Fiction lets you show why someone chose what they chose
Carles Porta, the Catalan journalist who made his name excavating real crimes with documentary precision, has crossed into fiction with '33 días' — a television series that takes a real fugitive case from Catalonia and rebuilds it as a psychological love story compressed into thirty-three days. The move is less a departure than a deepening: where his documentary work asked what happened, fiction allows him to ask why people choose as they do, and what lives inside the silences journalism cannot enter. It is a reminder that the boundary between fact and story has always been more porous than we pretend.
- A journalist celebrated for his unflinching true crime documentaries has staked his creative reputation on a form he has never before attempted — scripted television fiction.
- The series draws from a real Catalan fugitive case that genuinely frightened the region, but Porta has stripped away the procedural mechanics and rebuilt it around desire, fear, and self-imposed limits.
- The compressed timeline — exactly thirty-three days — creates a pressure-cooker structure that forces every character choice to carry maximum psychological weight.
- Audiences trained on true crime's factual promises may resist a hybrid that uses a real case as scaffolding for emotional invention, leaving the series on uncertain but deliberately chosen ground.
- The project signals a broader cultural appetite for narratives that refuse to stay inside genre boundaries, blending journalistic credibility with the interior freedom only fiction can provide.
Carles Porta built his reputation on 'Crims,' a documentary series that excavated real Catalan crimes with precision and empathy — the kind of work that made him the person you call when something dark needs illuminating. Now, rather than deepen that groove, he has stepped sideways into fiction.
'33 días' is his debut as a television creator, and it is not a simple pivot. The series takes its skeleton from a real fugitive case that shook Catalonia, but Porta has rebuilt it as something else entirely: a thriller centered on an unconventional love story, contained within the pressure of exactly thirty-three days. The question driving it is not 'What happened?' but 'Why did they choose what they chose?' — a different kind of investigation, but investigation nonetheless.
Porta has said the project emerged from a recognition that some stories could not be contained by documentary form. Fiction offered tools journalism cannot: the ability to live inside a person's head, to render the moment-by-moment texture of desire and fear. The result is hybrid — carrying the credibility of a real case while claiming the freedom of invention.
Whether audiences will follow him into this uncertain territory remains open. True crime viewers have sophisticated expectations, and a series that uses a real case as a launching point before diverging into psychological fiction occupies ground that is neither pure documentary nor pure drama. But that uncertainty may be exactly what Porta is after — a career spent finding the human story inside the crime, now asking what remains when you remove the crime and keep only the human.
Carles Porta has spent years building a reputation as a journalist who knows how to find the story inside the crime—the texture, the psychology, the thing that makes people lean in. His documentary work on true crime, particularly the series 'Crims,' established him as someone who could excavate real cases with precision and empathy. Now, at a point when he might have simply deepened that groove, he has chosen instead to step sideways into fiction.
'33 días' marks his debut as a television creator, and it is not a simple pivot. The series takes its skeleton from a real event that shook Catalonia—a fugitive case that terrorized the region—but Porta has chosen to rebuild it as something else entirely: a thriller centered not on the mechanics of escape or the hunt, but on an unconventional love story. The title itself is precise. Thirty-three days. That is the span of time the narrative inhabits, the pressure cooker in which everything happens.
What makes this move interesting is that Porta has not abandoned his roots in true crime. Rather, he has bent them toward character and psychology in ways that documentary form does not always allow. In interviews, he describes the series as a story about self-imposed boundaries—the ways people limit themselves, the choices they make not to act even when they could. It is a different kind of investigation than the one he conducted in 'Crims,' but it is investigation nonetheless. The question has simply shifted from 'What happened?' to 'Why did they choose what they chose?'
Friends have noted, with some humor, that Porta has a reputation for appearing whenever a major crime breaks in Catalonia. He is the person you call when something dark needs illuminating. But '33 días' suggests he has grown curious about a different kind of darkness—the interior kind, the psychological architecture of people caught in impossible situations. The series takes a real case and asks what fiction can do that journalism cannot: it can live inside a person's head, can show you the moment-by-moment texture of desire and fear and the weight of decisions.
The creative journey from 'Crims' to '33 días' was not straightforward. Porta has said the project emerged partly out of necessity, a recognition that there were stories he wanted to tell that the documentary form could not quite contain. Fiction offered a different set of tools. It allowed him to preserve the factual foundation—the real escape, the real terror it inspired—while reimagining the emotional and psychological core. The result is something hybrid: a series that carries the credibility of true crime but the freedom of invention.
What remains to be seen is whether audiences will follow him into this territory. True crime has become a dominant genre, and viewers have developed sophisticated expectations about what it should deliver. A series that uses a real case as a starting point but then diverges into psychological fiction occupies uncertain ground. It is neither pure documentary nor pure drama. But that uncertainty may be precisely what Porta is after. He has built a career on finding the human story inside the crime. Now he is asking what happens when you remove the crime and keep only the human.
Notable Quotes
It's a thriller of love, but an unconventional kind of love— Carles Porta
It's a story about self-imposed boundaries, about the choices people make not to act— Carles Porta
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why move away from documentary work when you've built such a strong reputation in true crime?
I haven't moved away from it, really. I've moved deeper into it. Documentary shows you what happened. Fiction lets you show why someone chose what they chose. That's a different kind of truth.
But you're using a real case—the Catalan fugitive story. Doesn't that create a responsibility to the actual events?
Absolutely. That's why I kept the skeleton intact. The thirty-three days, the escape, the terror it caused. But the love story, the psychology—that's where I get to ask questions the real case can't answer.
Your friends say you show up whenever there's a hot crime. Does that instinct change when you're writing fiction?
It changes the question. Instead of 'What happened?' I'm asking 'What would it feel like to be inside this?' That's a different kind of hunt.
The series is described as a love story, not a crime story. That's a significant reframing.
It is. The crime is the circumstance. The love story is the substance. That's the unconventional part—most people would lead with the escape, the danger. I wanted to lead with the human choice.
Do you worry audiences expecting true crime will feel misled?
Maybe. But I think there's an audience ready for something that uses real events as a foundation but asks different questions. That's where I wanted to go.