2.1 Thriller, city, and historical representation: the case of Seville

The audiovisual representation of the urban territory plays an essential role in the configuration of imaginaries around it, by exceeding the materiality of reality (^{Lapsley, 2005}) and producing a totally different portrait of the same city (^{Sorlin, 2001}). Considering Spanish film productions, this distinction is evident when we think of the outlying, marginalized Madrid suburbs portrayed in Faster, Faster (Deprisa, Deprisa, Carlos Saura, 1981) as opposed to the cosmopolitan and underground Madrid of Pepi, Luci Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (Pepi, Luci Bom y otras chicas del montón, Pedro Almodóvar, 1980).

In the case of the thriller, this relationship is especially important because of the centrality of the city as the scene of a contradictory modernity that exposes the rationalized control of public space to the potential intrusion of a danger that destabilizes the order (^{Rubin, 1999}). The audiovisual representation of the city is also determined by two other elements typical of thrillers: mystery and suspense. The suspense precedes the accomplishment of the facts and places the viewer before a sense of tension that points to two logically opposed outcomes, in which one of the alternative outcomes is morally correct, while the other is morally incorrect and socially rejected (^{Carroll, 2001}). Consequently, suspense and mystery contribute to creating an image of the city that insists on the uncertainty and that awakens the encounter with the unknown.

The case chosen for this article, Seville, has also been a protagonist within the thriller genre, in several works. Despite approaching the city from a different slant, its streets and squares play a major role in the construction of the narrative. In Unit 7 (Grupo 7, Alberto Rodríguez, 2012), the city prior to the 1992 Universal Exposition and the important task of making it a safe city for the event to pass off successfully, serves as a backdrop. In Bye (Adiós, Paco Cabezas, 2019), the conflictive neighborhood on the outskirts of Seville known as Las 3000 Viviendas (The 3000 Dwellings), and its high levels of criminality and marginalization, is the setting for the investigation carried out by some parents who, due to a car accident, have lost their daughter. In Nobody knows Anybody (Nadie conoce a nadie, Mateo Gil, 1999), Holy Week in Seville serves as the setting for the events that lead the main character to participate in an involuntary role-playing game, in which the cartographic representation of the clues and the labels of specific places, the model of the city and the map of the protagonist, draw a route of their locations that facilitate both the tourist to visit this place and also the configuration of a mental image (^{Tovar Vicente and Bogas Ríos, 2019, p. 13}).

In the film and transmedia universe of La Peste, the representation of Seville goes beyond the purely geographic to delve into temporality by offering a hybridization between the thriller and the historical genre. This characteristic, typical of the postmodern stories that have emerged since the eighties and nineties, also responds to the creative experimentation of generic formulas that have taken place since the emergence of the genre (^{Altman, 2000}). Therefore, the concerns of the thriller coexist with the search for an adequate visual reconstruction of the places or characters to achieve the credibility of the viewer from the dynamics of the recreation that proposes an immersion in the fiction of the reality that it presents. Thus, La Peste shows an apparently real and documented image of an imaginary city that is supported by the cinematographic immersion (^{Žižek, 2005}, p. 19). In the narrative itself, it can be seen how, despite being set in the final years of the 16th century and anachronistically locating the plague epidemic of 1647, the plot focuses on drawing a city whose twists and alleys favor mystery and suspense.

This historical thriller is presented as an ideal case study for exploring three aspects. First, the audiovisual representation of its past allows it to become a heterotopia or non-place that excludes contemporary perception (^{González Calle and Monteserín Abella, 2021}) and turns it into a strange place. In fact, the preeminence of recreation in the historical genre and the non-recognition of buildings and streets that were part of this city connect with the primacy of suspense in the construction of the thriller. Finally, the context of the plague epidemic also combines perfectly with the configuration of the city as an unsafe territory. The expansion of the city of Seville beyond its walls, and the persistent reference to the opening and closing of the city gates to contain the infection favors the portrayal of a suffocating atmosphere with danger always lurking in the form of disease or a crime that some inhabitant may commit on the protagonists. Through this double game, Seville becomes an added character thanks to the visual privilege that cinema grants to the territory (^{Gámir Orueta and Manuel Valdés, 2007}). Thus, the achievement of clues through filmic and transmedia narration insists on the urban protagonism, expanding the purely televisual limits.

2.2 The city as a game board: transmedia cartographies and ARG

In the process of describing geographic space as an object of mass consumption, it is worth mentioning the updating of the “new genre of geographic culture” (^{Gámir Orueta and Manuel Valdés, 2007}), which began with the incorporation of the photographic and cinematographic media at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Today, the interest of geographers in the representation of territorial elements in the collective imaginary has been revitalized through the incorporation of interconnectivity and digital convergence (^{Bolter and Grusin, 1998}; ^{Jenkins, 2006}; Jenkins et al., 2013). As Scolari points out, “If a few years ago we all talked about multimedia and interactivity, now the keywords are convergence and transmedia” (2013, p. 16). By transmedia, we understand those stories that expand through multiple media and communication platforms in integrated productions in which the content generated by the users is the protagonist (^{Fernández-Castrillo & Cirio, 2022}; ^{Scolari, 2022}) and in which the plot is established from “ (...) a network of characters, events, places, times and means” (^{Scolari, 2013, p. 36}).

The increasing creative use of new information and communication technologies in the audiovisual representation of territory poses new epistemological challenges when it comes to establishing the differences and meeting points between real and fictional space. Based on the idea that filmic images are not faithful reproductions of geographical space, La Peste marks a milestone in terms of both the rupture of spatial continuity and the territorial representation of Seville. The innovative nature of this series is aligned with the interest of Originals Movistar Plus+ to explore the experiential character in the expansion of the diegetic universe of its series through the proposal of a series of transmedia actions in real augmented spaces. According to Miriam Lagoa , head of the Original Production Transmedia Department at Movistar Plus+ during the series shooting, this is a promotion and loyalty strategy for its productions that also contributes to the positioning of the platform itself and, in the case at hand, that of the city being filmed (^{Cortés-Gómez, 2016}; ^{Sequera, 2013}).

Starting from the post-digital condition (^{Negroponte, 1998}; ^{Andrews, 2002}; ^{Taffel, 2015}; ^{Fernández-Castrillo, 2009} and 2021), there is a tendency to smooth the transition between online and offline reality present in the dynamics of hypersocialization marked by a great fluidity regarding the connection with the physical and digital environment. In this sense, the role of the user is essential in activating both spheres in a spatio-temporal continuum in which old and new media are interconnected to enrich the fictional experience. Therefore, we are not looking at a passive audience, but rather a collaborative one as an essential part of the transmedia strategy approach (^{Bruns, 2008} and 2010).

Within the framework of participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009; ^{Burgess and Green, 2009}), the need arises to delve into the experiential (^{Hills, 2017}) as a distinctive element of transmediation today and the backbone of the expansion of the narrative universe of La Peste through an original use of space. Indeed, as has been pointed out, the urban environment occupies a leading role both in the series and in the extra material, based fundamentally on gamification and the generation of content by the audience, turning Seville into the largest game board in Spain (^{Molina, 2019}). In geographical terms, this type of actions follows in the wake of chorographic descriptions or the incorporation of maps in travel stories as cartographic extensions that contribute to enrich the discourse by means of an approximation as plausible as possible to the territory in which the story takes place.

Focusing on the case study at hand, in the design of the transmedia strategy of the first season, the prominence of cartography as a vehicle of temporal (16th-century vs. 21st-century Seville) and metafictional (fictional representation vs. historical and present reality) union stands out. While in the second season we witness an extension of the two-dimensional format of the map through multiple resources such as the incorporation of a virtual reality (VR) installation or an alternative reality game (ARG) to collect clues and solve the questions raised by this historical thriller. We are in the presence of the exemplification of the evolution of the “mediatized space” (^{Gámir Orueta, 2012}), transmitted not only from an audiovisual perspective but also from a multisensory one, towards one lived not from the memory but from the direct intervention in the present reality. In this sense, from El Cañonazo Transmedia, those responsible for the creative project recall that the main challenge consisted of returning to the past from a contemporary perspective and narrative:

Of course, traveling back almost 500 years in time was a long journey. And, for any journey, what is needed is a map. This is how it happened. At first, it was the map (...) A contemporary street map to know the Seville of the 16th century and its reflection in the 21st century, to know where to visit the fictional characters and the real historical characters that populated the Spain of the time (^{Esteban and Alcázar, 2018}).

The fictional space is dominated by the representation of the Seville of The Renaissance in which an impeccable work of historical setting stands out through an important game of geographical recreation and composition of virtual scenarios to reproduce the spatial context of the time. In the interview given by Alcázar, the creative director recalled that the biggest challenge consisted of going beyond the traditional television consumption experience:

In season two, we translated the thriller genre in a way that television couldn’t, allowing the viewer to become a character and engage in that detective investigation through the format of alternative reality games. Mentally, you had to go back to the 16th century, even playing from the 21st century, but that involvement was allowed while respecting the personality of the users who had to collect information in real locations on the streets of Seville. The culmination was the participation in the VR in which the paradox was that you were physically in one of the locations of La Peste and virtually in two other locations of the series.

Therefore, in line with the premises of the thriller genre, the experiential strategy of La Peste achieves a greater impact on the emotional state by sublimating the main story through the engagement of the audience as an active agent by proposing a series of physical and geographical actions to maximize the fictional experience.

4.1 Analysis of the fictional and geographical space in La Peste

In the study of the series La Peste we observed some differences between both seasons. While in the first season several murders guide the story, in the second season it is the criminal plot that is the focus of attention. In fact, the analysis of the chosen scenes has revolved around two fundamental axes: one chronotopic and the other geographical, by attending to the intrinsic space-time relationship in fiction. In this sense, the series situates us in Seville at the end of the 16th century, characterized as one of the most flourishing urban enclaves of the Crown of Castile. However, as is the case with other titles of the genre, the nihilistic discourse of the city affects the decadence of a modernity lacking in values and where insecurity reigns (^{Herrera Gil, 2019}). In fact, the protagonism of a city that suffocates, encloses, elevates, and marginalizes its inhabitants, whose urban plan favors the expansion of the plague (Season 1) or the concealment of the criminal group known as La Garduña (Season 2), is insisted on.

First of all, the use of light and the play of interiors/exteriors was one of the characteristics analyzed. On the one hand, the presence of interiors is greater by more than half (59.76%) than scenes shot in exteriors (28.05%), with some cases where in the same scene there are mixed boundaries (interiors and exteriors) (15.85%). In fact, all the spaces that appear in exteriors correspond to the shots where the activity of the common stratum is staged. On the other hand, the scenes are mostly daytime (64.63%), breaking with the predominant tendency of thrillers to associate the night with criminality and whose time frame favors the carrying out of crimes and exposes the fragility of the individual before his encounter with other strangers (^{Rundell, 2014}). In La Peste, the day serves both for the discovery of the corpses (Season 1, Image 1) or for the pursuit of the La Garduña band through the narrow and labyrinthine streets by Mateo (Season 2).

Source: Episode 1x2 of La peste (Corral and Félez, 2017-2018)

Figure 1 Mateo discovering the first corpse in the poor suburb 

Secondly, the use of atmospheric light and the regularity or irregularity of the streets have made it possible to recreate a danger that stems from the separating borders between neigh- borhoods in 16th-century Seville. Even though there is not such a marked social segregation, in the narration three spaces associated with three estates can be distinguished: noble, religious, and common stratum. Thus, a considerable majority of the scenes are in those associated with the common stratum, both the poor strata (up to twenty scenes have been counted in the poor suburb outside the city walls) and the mercantile groups, money changers or wealthy bourgeoi- sie -where the Royal Mint or the factory of Teresa’s family are located. Despite the religious permeation in all aspects of life of the city, the scenes developed in places belonging to this class are reduced to specific spaces such as the prison of the Inquisition, the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas (Hospital of the Five Wounds), or some scenes in the cathedral or in different churches such as the Capilla de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Chapel of Our Lady of the Angels). Finally, the noble stratum is the least numerous of all -six scenes were located- and it is mainly situated around the Hall of the Twenty-four of the Cabildo (City Council).

Thirdly, the recreation and replacement of real locations have been fundamental in the geographic configuration. In fact, only seven of the scenes analyzed deal with real locations, the only ones filmed in Seville being the City Hall, the Reales Atarazanas (the Royal Shipyards) and the river area filmed in Isla Mágica (Magic Island) -curiously, this last location recreates the Sevillian space-. Therefore, although the Seville area is central to the story, in the scenes analyzed in which suspense is the main theme, it was mainly made up of locations in Carmona, Utrera, and, to a lesser extent, Coria del Río and Alcalá de Guadaira.

This recreated Seville builds a thriller that rides between the intramural and extramural city, whose murders and mysteries are spread between the interior, Castle of Saint George and the suburbs. This last neighborhood will also serve as the starting point for the murders (with the first corpse being found in this fictional location) and for the origin of the plague, which insists on the fragility of the protagonists and the fantasy of the protective wall.

4.2 Analysis of the expanded space in La Peste

In the transmedia universe created for the fictional expansion and promotion of La Peste, the urban space takes a fundamental role. The plot of this historical thriller expands through the metaphor of the map as an expedition between the past and the present; fiction and reality; geographical space and cyberspace; the traditional medium -television series-; and the new multiplatform formats. The possibility for the audience to plot their own media journey arises from the influence of the collaborative dynamics present in the current participatory culture (^{Fernández-Castrillo, 2014}). Therefore, the new model of interaction with the viewer-user stands out, a key piece for the activation of additional information to that provided in the six 50-minute episodes of the television format in both seasons. As a result of the analysis carried out, we can establish that the transmedia contents of this production differ from each other according to their three fundamental functions:

Investigative: Expansion of the data provided from the series (both diegetic and historical). Immersive: Physical and emotional link with the expanded information.

Interactive: Direct action and generation of new contents.

The strategy designed by El Cañonazo Transmedia for the first season focuses on enhancing the spatial-temporal immersion in the plot. The approach of this adventure is based on the creation of a reference website with more than 350 minutes of extra audiovisual content distributed in different formats: geolocalized multimedia routes, interactive webdocs, fiction podcasts, cooking shows, a weblog on YouTube, a collaborative website and web reports.

In the second season, on the other hand, the transmedia actions invite the audience to interact with the plot itself through the online and offline space by means of leads and clues, thus becoming part of the fiction as another character, to solve the mysteries posed by the thriller. In this case, the degree of dependence of the transmedia strategy on the television production is much greater, since the contents generated for the first season have a certain degree of autonomy. In addition to the YouTuber channel, there is an exhibition, several routes (including one with smartglasses and gastronomic experiences), an alternative reality game and a virtual reality installation. This series of immersive and interactive actions transcend mere audiovisual stimulation by creating multi-sensory experiences (AR and VR) based on pre-existing spaces.

Through the analysis of the two seasons, we will see how the application of transmediality to the fictional universe of La Peste contributes to the expansion of its plot through an original historical-territorial cartography. The aim is not only to make the viewer follow the discursive thread, but also to revitalize the thriller genre by generating unique experiences based on the creative use of urban and cybernetic space.

4.2.1 Spatial transmedia strategy in the first season of La Peste

Seville acquires a fundamental role in the development of the plot in the series and as a starting point for the transmedia experiences in both seasons. In the interview we conducted with Luis Alcázar, Creative Director of El Cañonazo Transmedia and in charge of the transmedia creative strategy of La Peste, he highlighted that:

The series would not make sense if we did not talk about this city. The physical space acts as a trigger to raise a new narrative line, so Seville is treated as another character, while in the second season the intention was to lower the narrative to the street level, to be able to live it via different real spaces.

In the initial stage, the map of Seville serves as a container of information that complements and provides access to the first six episodes. It shows the Seville prior to the urban transformation plan (1767-1823) initiated by Pablo de Olavide, who promoted the first global cartography of the city, something that came surprisingly late considering its important function as the main Atlantic port to America (^{Ollero Lobato, 2015}). Adopting the cartographic perspective as a starting point, we will dwell on the spatial analysis of the transmedia strategy:

Cyberspace and augmented space: both dimensions coexist in La Ruta de La Peste (The Route of La Peste), the website that hosts the transmedia content map, among which stands out La Ruta Dorada de La Peste (The Golden Route of La Peste), a multimedia guide to tour Seville both from cyberspace with extra multimedia content about the 16th century and through its 21st- century streets by means of a geolocation system and QR codes. In addition, under the hashtag #LaPesteSerie the actions on social networks consisting of the creation and dissemination of microcontent through dialogue with users are grouped.

Source: Image from La Ruta de La Peste (n.d.)

Figure 2 The Route of La Peste 

Historical space: in Ida y Vuelta (There and Back) we find a six-episode webdoc with historical documents, testimonies of academics, experts, and technicians who worked on the series, while in La Mancebía (The Brothel, or House of Ill Repute) it is the character of Eugenia who brings us closer to the secret life of the Seville of the past from her YouTube channel. El Yantar (Good Fayre) is a cooking show in which the chef Daniel Toro talks with the actors of the series about anecdotes of the filming while he teaches us how to prepare recipes of the time. And the users themselves are in charge of researching and publishing data about the historical context of the series from Wikipeste, which includes a specific category about the locations.

Source: Image from ^{Wikipeste (n.d.)}

Figure 3 Wikipeste 

Geographic space: CGI Seville consists of six web reports in which curiosities are offered about the locations and recreations of the historical places during the filming process of the series of each episode. By way of example, the first episode explains how the Puerta de Sevilla was filmed in Carmona, which thanks to its historical heritage has served as a natural setting for many of the sequences of La Peste, and by means of a 3D digital recreation using period shots.

Source: Image from ^{Movistar Plus+ (2018a)}

Figure 4 La Peste. CGI Sevilla, Episode I: The Port of Seville 

Fictional space: El Confesor (The Confessor) is an audio fiction in which the scriptwriter Rafael Cobos will help to atone for the sins of his own characters. Each podcast is linked to the main plot and to the spaces central to the corresponding episode in the series. In the case of Los Inquisidores (The Inquisitors), audio commentaries by the creators of the series -Cobos and Alberto Rodriguez- guide listeners through the episodes, with special emphasis on the challenges involved in recreating Seville through sets and VFX using film plates, matte painting, digital figuration, and 3D projections.

The possibility of taking a trip to 16th-century Seville and then back to the 21st century is focused on exploring the extra contents of the series mainly from the conjugation of cybernetic and historical-fictional space. Even though the direct presence of the geographical space was limited to three actions, and we only identified the presence of the increased space in La Ruta Dorada de La Peste (The Golden Route of La Peste) the tourist impact of the campaign was more than remarkable, obtaining the Spain Film & Tourism Award, 2019. As we will see below, we will have to wait for the second season to find examples of virtual space.

Table 3 Spatial transmedia strategy in the first season of La Peste 

Title	Format	Function	Environment	Space	Description
The Route of La Peste	Website	Interactive	Transversal	Cyberspace	Base platform for the transmedia strategy
The Golden Route of La Peste	Geolocalized multimedia guide	Immersive	Transversal	Geographic	Fictional Multimedia guide to visit Seville online or physically and learn about its history through the series by means of a geolocation system and QR codes
				Augmented
				Cyberspace
				Historical
				Fictional
CGI Sevilla	6x4´ YouTube Web report	Investigative	Common stratum (suburb outside the wall)	Geographic	Web report, with interviews and making of, in which two presenters investigate how the VFX of the series have been made
				Historical
				Fictional
The Brothel (The House of Ill Repute)	6x4´ Season 1 YouTube Weblog	Investigative	Transicional(mancebía)	Cyberspace	YouTuber channel of actress Cecilia Gómez on historical curiosities
				Historical
				Fictional
Good Fayre	6x5´ YouTube Cooking show	Investigative	Transitional (tavern)	Cyberspace	Chef Daniel del Toro shows recipes from the 16th century while he chats with the actors of the series about historical and filming anecdotes
				Historical
				Fictional
There and Back	Webdoc multimedia interactive	Interactive	Common stratum (port)	Cyberspace	Navigable interface to access historical documents and multimedia material about 16th century Seville
				Historical
				Fictional
				Geographic
The Confessor	6x10´podcast series	Investigative	Religious (Castle of Saint George)	Cyberspace	Expansion of diegetic content through the confessions of different characters
				Historical
				Fictional
The Inquisitors	6x20´ podcast series	Investigative	Religious (Cathedral)	Cyberspace	The series creators comment on each episode
				Historical
				Fictional
Wikipeste	Collaborative web site	Interactive	Transitional (Printing House)	Cyberspace	Wiki platform for collecting data from the fiction and historical context
				Historical
				Fictional
#LaPesteSerie	Facebook Twitter Instagram	Investigative	Transversal	Cyberspace	Creation and dissemination of microcontent through dialogue with users

Source: table compiled in-house