Drug Squad: Costa del Sol is a Spanish TV cop series set in 1970s Torremolinos. Sit back and enjoy the 70s fashions, 70s cars and 70s police mores when it comes to interviewing suspects (think Jack Regan in The Sweeney). Last but not least, you can enjoy Hugo Silva in action as Bruno López. Bruno is a maverick (obviously) who has a problem with authority (obviously) but is an excellent cop (obviously). He’s also in charge of the eclectic band of brothers that make up the squad. There is rich boy and son of a former general under Franco, Leo Villa (Álvaro Cervantes), Martín Pulido (Miki Esparbé) aka The Hippie and Terrón (Jesus Castro), the good-looking one who has a secret of his own that won’t go down well in 1970s macho Spain. (CONTAINS SPOILERS)
Set in the late 1970s, as the drug trade is beginning to get its hooks into Costa del Sol, these four very different cops set up Spain’s first ever drug squad (hence the show’s title) almost by accident. In a sense, the show is a paean to the 1970s cop shows, from the opening credits to the fact that the supposed ‘anti-hero’ Bruno López has no qualms about rough housing suspects. I have no doubt this was a feature of 1970s Spanish policing but today’s sensibilities are somewhat different and although Silva has a lot of charm, even he can’t quite pull off the fact that at times his browbeating of suspects makes for a rather uncomfortable watch.
The series uses an interesting device to frame the story in that we soon realise the initial voiceover is that of Bruno who has been shot and left to die at a local beauty spot. Initially this framework is used to top and tail each episode as they depict the events that have led to Bruno’s shooting. At the same time, the secondary storyline within this framework develops and usually succeeds in neatly misdirecting us as to what is going on.
In the midst of all this Spanish testosterone is Yolanda (Sara Sálamo) aka La Buhíta (the owlet) on a mission of her own to track down the murderers of her father aka The Owl (you see what they did there), who was stabbed to death whilst smuggling contraband. As it happens, she’s also drop dead gorgeous, and it’s not long before she is the cause of some serious tension between Bruno and Leo.
As for the baddies of the piece, there are the seemingly respectable owners of what appears to be the only disco in Torremolinos, Reyes (Jorge Usón) who seems perpetually out of his depth and his ghastly social-climbing wife Marielena (Cayetana Cabezas). Then there are the Peña brothers, Atilano (Daniel Holguín), think Spain’s answer to the terminator and Cristóbal (Jorge Suquet), think massive creep.
There’s enough twists in the plot to keep you hooked although it is rather obvious who the mysterious ‘El Ingles’ is given it couldn’t be anyone else. Moreover, I enjoyed the insight into late 1970s Spain with its politics, dubious social mores and the fact that Franco may have been dead and buried by this point but his legacy is clearly still entwined into the fabric of Spanish society.
As anyone who has watched the brilliant Ministry of Time knows, Silva is an incredibly engaging actor who is always worth watching. In addition, I particularly enjoyed Miki Esparbé as The Hippie, the de facto brains of the squad. As for Bruno’s sister Vicky (Olivia Delcán) I was at a loss to understand how she was such a man magnet, given she seems to be off her face most of the time and a royal pain in the arse. She also looks about 12. Thus, not only is The Hippie’s soft spot for her incomprehensible, it also seems rather suspect. However, I love the fact that Bruno’s wife, Charo isn’t subject to the usual tropes that befall the wife of a maverick TV cop and is played with a lot of inner strength and dignity by Camino Fernández.
There are a few unbelievable moments such as The Hippie somehow knowing Bruno has broken down in the middle of nowhere, several decades before the advent of the mobile phone. Or that Spanish men seem immune if you wound them in the stomach. Despite a gunshot that would kill most mortals, Bruno is able to take part in a gunfight while still in his hospital gown and as for Atilano, he doesn’t even bother with proper medical treatment for his numerous wounds and still survives.
However, for those of you who like me labour under the misapprehension that you can speak and understand Spanish then good luck. It can’t just be me but I suspect the Spanish spoken in Drug Squad: Costa del Sol is incomprehensible to the majority of non-native Spanish speakers. Personally, I have no idea if that’s down to slang, the Andalusian dialect or a mixture of both but for a supposed linguist such as myself it’s rather depressing when the only word you seem to have understood throughout the whole episode is sí.
Given that the series ends on a cliffhanger, presumably series 2 is in the works. Vicky has been kidnapped, Chino (Pablo Béjar) has been shot in the stomach. I would venture fatally but as he’s Spanish, no doubt he’ll have made a full recovery and be back for series 2. Yolanda looks as if she plans on getting her hands dirty in the drug trade but we all know it’s because she is still out for revenge, now that she knows who the murderer of her father is. As for our intrepid heroes, they have to figure out how to get into Gibraltar in order to capture the baddie and free Bruno’s sister. There is one thing you can be sure of: it won’t be done by the book.
Recently discovered “Brigada Costa del Sol” on Netflix, and so far it’s much much better than it has any right to be. The style is not just The Sweeney; there’s quite a bit of The Professionals and Minder in it. Note also that the start / ending to each episode is a device similar to that used in such diverse things as Series 3 of “The League of Gentlemen” where each episode covers a different event, all of which take place on the same day, linked by a common sequence.
The production team clearly went round the classic car clubs to borrow just about every surviving example of what was common on Spanish roads in the late 1970s (albeit without dents), although the red Capri used by rich boy Leo was actually built in the 1980s, and the green Seat 127 parked in the back streets and deliberately damaged by Inspector Cifuentes was also one that has 1980s cosmetics (don’t ask how I know). The Chrysler 180 driven by Bruno is a rarity today, as is the Renault Siete (basically a Renault 5 with a boot added on) – both were Spanish-built, and the Siete in particular seems to have been a Spain-only model; it was never sold in Britain. Fun fact: the Spanish domestic car market was very heavily protected against imports until about 1982.
Background and scenery will have many of a certain age going soggy with nostalgia, and wearing your shirt collar outside of your jacket lapels (which also went on in Ireland a lot longer than it should have) might just make a comeback in men’s fashion one day. The scriptwriters also took care to work in the radio broadcast of the Yugoslavia v Spain match on 30th November 1977 and, sure enough, the team sheets from that game can be viewed here:
https://www.11v11.com/matches/yugoslavia-v-spain-30-november-1977-234560/
Franco’s ghost continues to haunt Spain to this day, so I can’t even begin to imagine how things were for Spanish society in the immediate years after his death.
Some additional observations so far:
– Hugo Silva’s Bruno bears more than a passing resemblance to Paddy Considine, which made me wonder if the two actors might be distantly related!
– for me, Marielena and Reyes hint heavily at a Macbeth / Lady Macbeth relationship – she effectively drives her husband deeper into the hash trade in order to make herself look better and it’s pretty clear that there’s nothing she likes more than the sight and feel of cold hard cash. He in turn finds himself in so deep that he is driven to murder, an act he previously thought unthinkable.
– Atiliano is played like a cross between Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood characters: minimal emotion and maximum menace. He’s like the archetypal indestructible force – no matter what they do to him, he just keeps on coming back.
– I didn’t quite see the point of Vicky either.
– the dialogue is rapid-fire Spanish, and I didn’t stand a cat’s chance in hell of even pretending to keep up. A good friend of mine is fluent in Spanish having lived there previously for 20+ years and keeps encouraging me to read and watch as much in Spanish as possible to pick up the speech patterns if nothing else. It’s a very hard task!