Fariña/Cocaine Coast (2018) and Patria/Homeland (2020): (Re)negotiating the Transition in the age of streaming and crisis

Abstract

The indignados movement has suggested that the roots of Spain’s political and economic bankruptcy are to be found in the ‘Regime of 78’, allowing Francoist ills to continue after the Transition to Spain’s parliamentary democracy. This article critically accesses how and why two recent television series – Fariña/Cocaine Coast (2018) and Patria/Homeland (2020) – depict drugs and terrorism, major blights to everyday lives in Galicia and the Basque Country, respectively, during the post-Franco period. The article asks how these twenty-first-century screen narratives rewrite canonical accounts of the Transition during a time of crisis in which the success of local television drama has provided a rare light of optimism – Fariña was bought by Netflix and Patria is the first Spanish drama to be produced by HBO Europe.