At the end of October 2024, the director and photographer Silvia Grav He publicly denounced, through his social networks, to the director Eduard Cortés for “abuse of power and labor manipulation and grooming.” Then, the woman detailed that everything had happened when she was 19 years old and he was 55. After making this information public, 15 other women contacted her to share a similar story, a few days later. A month later, on November 7, she once again realized the magnitude of what was happening: “There are already 50 women affected and we are not done.”
This Wednesday, The Country has published an article in which 27 women claim to have suffered sexual harassment by the director of series such as Merlin y Not one more. At Grav’s side are, among other women, the visual artist Eva Fàbregas, the actresses Sofía Barco, Norah Alexandra Vega and Nicole León, who accuse Cortés of having benefited from his position to offer them work in exchange for being filmed nakedmasturbating or engaging in other types of sexual practices. Most of them were between 20 and 30 years old when everything happened. Two of them were minors.
The system he used to approach them was similar. For more than a decade, Cortés would have contacted these women through the Fotolog, Facebook, MySpace, Messenger and Instagram platforms, as well as by email and Skype video calls. El País collects the statements of the complainants who tell similar stories. Cortés began a conversation in which he praised their work and assured that he could get them a position in one of their productionsmainly for a project called Ingrid. It was then that the tone of the conversation increased, which became increasingly uncomfortable for them.
“The only thing I can say is that I did a project called Ingridwhich was linked to social networks, and I contacted many people during that time (before 2009, when the film was released),” Cortés explained to El País in response to the accusations. It was due to a phone call, which was followed by an email with a new statement supervised by his lawyer that read the following: “The conversations on social networks occurred within the hypotheticallooking for connections between the character’s way of acting and our personal experience. They were never explicit proposals.”
According to the newspaper, at least 15 interviewees have taken the first steps to report what happened, but they have not had it easy. After Grav’s public complaint, the Catalan Film Academy, of which the director was a member, announced that it would open an investigation, but it was never carried out. At the end of November, Cortés announced his resignation citing “personal reasons.” The investigation was closed and would not be opened again unless he attempted to enter one’s Academy in the future.
The complainants say that from the Catana Academy they were referred to the law firm of Carla Vall who collaborates with this institution. The lawyer offered legal advice to the complainants, but most of them could not afford the costs and turned to the Spanish Film Academy. The women went to the newly created care unit for victims of sexist violence in the cultural sector managed by the Aspacia foundation (financed by the Ministry of Culture) and found what many victims encounter when they try to ask for help: inconsistency and closed doors. . “In Aspacia they told me that They couldn’t offer us anything better than the Catalan Academy“, says Norah Alexandra Vega, one of the complainants interviewed by The Countrywho contacted the foundation who refused to answer their questions.
