The most successful program on Basque television in the last two decades will soon arrive on La 1 (the forecast is in the summer) by the presenters Julian Iantzi and Raquel Sánchez Silva. El conquistador is presented as an "adventure and extreme risk" contest in which 33 people selected from among 1,500 candidates participate. Accompanied by Joana Pastrana, Patxi Salinas and Cesc Escolà as captains, the contestants will fight in the Caribbean to become the first winner in Spain of an extremely physically and mentally demanding reality show.
This adaptation of El Conquistador arrives as a RTVE production in collaboration with Hostoil (The Mediapro Studio), the production company in charge of this program in the Basque Country. Behind the success of the original format, programmed since 2005 on ETB, the Basque public television, there are several ingredients. One of the most important is the casting itself, the contestants who compete on the show. In the Basque version of El Conquistador there has been everything; from professional athletes, ertzainas or firefighters with an excellent physical condition, to people with little sports background who have used other types of qualities to face the adventure.
The La 1 program will feature 18 men and 15 women who will test their physical and mental capacity, with a prize of 100,000 euros on the horizon. “The format has been modernizing, it is inclusive and egalitarian. It is not an iron man. There are elite athletes and people who want to get out of their comfort zone. The viewers are going to feel identified”, explains Patxi Alonso, general director of Hostoil and creator and executive producer of the format.
Former boxer and businesswoman Joana Pastrana, former soccer player Patxi Salinas and fitness professional Cesc Escolà will accompany the contestants as captains, divided into three teams: the green one for the girls (Atabey), the red one for the boys (Tocahu) and blue is the color that distinguishes the mixed (Cocorote). “It is a program in which the limits of people are seen, both physically and mentally, and I believe that the wild Cesc that I have never shown will come out”, indicates Escolà.
The very place in which the adventure is being recorded is another relevant ingredient, a paradisiacal environment in which, however, they will know hell at times. In this first edition on a Spanish scale, the program is being recorded in the Los Haitises National Park, in the Dominican Republic, with a technical team of 250 people.
The new program aims to get closer to the exceptional success that has accompanied this format in the Basque Country since its first broadcast, almost two decades ago. In its 19 editions it has become an audience phenomenon, with averages that exceed 20% of the screen share, especially successful among youth and followers even in Latin America.
“It is an adventure and extreme risk format that was missing on RTVE, and which has been tested with great success on Euskadi public television. It promotes values such as camaraderie, loyalty, teamwork, truth, self-improvement or conservation of the environment”, explains the director of Originals for RTVE, Ana María Bordas. From The Mediapro Studio, its non-fiction director, Amparo Castellano, highlights that the key to the format is that "it is true" and "very different" from any survival program.
