was to ask him if he had been scared. It seemed essential for the character to know if he was scared or he didn’t care. He told me: ‘I didn’t care.’
“The same thing, I knew it was a matter of time. Going with the truth ahead will solve it.’ He is an extraordinarily upright person that you don’t usually find. Normally we move in a sea of doubts, we are very fickle, and we offer volatile things.”
The series not only focuses on what happened on the ship but also in the offices – that is where Portillo comes into play in the role of the diplomat who exerted force to solve the problem – and also on land, in Santa Pola, where we meet the families of the fishermen, how they experienced the event and also how difficult it is to have a family member with this profession.
“We have been able to meet Pepe and Pepi [his wife]. If you talk to them, he will tell you that the hardest part is the one she experienced. He believed that he had the story under control; they knew how far to push, but on land, they suffered badly because the uncertainty was total. Communications were difficult, and the tension was absolute,” says Tosar.
Co-produced between RTVE and À Punt, the Valencian regional broadcaster, the series was born from the production company Studio 60 led by Flipy, who had been trying to raise this project for more than a decade, first as a film and then as a series.
“They are important stories to tell. It has a slow pace and is shot to give it truth. The actors have given it a lot of truth; you think they are fishermen. It has been a very team effort.”
Alberto Ruiz Rojo, director of the series, adds: “It started out like crazy. We had a lot of footage on the boat, and we opted for the riskiest: 18 consecutive days filming at sea where we became a big family.”
And he believes that it was worth it since that feeling of family and pineapple is transmitted between the crew and those rescued.
“Interestingly, we filmed the ending first. On television, everything is the other way around,” recalls Tosar, “On the day of the rescue, we were all excited seeing the dimension of what a rescue on the high seas can be. It was very nice to recreate that moment, the more emotional.
For them [in the real story], it was also very special because somehow, they all rescued each other. It is a round trip between people who come from worlds that have nothing to do with each other and from which they learn.”
For the television team, the experience was very emotional because some of the extras also had or knew hard stories related to migration. To a small extent, we live it on the boat; they tell you their stories, people who live it every day.
For Tatiana RodrÃguez, a screenwriter, it was important that there not only be a white perspective in the story.
It starts with people from Santa Pola who rescue a group of immigrants, but we wanted not to be Manichaean, not to leave it in the story of rescuing some poor people who are drowning.
We wanted it to also serve to tell something about their lives. We see the case diary, but we don’t know that much.
For me, the great discovery [when documenting] is that they are voyages of years, and the boat is perhaps the best of all that.
In the series, the crew discovers them and they see that they are like them, that their “Life is not so different, saving the distances.
When I meet the others, I see that they are similar to me, the story changes. It is done with all the respect and also with the need to know.
