Teresa Fernández-Valdés and female-produced TV series in Spain. Cable Girls/Las chicas del cable as case study

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the producer Teresa Fernández-Valdés, co-founder of Bambú Producciones, and her contributions to female-created TV series in Spain. Considered as one of the most powerful women in world of television, her company has produced successful romantic melodramas set in historical periods such as Velvet or Gran hotel. We approach her career and TV series in order to clarify how industrial context affects the agency of women creators and the discourse on femininity offered by TV shows targeted at female audiences. In particular, we focus on Cable Girls/Las chicas del cable, a show produced in collaboration with Netflix that has been controversial because of its ambiguous treatment of feminism. Combining historiographic accounts of Spanish television, textual analysis of the narratives and characters of TV series, as well as feminist reflections on the media industry, we argue that female authorship is a collaborative practice which, although possible in the context of the Spanish TV industry, is often subordinated to the need for profit.

KEYWORDS:

• Female authorship
• Spanish television
• TV series

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francisco J. López Rodríguez

Francisco J. López Rodríguez holds a PhD in Communication Studies (University of Seville, Spain) and an MSc in Film Studies (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom). He is currently working as a Lecturer in the Department of European Studies of the Aichi Prefectural University (Japan). His research interests include Japanese cinema and popular culture, as well as cultural and gender studies. E-mail: [email protected].

Irene Raya Bravo

Irene Raya Bravo holds a PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Seville (Spain), where she currently teaches at the Department of Communication and Advertising. Her main research lines focus on audiovisual story-telling and television history. She is a member of the research group ADMIRA and has published about cinema, television, genre and gender. E-mail: [email protected].