The six-episode production, available on RTVE Play and Netflix, tells the story of four women —Manuela Carmena, Cristina Almeida, Paca Sauquillo, and Lola González Ruiz— who, from labor law offices, confronted the Francoist regime by defending workers and political opponents.
The plot of Las abogadas begins in Madrid in 1969 and culminates with the tragic Atocha murders in January 1977, an event in which a far-right group took the lives of four lawyers and a trade unionist in the Atocha 55 office, also leaving four others seriously injured.
We are not dealing with a documentary or a meticulous legal chronicle. 'Las abogadas' is rather an exercise in memory: an evocation of those labor and neighborhood law offices that, under adverse conditions, sustained the defense of workers when doing so implied a real risk.
Although the series takes narrative liberties, its main objective is to rescue crucial historical memory, especially in a context where the interpretation of that period of repression and struggle for freedoms remains a subject of debate. Names like Enrique Ruano, Pedro Patiño, and the victims of Atocha 55 are remembered as wounds still open in collective memory.
Francisco Naranjo Llanos, former director of the Atocha Lawyers Foundation and CCOO trade unionist, emphasizes the importance of a public television channel like RTVE recovering these stories, highlighting that some struggles for freedom and human rights have not yet concluded. The series is an exercise in consciousness to understand the past and its impact on the present.
