LALIGA Studios & Little Spain Go Behind the Scenes of Scripted Drama

Earlier this year, C. Tangana’s production company Little Spain extended its partnership with LALIGA Studios to develop a scripted TV series set in the world of LALIGA, marking the first time a production has received the official seal of approval from the Spanish men’s soccer league.

Little Spain had already been working with LALIGA Studios for nearly two years on various other projects, including an anti-racism campaign. “We value partnership with Spanish institutions and brands that have a strongly rooted Spanish identity teamed with a global presence,” the team at Little Spain explains. “In this sense, football is a key focus for us. We believe football is much more than a sport; it is an important pillar of our culture and it affects the way Spaniards live and interact with each other. LALIGA is part of their lives and who they are. We are interested in the universal scope of that sense of belonging and in how LALIGA interweaves very different regional specificities.”

As such, the partnership between the two companies “was a natural fit, as it allows us to combine our strengths in storytelling with LALIGA’s deep connection to football, creating content that resonates on an international scale,” the Little Spain team explains.

The companies decided to focus their latest activity on a scripted project instead of an unscripted title “because it offers greater appeal, particularly in markets outside Spain,” Little Spain says. “A well-crafted narrative with strong characters can engage audiences more deeply, especially when working with an international and diverse cast. This approach allows us to build a compelling story that transcends language barriers.”

And there’s a gap to be filled in the fictional football landscape, says Chalo Bonifacino Cooke, CEO of LALIGA Studios. “Historically, football in fiction has fallen into various cliches that have undermined its authenticity and, as a result, its ability to resonate with audiences. Often, this may have been due to production challenges, budget constraints or limited access to talent. There’s a compelling gap to be filled. Having a project set within the world of LALIGA, with access to its clubs, stadiums, talent and the name of the competition—essentially, access to ‘reality’—will give us a unique point of view.”

Plus, “we are talking about the most significant football ecosystem in the world, the second most-watched football league globally, featuring one of the most-viewed sporting events worldwide,” Bonifacino Cooke adds. “It holds tremendous untapped potential, particularly in reaching audiences who either have never been passionate about football or those who have fallen out of love with it for various reasons. We believe fiction is an incredibly powerful way to connect with people and, above all, to convey profound truths.”

The series comes at a time when European projects are successfully breaking through to the international market. “Both from the mainstream and the margins, in recent years, great audiovisual productions with global reach have emerged, positioning European fiction in a place that was once reserved exclusively for Hollywood,” Bonifacino Cooke says.

He continues, “With this project, we want to tap into this cultural landscape in order to tell a story as local and unique to the regions of Spain as it is universal and human, marked by cultural clashes and adaptation to different environments.”

“At the end of the day, everything we do at Little Spain is built using emotion as our main tool,” Little Spain’s team says. “We firmly believe it is through this emotion that you can connect and awaken something in audiences worldwide. Football and LALIGA are a powerful framework, but it is through the characters’ stories that we can build truly valuable narratives with which anyone, anywhere, can feel identified.”

Ultimately, “we want to tell a story capable of attracting large audiences, each for different reasons, with football as the common ground uniting strangers under the same stands,” Bonifacino Cooke notes.

And the two will continue to work together beyond this scripted project, too, as “we share a common vision about the role of storytelling and communication, aiming to make an impact on culture by creating fresh, irreverent content that inspires and shapes the cultural zeitgeist,” the LALIGA CEO concludes.