La náufraga: Everything About Fernando León de Aranoa’s First TV Series

Fernando León de Aranoa has begun filming La náufraga, his first series as creator, screenwriter, and director. The series is being filmed at various locations in the Canary Islands, Alicante, Madrid, and Morocco, and will premiere exclusively on Movistar Plus in 2027.

The cast is led by Belén Cuesta, Margot Bancilhon, Guillermo Toledo, Raúl Arévalo, Fily Diagne, and Elisabet Casanovas. Movistar Plus announced the project during the recent San Sebastián Film Festival. The series consists of four 50-minute episodes and addresses immigration “from multiple angles,” according to its creator, from an unusual perspective.

An Unexpected Passenger

The plot begins with a rescue at sea of a rubber dinghy filled with sub-Saharan migrants. Among them is a passenger no one expected: a Western, white, upper-class woman with a baby. Once in port, Moreno, a lawyer specializing in maritime arrivals, will attempt to shed light on the strange circumstances surrounding the incident.

“La náufraga is my first series as a writer and director. All the characters are connected to the rescue of a boat on the high seas, and thus to the phenomenon of migration. This is the major issue of our time, the greatest challenge facing European society, and perhaps also, to date, our greatest failure,” explained the filmmaker. According to the director, the four episodes weave together the different facets of the issue “through the charisma of its characters, stemming from an unexpected event”: the appearance of the woman on a rubber dinghy filled with migrants, adrift at sea.

New format, same team

Jaume Roures, Patricia de Muns, Eva Garrido, and León de Aranoa himself serve as executive producers, while Ángel Amorós is the director of photography. Roures, who has been working with the director for 25 years—from Mondays in the Sun and Princesses to The Good Boss—emphasized that “this exciting and complex journey had to be undertaken with the best possible partners.” He added that Movistar Plus is “the perfect partner for a production of this magnitude.”