On Thursday, January 18, 3Cat will premiere the documentary series Històries de la Primària on TV3 and the 3Cat platform. Comprising six episodes, it is one of the major bets of the new season of Catalan public television and is a work by Incís Films, the production company of Must Media Group, a communication group to which The New Barcelona Post and the Giny Comunicació agency also belong.
Directed by Pol Izquierdo and with Guillem Carol as executive producer, Històries de la Primària is a documentary and entertainment format that opts for a narrative starring the voices of patients, which follow one another without pause. It has been filmed in 15 different CAPs (Primary Care Centers) in Catalonia and in some homes in Barcelona, Bages, and Pallars Sobirà. About fifty primary care professionals appear, especially nurses and doctors, 95% of whom are women.
This new audiovisual content has had the support of the Department of Health and has been financed with funds for the 2022 strategies of the Ministry of Health, as support for the implementation of the Primary and Community Care Action Plan.
"The main value of the series is having had access to this special relationship established between primary care professionals and their users. It is the first time that content of this nature, which the general public usually ignores, has been revealed," explained Pol Izquierdo this Wednesday during the press conference presenting this new Incís Films production. According to the series director, one of the elements that surprised him most is "the level of intimacy" that he and his team have been able to record.
According to the president of 3Cat, Rosa Romà, the documentary series "bears the unequivocal quality seal of 3Cat and is a very clear example of our firm commitment to public service." "We will learn tough stories, but also very human ones. And it is that the complicity of doctors and nurses with their patients is one of the pillars that makes the country advance. A country that this documentary series is capable of showing with all its plurality, complexity, and richness," added Romà.
In the same vein, the Minister of Health, Manel Balcells, emphasizes that in the documentary series "all professional roles of Primary Care appear," and explained why he believes that showing the functioning of CAPs from within was a necessity: "Hospitals have great glamour, but the reality is in primary care."
Each chapter is between 40 and 45 minutes long and includes about four different locations. Barcelona, Badalona, Castelldefels, Sant Cugat del Vallés, Navàs, Balsareny, Sort, Bretui, Montardit de Dalt, Vinebre, la Torre del Espanyol, Lloret de Mar, Girona, Santa Coloma de Farners and Lleida are the towns that appear throughout the series.
Giving visibility to a task not always sufficiently recognized
For Encarna Sánchez, director of EAP Navàs-Balsareny, it is important that Catalan public television gives visibility to problems "perhaps not very well known, but which are part of our daily lives as professionals." Regarding the first chapter, dedicated to the distances that some of the primary care teams located in the territory must cover, she highlighted that this fact also has advantages: "We travel many more kilometers. In return, we enjoy a closer relationship with patients, which is very gratifying for us as professionals."
Another protagonist of the series, Anna Carrera, nurse and assistant director of the same primary care team, shares the same opinion: "Letting television cameras into our consultation and recording real cases has been quite an experience, because we are not used to it. But we agreed to it because it has been an opportunity to show the public what we do in primary care."
The director of TV3, Sigfrid Gras, added that Històries de la Primària shows "an essential service for society, such as primary care, as it is. With its virtues and its limitations, but always with the commitment to help people."
The premiere of the first chapter of Històries de la Primària is scheduled for Thursday, January 18, at 10:45 p.m.