Victims’ Families Fight Film About Madrid Plane Crash

By RAPHAEL MINDER
Published: September 5, 2010

MADRID — A Spanish association representing victims of a plane crash and their families is fighting this week’s broadcast of the second half of a film about the crash.

The association has filed complaints in two Spanish courts seeking to block the channel Telecinco from showing the film, “Vuelo IL 8714,” a dramatization based on the crash during takeoff of a Spanair jet headed from Madrid to the Canary Islands on Aug. 20, 2008, killing 154 people.

The courts have yet to rule, and Telecinco, which made the film, broadcast the first part on Wednesday. The second part is scheduled to be broadcast this Wednesday. The complaint hinges upon the fact that the crash is still under judicial investigation.

Representatives of the group met last week with the management of Telecinco, which defends its right to show a prominent production featuring several leading Spanish actors. The company said by e-mail that it “respected the position of the associations representing relatives of victims and trusted fully in the seriousness of its project.”

Intellectual property lawyers have been watching the dispute closely as a test case for such dramatizations.

Borja Vidaurre, partner at VTF Abodagos, a Spanish law firm that specializes in media issues, said the association would have a stronger case against Telecinco if it had the backing of the judge investigating the crash. Without such support, however, “this seems to me to be more an ethical than a judicial question, and so it seems difficult to argue this on legal grounds,” he said.

The association said it had collected 65,000 signatures in three days from people demanding that the film be scrapped. The strongest opposition has come from the Canary Islands, where many of the passengers lived.

The association is now calling for a boycott of any products related to Telecinco, which is controlled by Mediaset, the Italian media group founded by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Dramatizations have long been a mainstay of the film industry. “United 93,” a film about one of the planes that crashed during the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, won acclaim.

“The difference between this movie and those made about 9/11 and other tragedies is that this fictional account comes as we’re still waiting to get the truth about why this tragedy happened,” said Pilar Vera, president of the association. “I cannot think of a single case of such a fiction being allowed, not only without the permission of relatives but also with the risk of causing serious prejudice to a judicial investigation.”