On October 11 it premiered The Messiaha series by The Javis narrating the story of a disturbed mother —Montserrat— who locks his eight children at home. Montserrat has her first two children very young with an abuser. She runs away with them, lives as she can and becomes a prostitute to pay the rent. There she meets Pep, a disturbing ultra-religious gardener who promises her salvation through God. Pep takes her to live in a farmhouse and they begin to procreate.

The family, made up of two older brothers (Enric and Irene) and six little ones, lives apart from the world. “We wanted to make a story of a family group outside of social norms”, the authors explained in the presentation. They said that they had several references—The Virgin Suicides, Camino—and that they asked a researcher to look for real cases of families who grew up locked up. “From the Turpins to The Wolfpack, a documentary about brothers who became obsessed with Tarantino. “There are many.”

The problem: that, only with the trailer, followers and great connoisseurs of the story of the Spanish Catholic pop group Flos Mariae They detected coincidences between fiction and reality. They took out the newspaper archive and pointed them out, one by one. The family confinement is documented because social services intervened. A fire that is seen at minute 1:40 as well. Montserrat’s first lines of dialogue are verbatim phrases from the diaries, published on the internet, of the real mother of the Bellido Durán sisters, the members of the pop group. The bad treatments to the eldest son shown are related to said son’s blog in real life.

For most people, Flos Mariae is that group of seven sisters who in 2014 surprised with the video clip of Amen: a song about praying and not losing hope when one in life feels “like a slice of cheese, in a sandwich.” The lyrics, its musical style and the strange aesthetics of the clip made it viral.

From that moment on, the sisters not only continued publishing content—they have 600 videos and 36,000 followers on YouTube—but they diversified and launched clothing businesses and children’s content production. According to what they say on their website, the musical band, formed by devotion to the Virgin Mary after his mother was diagnosed with a malignant tumor, he is “an extra to their work and vocational activities of being businesswomen.

The mother, María Durán, died in 2015. He had 16 children: 3 from the first marriage and 13 from the second, two of whom died. In 2021, the sisters split into two new groups: Mariah’s Pop and 4HBD (4 Hermanas Bellido Durán).

What the public did not know was that behind this incomprehensible and fascinating phenomenon there was a murky story. Based on testimonies on the older brother’s blog and information that more older brothers published on networks (under the name Los Otro Hermanos Bellido Durán), Cuatro broadcast a documentary that revealed the family secrets. It was in March. By then, The Javis were already rolling The Messiah, The media had linked the series with the group and Flos Mariae had spoken.

“We are against the use of Flos Mariae’s name to publicize the series ‘The Messiah,'” they said in a statement. “We have never authorized it nor have we been asked for permission. We reserve the right to take legal action if a “crime of insults against our right to honor”.

Where did the information come from?

Screenwriters consulted by THE NEWSPAPER OF SPAIN explain that, although each production is a world, in stories based on real events it is common to go to press and judicial information. For their part, lawyers consulted assure that there is room to fictionalize reality as long as the work is not “very defamatory.”

“If you make a humiliating series about a recognizable character, “The judge has to appreciate the caricature,” says privacy lawyer Borja Adsuara. “There have been sentences for parodies because they are not considered humor, but rather humiliation.”

“Yes there are a summary and journalistic informationyou can tell the story,” says Natxo López, screenwriter of Operation Black Tide, based on the story of the first narco-submarine intercepted in Europe. “But that is not enough: you lack emotional information about the characters, why they do what they do. You fictionalize that part. If you change the names and pretend there should be no problems. But if the fiction is absolutely faithful to the real facts, even if you change the names there could be problems.”

Screenwriters do not always get testimonies from the real protagonists. They don’t want them either: This way they can create characters freely. Carlos López, screenwriter of The body on fire (series about the crime of the Barcelona Urban Police), says that “with the summary and everything published it was enough to build the script. The creator of Successioninspired by Rupert Murdoch, said that prefers to read books and newspapers and create from there: that he went to a board of directors to document himself and got nothing.

In the case of Flos Mariae, in addition to his YouTube channel and his website, there were publications on networks and the older brother’s blog, Gerard Castelló Durán, with whose name the group’s die-hards had already given clues. Castelló has a very public profile: she is a sex therapist, worked in the world of cinema, has YouTube and an open profile on Facebook. On his website it says that he spent his childhood “locked up in the middle of the mountains” with his “crazy parents”his 14 siblings, without going to school and who At 19 years old he escaped.

Gerard’s last names are the same as those of Silvia Castelló Durán. Her profile is not hidden: she runs a sewing school and chairs the association of textile businessmen in Girona. She hasn’t written much about her childhood, but she has said in interviews that It wasn’t easy and he didn’t go to school.

The Castellós are two of the first three children that María Durán had in her first marriage, from which she fled due to mistreatment, according to what she herself said in an internet forum. Just like Montserrat, the protagonist of the Los Javis series. In the fiction, narrated from the point of view of his older brother, he escapes from the family and looks for his sisters when he sees his videos on YouTube. The older sister, a seamstress, is a boss in a textile workshop. The pop group in the series is called Stella Maris and is aesthetically similar to Flos Mariae.

As confirmed by this newspaper, both Silvia and Gerard Castelló were with Los Javis during the filming of the series in Girona. Contacted and asked about it, Gerard preferred not to speak. “I’m not interested,” he said. At Silvia’s sewing school they asked not to use the business phone for personal matters and agreed to pass the request on to her, but she never responded.

Some time ago, the older brothers contacted followers of Flos Mariae. They asked for help to locate links to websites where his mother talked about family history. Now that they’ve seen the series, these fans suspect it was part of the documentation.

Firm sentences

As the series progresses, the Flos Mariae’s anger increases. First, they issued a statement assuring that their childhood was happy, that they did not suffer abuse—contrary to what the series shows—and that They studied at home using the method homeschooling. Later, one of them published a video pointing out “some brothers” who “don’t sympathize with us”, who left the family and have been spreading “slander” for years. She says those brothers put complaints of mistreatment, but that justice determined that everything was fine.

Judicial information is useful for screenwriters. Based on what has been shared these days by the Bellido Durán sisters, there is at least one sentence about your family: which dictates that children are fine at home without schooling, from 2010. But that ruling was appealed and The court forced the parents to send the four brothers who were minors at that time to school.. The father appealed, but the TSJ of Catalonia rejected it. Both are in the CGPJ database.

“When can you talk about someone? There are public figures (e.g. politicians) for whom the right to image is ‘diluted’. If the series is about public events, you can do it without authorization: the limit is not to say things about their personal life,” explains Isabel Mariscal, expert lawyer in the audiovisual sector and partner at Singular Law. “For the rest, If the facts are public and have been published in a final ruling, you cannot rely on the right to honor in relation to those events”.

To heal in health, The platforms seek agreements with the protagonists of the real stories. “Since they don’t want problems, they talk to them, ask for permission to tell their story in fiction and whether or not they agree on remuneration. It is customary and legal. “They are companies that come from Saxon law and since the legal system is not the same, they are cautious.”

The Messiah It is broadcast on Movistar. In The body on firethe court ordered the seizure of any Netflix payment to the main murderessRosa Peral, as “image rights”. Peral tried to stop the series, but being a public and court case he could not even prevent them from using his real name. Did Los Javis reach an agreement with the older brothers of Flos Mariae who were with them on the set to tell the story from their point of view? Neither Movistar nor Suma Content, producer of La Mesías, responded to this newspaper’s requests.

Lawyers: “There is room”

For Mariscal, agreements prior to filming are ideal. If not, lawyers review the series before launching. “In some project they have asked me for a bibliography to know where everything comes from. If you say that they are real events, you have to be careful. If you talk about a public figure and dramatize dialogues, “You can’t invent things that create a bad image,” Add the screenwriter Natxo López. In a biopic about Felipe González you could have him say that he is “fed up with everything”, but not have him admit to a crime. It is more complicated to work on the living than the dead, he adds.

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May the Flos Mariae they will enter the rageven if it was to stand out, and that the fans would take similar to reality has opened the box of thunder. For Adsuara, Los Javis do well by separating their series from the real story. “They say it’s a dramatization, that there are data from real cases but others are invented,” she says. “People don’t know what is true until the protagonists confirm it.”

If the family sued and there was a trial, the normal thing would be an agreement between the parties. The other option is to prove which parts of the series are true. “How do you get rid of an accusation of slander? By proving that what you say is true. The best thing for both parties is to agree that it is dramatized. If not, they can call those who have told the story to declare their truth,” he says.