"Las noches de Tefía" with Jorge Perugorría's performance wins one of the Diversify awards

October 21, 2023

The Spanish series "Las noches de Tefía" won one of the Diversify awards this Tuesday, October 17, which recognize diversity in all its forms in television productions each year.

The A3 Player production emerged as the winner in the category of LGBTQIA+ Community Representation in series, one of seven categories in these awards, which are announced and presented during Mipcom, the largest audiovisual market in the world, being held this week in the French city of Cannes.

"Las noches de Tefía" had as rival nominees "About Sasha", a French series about a transgender teenager, and "She loves to cook, and she loves to eat", which tells a lesbian love story in Japan, a country still very traditional and male-dominated.

The winning production, which began airing in June of this year on Atresplayer, is a series of eight chapters that tells a fictional story based on the real history of a concentration camp built by the Franco regime on the island of Lanzarote, under the euphemism of "Tefía Penitentiary Agricultural Colony".

The camp, which operated between 1954 and 1966, served to confine common and political prisoners but also for the "reeducation" of homosexuals detained under the vagrancy and delinquency law, which was in effect for much of the Franco era.

The award "is recognition of a project to which much care was put. It was a very difficult story that we wanted to tell," Nacho Jiménez, director of Purchases, Sales and Distribution of Atresmedia, explained to EFE.

"As a media outlet, as a platform, as a television station, we have the obligation to tell these stories, to show a situation that should never be repeated, but that existed, unfortunately," he added.

Jiménez pointed out that they had "great faith in the series", because the production "is of very high quality and is a subject that touches and reaches people". He added that he hopes the award received today in Cannes "will help us give it much more visibility" at an international level.

He also recalled that "Las noches de Tefía" has four nominations for the Iris Awards of the Spanish Television Academy, which are presented on November 21. EFE

Created by Miguel del Arco, playwright, screenwriter, stage director, actor and one of the most influential voices in the Spanish theater scene, 'Las noches de Tefía' tells one of the most unknown stories of our history: the Franco concentration camp that existed between the 1950s and 60s in Fuerteventura to send those condemned by the Vagrancy and Delinquency Law.

'Las noches de Tefía' was filmed in natural outdoor locations in Tenerife and Madrid. The extensive cast of the series includes Marcos Ruiz (Airam/La Bambi), Patrick Criado (La Vespa), Miquel Fernández (Charli), Israel Elejalde (Don Anselmo), Roberto Álamo (La Viga), Jorge Perugorría (Airam), Carolina Yuste (Nisa), Raúl Prieto (Boncho), Javier Ruesga (La Sissi), Luifer Rodríguez (La Pinito), Mingo Ávila (La Rata), Jorge Usón (Conde Fénix), Jorge Yumar (Perico), Ana Wagener (Agueda), Ciro Miró (Carlavilla), José Luis García-Pérez (El Andaluz), José Luís de Madariaga (La Vespa), Celeste González (La Sissi), Horacio Colomé, Maykol Hernández (Miguel), Isaac dos Santos (Caranabo), José Gimeno, Elisa Cano (Nisa) and Ruth Trujillo (Claudia), among others.