The problems of screenwriters in Spain are very similar to those that have led their colleagues in the United States to go on strike, but a strike would be practically unthinkable here, as Natxo López, a member of the board of directors of the ALMA union, explained to EFE.
"Many more abuses are committed in Spain because the sector is not so regulated," López explained, adding that the majority of scriptwriters in Spain are self-employed, which prevents the union from having "true representation" for negotiate.
Founded in 1989 and currently with 800 members, it was not until 2015 that ALMA managed to incorporate its salary tables into the collective agreement of the audiovisual production industry, which set minimum remuneration for contracts.
But some production companies systematically failed to comply, which led to a four-year legal battle against one of them that culminated in a final ruling favorable to the union last January.
"One of the main struggles we have as a union is to have greater strength and representation," says López, who explains that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) is also in charge of collecting what they call "residuals", one of the workhorses of the strike, whose equivalent in Spain would be copyright, managed by entities such as EGEDA or DAMA.
"There all professional scriptwriters are affiliated and have the obligation to participate and follow their rules, that's why the strike is widely followed, here that would be much more difficult."
Unlike the writers' strike that paralyzed Hollywood fifteen years ago, offshoring as a result of globalization gives companies a new element of pressure, the threat of taking production offshore.
According to López, some Spanish scriptwriters have been probed as a result of this strike by some of these large American production companies. "From ALMA we stand in solidarity with our American comrades and we are recommending to our affiliates that they not accept jobs that come from there," he affirms.
Netflix, the leading platform, opened its production center in Spain in 2015. One of the factors that could have influenced this decision is that "we are cheaper" and the rules are "laxer", according to López. "It was said that the arrival of the platforms was going to bring more work but it has turned out to be more precarious and unstable."
Before, working on a series for traditional television meant forming a large and stable team per season. "Now they ask you for a chapter, then two or three more, you write several without knowing if it is going to be broadcast or not and then the seasons are shorter," he says.
These conditions mean that beginners are excluded. "They are looking for people with more experience, but to learn you have to start from the bottom," says this screenwriter with more than 20 years of experience and who began working on "7 lives."
"That is no longer done and it is a danger for the renewal of the union," he maintains. "In the end, the problem is that they want to spend less, we're talking about platforms with million-dollar benefits (...), while many scriptwriters are leaving the profession because they don't have enough to live on."
Adequate compensation is one of the great demands behind the strike in the United States. "They pay you per script but they ask you for so many versions that in the end it doesn't pay off, that's happening here and there," says López.
On the other hand, there is the question of "residuals". They are paid based on the success of the work, but the platforms refuse to provide viewing data, which makes it impossible to calculate that compensation realistically.
In Spain, the film bill provides for this to change and oblige the platforms to provide this information, but the initiative is still pending parliamentary processing and it is not clear that it will come to fruition before the end of the legislature .
The third fundamental issue that the WGA has put on the table is that of artificial intelligence, still very recent but crucial for the future.
"It is feared that the production companies or platforms use artificial intelligence applications to propose a story and ask a scriptwriter to finish it off, but they keep the intellectual property rights," he explains.
"We don't know yet where this is going to lead, but it's coming. Artificial intelligence can help, but it should be a tool for the writer and not the writer a tool for artificial intelligence."
