Locations
While ‘Isabel’ was being filmed in Granada in 2014, the actors who played the Catholic Monarchs, Michelle Jenner and Rodolfo Sancho, were named Honorary Ambassadors of Granada, by its Mayor, José Torres Hurtado.
While ‘Isabel’ was being filmed in Granada, actors Michelle Jenner and Rodolfo Sancho made an offering of flowers in the royal sepulchre that houses the remains of the Catholic Monarchs, who they played in the series, a crypt that is only opened three times a year.
When the ‘Isabel’ series was filmed in Granada’s Alhambra, it was the first time in 25 years that the Nasrid palace had opened its doors to cameras. It was at a time that the monument was closed to the public. The Alhambra was used a year later to film the series called ‘Carlos, rey emperador’, the sequel to ‘Isabel’.
The scene of Carmen’s death in ‘Callas Forever’ was filmed in Córdoba, specifically in the ‘Christ of the Lanterns’. Two of the members of the choir pretended in their workplace a stomach upset to participate in the shooting. The next day, they were in a front-page photograph under the title of “Actresses from Cordoba for a universal film.”
The ‘Callas forever’ team spent a total of six months in Andalusia, from scouting locations to shooting. The team comprised 100 people and 500 local extras were also hired for three days of filming. The economic impact on Andalusia totalled more than 300,000 euros, including hotels, restaurants, catering, film set construction, equipment rental as well as cleaning and security personnel.
The director of ‘Callas forever’, Franco Zefirelli, stayed at Hotel Palacio Marqués de la Gomera, located in Calle San Pedro, where some scenes were filmed. He only had to look out from the large Baroque balcony of his room to check that the team was working on the set and preparing the next sequence to be filmed.
The gypsy camp scene in ‘Callas forever’ was going to be filmed in Guadix (Granada), but the director, Franco Zefirelli, apparently decided to continue filming in Osuna (Seville) and finally decided to film the scene by a group of prickly pears that, according to the locals, are as old as the Collegiate itself.
When ‘Carmen’ was filmed, the lampposts on the Roman Bridge in Cordoba were replaced by others made out of a different material.
The train travel sequence in episode 2 of ‘Fortunata y Jacinta’, with Maribel Martín and François-Eric Gendron, was filmed from Baeza to Linares; it was filmed from a car, although spectators see it from the window of the train in which the protagonists are travelling.
Powerful, passionate, independent, talented, pioneers… Women with a strong personality transformed into powerful characters in different films and television series filmed in Andalusia. Queens, artists, working women, mothers and wives, and even a Saint. Lives that have filled pages of scripts with their names as titles, as its best identity sign,only needing to be read out loud without requiring an accompanying male name. Carmen, Isabel, María, Teresa, Fortunata and Jacinta are now the protagonists of the most female film route, a route that takes us through four Andalusian provinces (Córdoba, Granada, Jaén and Seville) and to some of the region’s most emblematic locations, such as the Alhambra or Cordoba’s Mosque.
“In Úbeda, Baeza, Beas de Segura and their surroundings we shot for a week. And there, in a splendid landscape, we shot, improvising it, the scene that I like the most in the series. The one in which Teresa, at 60 years old and tired, smelling a bunch of herbs from the countryside, seems to have reached a paradise from which she does not want to move”.
