The film deals with the famous Redondela case in Guixar (Vigo) about disappearance of four thousand tons of oil , in which investigated and participated in criminal court José María Gil-Robles (Patrick Newell as José María Gil Ramos) , in one of his first public appearances in Spain after his return from exile . As Lawyer Gil Ramos helped by Padin (Carles Velat) tries to clarify in court the theft of four thousand tons of oil from Acegasa's deposits, but the people who could testify as witnesses die in strange circumstances. Gil Robles took special interest in highlighting the involvement in the case of the administrator of the company Nicolás Franco Bahamonde, although this it had not been processed. The well-known criminal lawyers José María Stampa Braun and Gonzalo Rodríguez Mourullo also intervened as defense lawyers in a notorious trial that took place.
Patrick Newell as lawyer José María Gil Ramos/Gil Robles gives a nice and sympatetic acting , as he attempts to clarify by whatever means the theft of four thousand tons of oil from Acegasa's deposits, but things go wrong when some witnesses die . The film was shot in Vigo and Alcalá de Henares , nicely photographed by Juan Amorós. During filming, the leading actor, famous for British The Avengers series , the Englishman Patrick Newell disappeared without a trace and reappeared a week later in West Germany. According to his agent, he went to that country because it was the first flight he found at the airport, and the reason for the march was great psychological pressure due to long working hours and not understanding any word of Spanish language. Patrick Newell is well accompanied by a great support cast full of familiar faces such as : Fernando Guillén , a young Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as his daughter , Elena María Tejeiro ,Carlos Larrañaga , Agustín González , Francisco Merino, Manuel de Blas ,Juan Jesús Valverde , Conrado San Martín ,Marina Saura , Paca Gabaldón, Héctor Colomé , among others .
The motion picture was professionally directed by Pedro Costa . His first steps in journalism are as a chronicler of events in the weekly El Caso. In December 1970, he wrote a chronicle on the Burgos Process that had great repercussion and provided him with a job as an investigative journalist for the magazine Cambio16 .In 1974 he left his post at Cambio16 and decided to launch "Posible", a political information magazine. Accompanying him on the Cuco Cerecedo project are Miguel Ángel Aguilar and Alfonso Palomares. He combines this work with the creation of API, an independent clandestine newsletter.In 1977, Antonio Asensio Pizarro hired him to launch Interviú and a few years later, in 1980, he moved to the United States as a correspondent for Grupo Zeta. He returned to Spain in 1982 and with the change of government, he decided to dedicate himself again to cinema.He died after a long illness at age 74 at his home in the Madrid town of Torrelodones. Pedro Costa wirote the scripts of some nice films as Amantes (1991) by Vicente Aranda , La buena estrella (1997) by Ricardo Franco ,Intruso (1993) by Vicente Aranda
Pídele cuentas al Rey (1999) by José Antonio Quirós , La vida de nadie (2002) by Eduard Cortés , Las 13 rosas (2007) by Emilio Martínez Lázaro and ¡Atraco! (2012) de Eduard Cortés . And directed some films as El caso Almería (1983), ¡Que vienen los Beatles! (1994) , Una casa en las afueras (1995) , El crimen del cine Oriente (1996) , Los que quisieron matar a Franco (documental) (2006). Rating : 6/10. Passable acceptable but a little bit complex , slow-moving and tiring .
The facts were as follows : Reace Case was a scandal that in March 1972 spilled over to the company Reace (Refinerías de Aceite del Norte de España, SA), located in Guixar (Vigo), due to the disappearance of 4,036,052 kg of olive oil, owned of the General Commissariat of Supplies and Transport (CAT), valued at 167 615 172 pesetas. The Reace company was founded in the Pontevedra town of Redondela, so the matter is also known as the case of the Redondela oil.1 Around this matter there were several strange deaths of people involved, which accentuated the public interest in the case, increased by the presence on the Board of Directors of Reace of Nicolás Franco Bahamonde, brother of Francisco . The Managing Director of the Company, José María Romero González, was forced to denounce the fraud in the courts of Vigo for not having the oil claimed, leading to a judicial investigation, which was ordered as summary 43/1972, and from which The investigating judge of Vigo, Julián San Segundo and the then Chief Prosecutor of the Provincial Court of Pontevedra, Cándido Conde-Pumpido Ferreiro, took over. At the beginning of the investigation, for crimes of falsification and embezzlement of public flows, the condition of the deposits was verified and the disappearance of more than four thousand tons of oil was verified.In July 1972, one of Reace's majority partners, the President of the Company, Isidro Suárez, was detained on a train bound for Bilbao, when he was on the run. Realizing that he was going to be arrested, he threw out of the train window a package containing a large amount of cash, as well as foreign exchange, the result of illegal profits obtained from the fraudulent sale of the oil, and from which Isidro Suarez had seized to take it abroad. After an investigation of the tracks, the package containing the money was recovered by the police. Isidro Suarez had ordered Jose María Romero to fill the tanks with water to try to hide the fraud, which was not done, since it would be useless since the content of the deposits could be checked with a calibrator that detected the density of the liquid . On September 30, 1972, the Managing Director of the Company, José María Romero, well known in Vigo for the intense social life and expenses he carried out in various public establishments, was found dead at his home in Seville, where he had settled days before, along with his wife and one of his daughters, 6 allegedly by suicide. Days later, the judge in the case received a letter from José María Romero, in which he declared that his death and that of his family was suicide. Some experts questioned this hypothesis, considering that the letter did not resemble, by extension or tone, that of a suicide bomber. In the court ruling, Rodrigo Alonso Fariña, founder of Reace, considered the main person responsible and beneficiary of the fraud, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and to pay, by civil liability, 167 million pesetas.11 By then, the President of the Company According to the official version, Isidro Suárez had died in prison when he was showering due to suffocation when a gas leak occurred.The trial sentenced : Alfredo Román Pérez, accountant and secretary of the Board of Directors, was condemned to 4 years in prison and Miguel Ángel García Canals, official of the Supply and Transport Police Station, was sentenced to suspension and a fine. This official was the one who had to monitor the state of the deposits and that of the seals to avoid the oil subtraction, and had not done so in exchange for the perception of a periodic reward from Reace of 5,000 pesetas per month, since April 3 from 1968 to March 1, 1972
