(FOUR STARS)
“Men don’t like women like you, with that rebellious and defiant look,” they tell her. Inés Suárez de Plasenciaan advance
to his time. In full century XVI, traveled from Extremadura to America, in search of her husband and together with Pedro de Valdivia, founded the city of Santiago de Chile, in addition to defending it with her word and her sword. This eight-episode series, inspired by the novel of the same name by Isabel Allende, based on real events, reviews a historical era full of exploits and horror, where the most intense love and honor coexist with the bloody conquest of South America. Elena Rivera (Tell Me How It Happened) and Eduardo Noriega (Alatriste, The Sonata of Silence) star in this co-production of RTVE, Chilevisión and Boomerang TVwhich boasts an impressive technical bill.
The plot begins with Inés (Rivera), as a humble seamstress, orphan of parents, who lives in Plasencia with her sister Asunción and her grandfather. There she meets a handsome merchant, Juan de Málaga, with whom she will not hesitate to run away and marry secretly from the authoritarian old man. Once they are united, they move to prosperous Seville, a city full of riches that they hope will open the door to prosperity for them. But after some mismanagement, the husband must go to the so-called New World, to find his fortune, leaving the girl alone. A year later, without receiving any news, the young woman decided to embark to try to find him.
The first chapter presents the visceral harshness of the Spanish conquest, and the unjust realities against which the woman protested as soon as she crossed the Atlantic. Although her citizenship of origin and married status protect her, unlike the indigenous women who accompany her on her journey to Cuzco, we see how she must face the unwanted attention of men and, faced with a more than immediate threat of rape, she commits his first murder in self-defense. Inés, as soon as she arrived, learned that her husband had died and, free of commitment, she meets the man who will be the love of her life, Pedro de Valdivia (Noriega), with whom she will leave to drink. Chili.
One of the great successes of the story is to infuse the relationships between its characters with impetus, creating a channel that works to understand the motivations that move them – which is nothing other than the passion that awakens the desire for wealth – even above the religion. Of course, it has the melodramatic imprint of a soap opera, a reviled television genre that, thanks to popular interest, is still in very good health around the world.
