Listen while you’re driving or on public transportation, cooking dinner, or waiting in line at the bank, these three Spanish-language podcasts manage to captivate with their unique stories.
Guerra 3
Podium Podcast
“How does a war start?” Jimena Torres asks herself in the first episode of Guerra 3, while covering the civil conflict in Damascus, Syria for a media outlet. While there, the journalist is given the task of traveling to North Korea, an assignment she had waited for years.
In principle, the trip consists of covering a festival of rhythmic gymnastics; However, the sporting event is just an excuse to try to unmask what is happening under the surface of the “most opaque country in the world.” In this way, listeners travel with the voice of the Spanish actress Adriana Ugarte —who plays Jimena— from Damascus to Madrid and from there to Pyongyang, where she will find herself face to face with a secret that, if known, could start a The third world war.
Guerra 3 is a podcast written by Spanish José Antonio Pérez Ledo and directed by Ana Alonso.
Red line: some episodes can get a bit long.
Case 63
Spotify Studios
The Chilean psychiatrist Elisa Adulante receives an unidentified patient and decides to record the conversation in her file as case 63. It is not a common consultation, the mysterious man does not seek to escape justice —as the doctor supposes at one point—, because of the On the contrary, he claims to be a time traveler from the year 2062 who returns to 2022 to stop patient zero of a virus that could end the world, from taking the flight that would take her from Santiago de Chile to Madrid.
The conversation between Elisa and Pedro Reuter —the Mexican from the future— becomes such a captivating narrative that it was listed among the most listened to podcasts in Latin America last year.
The project has already been adapted into Portuguese and Hindi, and an English version is underway with actors Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac as possible leads.
Red line: Netflix, Prime Video or HBO Max: what are you waiting for to adapt this podcast into a series?
Blum
The Extraordinary
Two women with specific obsessions and five years apart are the genesis of Blum’s story. The first obsession is that of Clara Pastor, an Art History student, with the work of Ursula Schultze-Bluhm, a 20th-century German painter of pictorial style. In the middle of her investigation about the artist, one day Clara disappears and leaves a vague voice note saying goodbye to her without further ado from her roommates.
Pablo, one of Clara’s roommates, tells the mystery surrounding this young woman to his girlfriend, Emma Castillo, a journalist who becomes obsessed with the disappearance of the student and five years later decides to travel to Switzerland to resume the investigation on Ursula. that Pastor left halfway.
Through cultural facts, poetic phrases and explicitly detailed descriptions of Blum’s painting, Emma narrates every fact, conversation and visit she takes by train to nine Swiss cities and ten Swiss art museums in nine episodes. Blum, the podcast, was written, created and directed by the Spaniards Carmen Pacheco and Manuel Bartual, starring actress Vicky Luengo and supported by the Swiss Tourist Office.
Red line: it would be a success to replicate this innovative tourism initiative in other countries.
Also read: Three true crime podcasts in Spanish
