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Spain’s prominent public broadcaster Radio Televisión Española (Rtve) is set to launch Rtve Play+, its international video-on-demand Ott platform, in Asia and Oceania this Tuesday, Oct. 22.

The announcement comes at a fortuitous time, given a recent glowing report from Spanish trade and investment body Icex and entertainment analytics org, Parrot Analytics.

The report, unveiled at Mipcom on Oct. 21, singled out Asia and Oceania as the regions with the highest and fastest growing demand for Spain-originated content. Demand in Asia was at 100% while Oceania was at a whopping 175%. Per the report, Spain ranks fourth among the top five markets for global revenue generated from non-English content, positioning itself as the leading European and Spanish-speaking content market.

Data presented by Icex and Parrot Analytics at the annual confab in Cannes revealed that Spain-originated content has generated an estimated $5.1 billion in global streaming revenue over the past four years. Rtve Play+ can...

Spanish public broadcaster Rtve held its fifth annual Rtve Showcase late last week in Madrid. Eight of the network’s top shows were profiled for international buyers, and several panels debated the current state of affairs in Spain’s TV production industry.

Professionals from around the world tuned into this year’s Showcase, which had the overriding theme of international co-production. Guest speakers from across Europe attended and shared details about their recent experiences working with Rtve and what future collaborations are in the works.

According to Rodolfo Domínguez, Rtve commercial director, more than 200 attendees tuned in to this year’s Showcase, including 70 international buyers from more than 30 territories. Of them, 50% were from Europe, 30% from the Americas, and the other 20% from Asia and the Middle East.

Below, we reflect on two of this year’s most internationally relevant panels and briefly break down Rtve’s original programming lineup featured during the Showcase.

David Pérez Sañudo (“Ane is Missing”) and Carlos Vila Sexto (“Motivos Personales”) are ready for a different kind of hero in “Detective Touré.”

A six-episode series, backed by Spanish public broadcaster Rtve, Detective Touré Aie, Tornasol Media, DeAPlaneta and Basque state TV Eitb, the series is based on stories by Jon Arretxe.

The series first caught attention when selected as a project at Series Mania’s 2022 Co-Pro Pitching Sessions. Sneak-peaked at Content Americas in January, it was one of the highlights at its Spain Content Goldmine.

Set in Bilbao’s neighborhood San Francisco, it sees an immigrant from Guinea – with acute skills of deduction – who becomes immersed in a complex investigation, with the Nigerian mafia on his trail.

“We are used to having police officers involved in these kinds of shows, but an illegal immigrant? That’s something we have never seen before, at least in Spain,” says Vila Sexto.

The incontrovertible and immediate effect of muscular tax credits, entering in force in 2023, have powered to a new level the shoot scene in Bilbao and Bizkaia – the Basque city and surrounding province in Northern Spain.

Introduced on Jan. 1, 2023, the new incentives offer an up-to-60% tax deduction for national and international co-productions of film and TV projects.

Enticing studios such as Toboggan and production houses Buendía Estudios and Tornasol to set up in Bizkaia and streaming giant Netflix to invest in original productions, the territory is fast capitalizing on its breaks.

Over 2023, 151 shoots filmed in Bilbao-Bizkaia, 76 from the Basque Country, 47 from Spain and 28 from abroad, according to the Bilbao-Bizkaia 2023 Year Book.

Total shoot spend in 2023 came in at €58.5 million ($63.7 million), 324% up on 2019’s figure of €13.8 million, six times up on €23.5 million ($25.6 million) in 2021. In all, productions shot 1,026 days in Bilbao or in the rest of Bizkaia, 74% more than 2022. The fact that...

Atresmedia TV’s “Dreams of Freedom,” Rtve’s “Detective Touré” and Mediterráneo’s “Fentanyl: A Deadly Epidemic,” feature in Spain Content Goldmine: In Demand Like Never Before, a showcase of new and upcoming Spanish series unspooling Jan. 23 on the first day of Content Americas.

The title’s no hype. Since “Money Heist” became Netflix’s first true-blue global non-English blockbuster in 2018, Spain has consistently seen its top shows and movies rank high in global streamer charts, or sell worldwide, such as The Mediapro Studio’s “The Head.”

In 2022, in Europe, most fiction titles commissioned by global streamers were produced in Spain (34) and the U.K. (32), according to the European Audiovisual Observatory.

In 2023, film and TV titles from Spain have ranked No. 1 on Netflix’s global non-English Top 10 charts for more weeks – 13 – than those from any other country in the world, apart from South Korea. This month, after dropping on Netflix on Jan.

Spain’s TV fiction industry is exercising some caution after high-end Spanish-language series lifted off in 2018.

“We all wanted to launch so many projects, so many new platforms arrived that there was no time for analysis,” says Bambú co-founder Ramón Campos.

As streamers scale back on originals and sales cycles slow, the industry has time for larger re-calculation.

“We come from a spectacular moment, in terms of both quality and volume,” says Sonia Martínez, series editorial director at Buendía Estudios.

That groundbreaking moment, championed by series like “Money Heist” and “Elite,” propelled Spanish fiction production to historic heights of global popularity.

“There is a virtuous circle that began in 2018 and has been continuously regenerating. Spain’s talent base already interests international audiences,” says María Valenzuela, Movistar Plus Intl.’s general manager.

But the country’s TV production scene is still cycling through the fruits of the boom: the number of...