Felix's heirs

The Spanish tradition in the production of nature documentaries began in the 1970s with the charismatic environmental communicator Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, who, especially through the TVE series El hombre y la tierra (124 episodes), that made the natural world popular with audiences through productions that were acclaimed both in Spain and abroad.

Rodríguez de la Fuente died in a plane crash in Alaska in March 1980, leaving an indelible mark. All the Spanish naturalists who came after him recognize the importance of his legacy.

After the disappearance of the pioneer, naturalist and environmental communicator himself, Joaquín Araújo completed eight episodes of El hombre y la tierra. In 1986, he created the series Silencio roto, which was watched by more than 11 million viewers in Spain and sold to some twenty countries. Araújo was also scriptwriter and presenter of the TVE documentary series El arca de Noé.

Since the late 1980s, Joaquín Gutiérrez Acha, a naturalist and filmmaker from Madrid, began to draw the attention of international producers, attracted his ability to assimilate new techniques and his original visual language.

Thus, National Geographic decided to commission him to direct what was their first venture in Spain, El latido del bosque, a documentary about the natural park of Los Alcornocales, co-produced by Canal Plus, which premiered in 1997.  

More recently, Gutiérrez Acha has directed the trilogy on Spanish natural heritage formed by the documentary films Guadalquivir (2013), Cantábrico (2017) and Dehesa (2020), all produced by Wanda Films.

The commitment and ambition of the independent production-distribution company Wanda, led by brothers José María and Miguel Morales, has been key to the development of documentary filmmaking in Spain, often teaming up with international partners to move its projects forward, as it did with Ukbar Filmes of Portugal and Austria's Terra Mater Factual Studios in the case of Dehesa.

Filmmaker Gerardo Olivares, now head of documentaries at the Mediacrest production company, has made numerous productions related to nature, including Marcos, the Lone Wolf (2012), a Wanda production about the life of Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja, who was the inspiration for the fiction film Among Wolves.  

With more than 25 years of experience, naturalist Álvaro Mendoza has produced more than 100 documentaries and more than 300 television programs for National Geographic, Disney, Discovery, Netflix, France TV, ZDF and TVE. Among his titles, Hot Life Africa, a 5×52 4k series he directed and produced at the company Genera Docs.

Also following in Felix’s footsteps is biologist Arturo Menor Campillo, considered one of the best specialists in nature documentaries, who released WildMed in 2014. The Last Mediterranean Forest, an international success rounded off in 2018 by Barbacana, The Footprint of the Wolf, produced at his company Acajú Comunicación Ambiental in collaboration with Canal Sur and CMMedia.