Leave a comment – this real life secret makes TV a natural ride | Television

DDid you know your name when you were five years old? The more you think about it, the harder it is to answer. Most of us would be lucky enough to not have this problem – parents or guardians are always there to take care of this. But for Ramón, Elvira and Ricard, it was a real story. Their family name was incomprehensible. In its four parts, this fascinating documentary shows and tells what it means to be absent.

The three brothers were found by a stationmaster while roaming at Barcelona’s Estació de França in 1984. They were carrying no luggage or ID. The eldest of them (Ramón) was five. He was driven there by a man he knew as Denis. He left, apparently to buy them candy, and never returned. No adults came to pick them up so they ended up in Spanish foster care.

At this point, the mystery deepened. As one parent remembers, the children who came her way were often neglected, not fed or deprived of other things. These three were different: healthy, well-dressed and sound for their age. They were also, however, a closed book in terms of established knowledge. This was still doubtful. As Ramón said later: “I suspect that our parents taught us, not to share too much”.

When the children met their foster parents, Lluís and Marisa, they were very happy. Not only were they able to live together, but soon they were officially adopted and enjoyed a happy and loving childhood. But questions about their history did not linger and when Elvira was in the process of starting a family of her own, she took a DNA test and decided to start researching the results.

The series feels a little helter-skelter at times; excitement and confusion and strange new knowledge and leads and blind alleys, all chasing each other in space. This confusion is probably a directorial choice – after all, events do not happen linearly but instead fall into a series of terrifying memories. As the eldest child, Ramón was the key to the process. He took his knowledge and his previous form began to form. A sports store with a crocodile in the window. A park with a fountain. An ugly old woman, dressed in black. A large glass of warm milk. This makes this story a universal phenomenon: we all have these kinds of associations – vague, not random, but familiar and meaningful to us. However, Ramón also remembers picking up the gun, firing it and seeing scars dancing on the stone steps as the bullet hit. This is very rare. But, as it was before, there had to be a reason why these children found themselves at the railway station.

Were their parents in gangs? As it turns out, it is not quite so easy. Elvira gathers a group of volunteer investigators and genealogists, and at this time the rise of the story threatens to collapse under the background of people, emails and WhatsApp messages. It didn’t, perhaps because the story at its heart is the same, involving several European countries, a post office robbery, stolen information and a criminal group that calls itself the Gold Bandits of Andalucía. But mainly because of the warmth provided by the bond between the brothers and the drip feed of the revelations that begin to make sense of their lives. Soon, through a series of beautiful but beautiful images, we will meet the parents: Ramón Sr and Rosario, real life Bonnie and Clyde, but on their heads and they seem to pay a lot of money.

At times, Abandoned plays like a true crime series. There is some openness to it: as it was with series like Making a Murderer, it is easy to imagine meeting this family again, new things have come out because of the existence of the show. While many journalists who participated (incl Guardian Giles Tremlett, who was part of the investigation) often suspect that Ramón Sr and Rosario are dead, the case remains unsolved.

And in any case, the indomitable Elvira clearly has no intention of giving up. Ultimately, what this series makes clear is that the search itself is the point. Linking places to pictures and dates to forgotten memories is a process of discovery and revelation. The three brothers lost something in 1984 and are now working full-time. Seeing them walking while re-creating childhood photos in the playground shows their inspiration. They are making memories that they will cherish. They are creating information. Elvira said: “I wanted to know if he loved me. Maybe these three will never learn anything about their parents and their plans to leave them, nameless at the train station. But they will never stop trying.”