Eva Rodríguez
Ana Marcos, is a writer of the Culture section in El País and in charge of Art. She was also part of the team that created Verne, an online platform of El País, founded in 2014 and which ceased operating in 2021, aimed at exploring the internet.
On 26 January 2024, she, together with her colleagues Elena Reina and Gregorio Belinchon, published an investigative article in El País about film director Carlos Vermut, in which three women accused him of sexual violence. The publication recounted the testimonies of a film student, an employee in the director's productions and a worker in the sector.
Ana Marcos. Source: El País
The information was published on the eve of the Feroz Awards, which produced an unprecedented mobilisation in the sector. The president of the Asociación de Informadores Cinematográficos de España, María Guerra, denounced before the attendants to the gala in the Palacio de Vistalegre the total support of the Association to the victims, showing rejection to any type of violence or abuse. The Spanish Film Academy joined the protest days later, and at the Goya Gala they also denounced the abuses.
A month later, three more women joined the accusations, this time an artist -now a social educator-, a cultural manager and an actress.
Carlos Vermut at Premios Feroz in 2018. Source: EFE
Ana Marcos has spoken to us about the process of the investigation, its difficulties and how she perceives it is impacting the Spanish film industry.
How did the research start, what did you see that made you think there was something there?
Well, the research started after last year's Los Feroz. I don't know if you remember that after the awards ceremony, there was the typical party that always takes place after all these ceremonies, and there the actress Jedet reported to the police that she had been harassed by a producer. I worked that weekend, I made the news, and during that week, because it was a Sunday, we started to think about culture, if there could be a possibility of a change in the film industry.
This actress, Jedet, is also quite young, and if this change could be linked to a new generation. That week, my colleague Gregorio Belinchon and I wrote a report that was a little general, a little bit about the atmosphere. We spoke to several actresses, producers, and there we realised that none of them wanted to give their names, and they weren't giving us anyone's name, they were telling us how these situations that we women live through, which are different types of violence, that had already been normalised and that in fact during the conversation they started by saying that nothing happened to me, and when the conversation ended they themselves reflected, well, maybe that was something. That was published just a week after the Feroz, and that's when my partner and I gave out our emails, and some emails started to arrive, not many, there were two or three.
We never had a list of names. This research is not a list of anger for certain men, but the process is the other way around. It is always through the women who want to tell their testimony.
That's when the first clue about Carlos Vermut arrived, but at that first moment we had several names from a couple of clues that had come to us. And for a year what we did was, through that lead, call dozens of people in the film industry, and then the first three women who appeared in the first investigation came to us. This is also important to understand.
"The first three women who appeared in the first investigation came to us"
One of the reasons why we have not had access to lists of possible male aggressors, nor to lists of possible victims of this type of violence, is because we were talking about violence against women, and 98% of women do not report it. So the process has been, as far as the first investigation is concerned, the other way round. From the women to us, and from there we were putting the investigation together.
What was the most difficult thing when it came to them having the trust to tell you things that are very difficult to articulate?
Well, the first thing is that you have to gain their trust, because they didn't know us. And to do that, you often start by sending a WhatsApp message, but then you realise that maybe it's better for them to hear your voice, and you send an audio message, then you make a call, and then you meet up with them. And when you meet with them, maybe the first time you don't have a notebook or a recorder, and you simply have to listen to them, and the second time you ask them if they want to be recorded, or if you prefer to take notes.
In other words, what we have also done is, depending on how we saw each woman at the moment she was in, and how they wanted to talk, we adapted to that. Many times, I mean, sometimes they weren't alone, and maybe they were with a friend or a partner because they felt safer. The places where we met them tended to be either close to their home because they didn't live in places where they think they might meet someone from the industry in the cinema, or suddenly it was a strange place, we had the guarantee that no one would pass by there who would recognize them.
They are not very famous women, but recognizable in the sense of peers, and in an industry that is very small. This is a job that takes a long time, and then you have to give them guarantees. You also gain their trust when you explain to them how journalism works, how their identity can be protected, and that the six who have appeared in the two reports in the country have read their testimonies, which is part of what the book Estudio del País proposes, that an interviewee can read their statements.
In other words, they knew at all times what was going to come out. Another thing is that they didn't know each other and they didn't know the testimony of the others, nor the information about the others, because we also had to protect them from each other.
Do you think that being in a medium like El País, which has so much influence, so much prestige, gave them more confidence that this information was going to be treated well and cared for?
I want to believe that yes, that it has to do with the influence and the years of experience and the guarantees of quality journalism that the newspaper has, and that they also saw that represented in us.
Because in the end they are going to talk to a journalist, they are not just going to talk to El País or to the idea of El País. In fact, you also have to create a certain intimacy to gain that trust. But of course they had guarantees from a newspaper that has a series of requirements in terms of the quality of the information, such as checking, verification, and then the subsequent editing that many people do in the newspaper.
When it came to contacting Carlos Vermut, how did you deal with having to talk to him?
Well, we had his contact because two of us, Gregorio and I, work in the culture section, so we had that contact from other times we had interviewed him. It's a very difficult call. I hadn't done this kind of research and you get very nervous because you're going to make a very unpleasant call.
You are going to tell a person that you are not going to accuse them, but you have to tell them about a series of aggressions that other people have told you about. And you also have to be careful not to give them details of the people who have told you so that they can't contact them afterwards, for example. And know how to handle the conversation because you call him as a journalist to get his version of the facts, because that is the requirement of this newspaper in the style book, but you don't want to enter into a debate with him on certain issues.
I mean, if you saw his answers, he was very keen to talk about how he was a promiscuous person and that he engaged in rough sex. I don't care about that. A journalist would never judge a person, male or female, for having rough sex or being promiscuous.
If it's consensual and it's fine with you, that's fine with me. If the conversation had gone that way, we might have been talking about it for a long time. Then you also have to know how to handle the conversation and try to keep it on the terms of I'm calling you to confirm these facts, not to debate with you about some other set of issues that have nothing to do with my work.
Do you think this investigation is going to help to change people's idea of what a rape or a rapist is? Do you think it's going to help change that perspective a little bit?
I mean, I don't know what's going to happen. I know what I've been reading since the two reports were published, reading the debate on social networks, what I can hear in my friends' groups, the debate that is also generated in the newspaper.
Even when you have a coffee in a bar, when you listen to older people talking about this, you realise that you have achieved an impact that goes beyond the immediate one, which is that of the social networks. I think that this research can contribute to a debate on consent that we have been having since the debate on the preparation and approval of the law solo si es si, even if we go back to the advance of the feminist wave, since the last feminist wave of 2017. I know it's not attached, but it did come very much out of the debate we had on consent last summer with Jenni Hermoso.
"This research can contribute to a debate on consent that we have been having since the law solo si es si"
That is to say, last summer we were already considering whether a kiss was violence or not and consent or not. We already started to think that violence against women can be exercised if you can't consent to things that for other people may be small. Small because it is a kiss and not an assault in a dark alley.
I want to trust and believe, because it's part of my job and the job of a journalist that has to do with a bit of social responsibility and public service, that we contribute to that debate and take it further. It has to do with, you can open the door of your house to a guy, you can want to sleep with him and halfway through don't want to. We have to talk about that. And that you can be raped by your husband. And that you can spend a long time with a person who is mistreating you in different ways. And that there are a number of reasons for that. And that women don't leave a house where they may have been raped for reasons that we have to debate and that they open the door and that they can be dressed in a certain way and that in front of 50,000 people and recorded in front of millions of viewers, they put up with a guy who is their boss kissing them on the mouth. I mean, I think that debate is there, what will be the conclusion and if we will make a lot of progress or if maybe the wave is to react and make more progress than those of us who raise these debates or want to be in these debates? I don't know, but I do think we have contributed to that kind of reflection.
Do you think there is less fear in the industry to denounce or talk about this?
Well, I do think that at the moment that the Goya Awards change part of the script, that the Minister of Culture proposes an office for this type of denunciation in the culture industry and there are agreements or attempted agreements between CIMA (Assosiation of female filmakers) and the Minister of Equality, that women talk about it on the red carpets and in interviews. In other words, I think that it is changing and I think that they have found a safe place in us, in journalism, and that this type of comments come from groups of actresses, producers, costume designers. Yes, I think that perhaps they are being encouraged to speak out, but at the same time I think it is important to understand that these dynamics that can occur in the hotel industry, in banking, in the case of cinema, can produce such beastly moments of media impact that we experience, but then they fall.
"I think that it is changing. They have found a safe place in us, in journalism"
And at that moment you can see yourself as much braver, stronger and more confident, but then you have to return to an industry that is precarious, with very small companies and where everyone knows each other and where women at any age don't like to be the problem, because you don't have permanent contracts for life. So I want to believe that there will be more talk, that maybe other women will speak out and tell their cases, others will go to the police, others will go to CIMA or wherever. I want to believe that they will.
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