Enric Auquer: “American films show police as tough guys, but no one is prepared to kill”

Enric Auquer remembers watching the 2017 Barcelona attack unfold from his parents’ home in Rupià, unable to believe what was happening. He followed the news on television, watched his phone and called friends living nearby. The memory of “astonishment, concern and sadness” now informs his work in ‘Cronos’, Fernando González Molina’s film about the 124 hours of anguish that followed the mass attack on La Rambla and the events in Cambrils.

The film tells the story from the other side of the news. Diana Gómez plays Patricia Plaja, head of communications for the Mossos d’Esquadra. Mónica López plays a police officer from Ripoll, while Auquer portrays Inspector Jordi Rodón, who launched the operation that gives the film its title. More than a hundred people who took part in the real operation also participated in the production.

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American films show police as tough guys. But no police officer is prepared to kill anyone.

Auquer sees the film as an almost institutional tribute to the public employees who resolved the crisis with what he calls a strong sense of service. It also tries to humanize the police. “We are too used to American films where the police are tough guys. But no police officer is prepared to kill anyone,” he says. Even his character, who mainly issued orders, had to accept that some decisions could prove lethal.

That sympathy does not erase Auquer’s criticism of police actions elsewhere. He says he belongs to the Tenants’ Union and other platforms, and that he is hurt when riot police use force during an eviction. Yet the attacks created what he describes as a particularly moving closeness between citizens and their police. That connection, he says, deeply affected the officers as well.

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The film has an almost institutional intention of paying tribute to the public employees who resolved the situation in the best possible way, with a great sense of service.