2023-05-26 14:44:00
caceres will remember this year for a multitude of reasons, but in all probability the filming of the media will appear at the top of that ranking. the house of the dragon. The city is not a rookie in the cinematographic. Sigourney Weaver, Alain Delon, Paul Verhoeven and Ridley Scott have filmed in its streets, names that have hardly been boasted about until Game of Thrones, the most watched series in history, reminded more than one of the hidden potential of a unique enclave.
If there is something that the arrival of international macro-production is having managed to reconcile Cáceres with her memory. Apart from the undeniable boom in filming that the city has recorded in recent years, the HBO saga has been in charge of propping up a trend that is establishing itself as a vein for the capital of Cáceres.
After their first visit in 2016 to record sequences for the seventh season of Game of Thrones, they returned in 2021, this time to shoot the prequel, then with unprecedented anticipation for the novelty. Dragon House premiered in the summer of 2022 with audiences of millions of viewers. At the time, neither the cast was known, except for Matt Smith (Doctor Who, The Crown) nor was the city aware at the time that it would become a key location for subsequent seasons. So much so that the confirmation of a second season has already sparked rumors that the production would return to Cáceres. That’s how it went.
Two years later, with the names and faces up to date and with the certainty that the monumental city is King’s Landing, the practically entire team has returned to record the sequences that will be broadcast in the second part scheduled for 2024. Once again, Cáceres has become the base of operations on the peninsula, however, the production has ruled out other settings from the first season such as Monsanto and La Calahorra.
A funeral and a beheaded dragon
The filming of the second season of The House of the Dragon has aroused all kinds of conjectures about the plots throughout the week of filming. If the fans of the saga were already speculating about the paths of the second installment, scheduled for 2024, throughout the week they have been able to develop their hypotheses with the material that has emerged during the days of filming.
It has been the captures that have been published in the media – the production company has tried as usual to shield any type of access to avoid spoilers – which put the fans of the prequel on the track.
Among them, it is advanced that there will be a funeral procession, presumably from Jaehaerys Targaryen, son of Haelena (Phia Saban). Also in relation to funerals, in Trujillo, he transcended a headless dragon head with arrows. Another of the advances is that there will be aerial shots of Los Barruecos. It remains to be seen if the dragons will fly over the natural area again.
On this occasion, they remain in the city for around three months -the first time it was almost half a year-. Even so, it continues to be the largest audiovisual production that the capital of Cáceres has ever hosted. The technical team, which manages the link in Spain for HBO, Malaga-based Fresco Films, has deployed almost half a thousand professionals, both local and international. As for the direction and the cast, Andrij Parekh–director in the last season of Succession–, the protagonists and already recognized Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy and additions such as Phia Saban have set foot on land in Cáceres.
This great display of media has generated benefits for a multitude of sectors, including suppliers, logistics companies, hoteliers and accommodation, which it has a direct impact on, generating income comparable to a year in a matter of months. At the time, the city council came to provide data based on estimates and came to estimate the economic impact of filming at ten million euros.
Apart from the obvious repercussion in economic terms, it is true that the series offers an international projection of the city. In fact, in recent years the number of visitors who travel exclusively to see the locations has increased. This pull could not be used after the first visit in 2016 after an exercise in self-criticism, local institutions have worked on initiatives to attract fans of the saga to the city, including a festival for Targaryen fans.
However, despite convincing an entire city economically and touristically, on this last visit, voices have increased calling for opening a debate on the need to regulate million-dollar productions due to the impact they cause on the environment. In this latest filming, in a matter of a few weeks, trucks, dozens of horses, cranes have paraded through the old town, the facades have supported giant chromes, the pavement of the walled enclosure has been covered with sand and vintage carriages with dozens of of kilos Both residents and groups ask that this deterioration be paid for in some way by production so that it can later be reverted to maintenance.
The truth is that Spain does not have a unified criteria on shooting rates. Circumstances such as those of Barcelona coexist, which charge from 150 to 700 euros, others only apply a public road occupancy tax and others such as Malaga or Cáceres, which do not charge anything in order to attract production companies. In this sense, those in favor of applying a tax maintain that years ago it made sense to apply tax incentives to publicize the city, but once the purpose has been achieved, the conservation of a unique scenario in the world must prevail. Thus, Cáceres says goodbye to another monumental filming between satisfaction and future debates that it will have to address if the announcement of the third season is fulfilled.
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