The Creators of the 'Asunta' and 'Alcàsser' Cases Arrive at the Alicante True Crime Festival

Alicante True Crime will be Spain's first festival dedicated to this subgenre of noir and will take place at Espacio Séneca from October 18 to 20. The event will feature national experts in criminology, journalists, writers, podcast authors, and audiovisual professionals. The Councilor for Culture, Nayma Beldjilali, and the festival director, Santiago Álvarez, presented the event this Wednesday at the City Hall.

Beldjilali noted that "this literary and audiovisual subgenre that blends fictional tools with real events is booming and generating great interest, which is why we have made this commitment within the noir genre." The councilor encouraged "Alicante residents and visitors to come to Espacio Séneca to attend sessions that promise to be very interesting due to the guests and topics that will be addressed." Additionally, the program includes two book clubs with Alicante authors in municipal libraries, Beldjilali added.

Festival director Santiago Álvarez explained that "it is an opportunity to bring the world of criminal fiction and non-fiction closer to readers and viewers. These are events present around us that need to be approached with responsibility but also with detail. True Crime not only helps us understand better who we are as individuals but also who we are as a society."

This first edition of Alicante True Crime offers twelve activities open to the public at Espacio Séneca aimed at revealing all the secrets of what can be seen in TV series, podcasts, newspapers, and books to lovers of criminal fiction and non-fiction.

Professionals in criminology such as Vicente Garrido and Paz Velasco, crime journalists Teresa Domínguez, Manuel Marlasca, and Luis Rendueles—authors of one of the most listened-to podcasts in our country, Territorio Negro—as well as the creative director of series like El Caso Asunta, El Caso Alcasser, and Cómo cazar a un monstruo, who has also worked on fiction with El Caso Fariña, Élite or Las Chicas del Cable, Ramón Campos, and the creators of L`Hora Fosca, which has just premiered its fourth season on Àpunt, are some of the key figures.

The lineup is completed by fiction writers such as Jordi Llobregat and others who delve into crime reporting like Mariano Sánchez Soler; criminal lawyer Enrique Botella; other true crime podcasters like Blas Ruiz, co-host of the successful podcast Crimen y Carrillo; and film doctor and member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Cinema, Pau Gómez.

Alicante True Crime will address a wide range of themes such as journalistic ethics when covering real crimes, why some cases remain in the collective imagination while others do not, the present and future of audiovisual media around true crime, the relationship between fiction and non-fiction, as well as analysis of the most striking cases by their main investigators.