Barcelona has hosted filming for Todo lo necesario, a new Movistar Plus miniseries about the 2009 Al Qaeda kidnapping of three Spanish aid workers. The production used a Port de Barcelona cruise terminal to stand in for an airport, and filmed the reunion scene with the workers and their families.
The series is a collaboration between Movistar Plus and Lastor Media. It is being made as a political thriller, with the story set around the negotiations for the workers’ release, the effort to survive in captivity, and the work of the secret services to find them.
Al Qaeda held Alicia Gámez, Albert Vilalta and Roque Pascual captive for 267 days. Director Marcel Barrena said the project took years to develop, and told La Vanguardia that the team began writing the story about five or six years ago after meeting the real people involved.
The scale of the case pushed the team to expand the project from a film into a three-episode miniseries. Barrena said the story included several strands, from the kidnapped workers to the CNI, the vice president and the spy, and that each one could have been a film in its own right.
The series also looks at the moral choices around the crisis. Cristina Merino, an executive producer for Movistar Plus, said the drama centres on the tension between what is supposed to be done and what must be done. The production asks whether a government should pay a ransom to save lives, even if that could increase the risk of future kidnappings.
Filming also took place in Murcia and Almería for the desert scenes, and the final phase of production will move to Saint Louis, Senegal, for exterior shots. The miniseries is due to premiere in the first half of 2027. For more Barcelona culture coverage, see our Community and Sport pages.
