Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Bank Under Siege’ follows the events that transpired in Barcelona on May 23, 1981. The country is already in upheaval, especially since the attempted coup d’état at the Congress of Deputies about three months ago. When the Central Bank in Barcelona is taken over by a group of bank robbers, who have over 200 hostages inside the building, it falls on the government to make a decision. Do they conform to the robbers’ demands and let the culprits of the coup, who are in prison, walk free, or do they do something more drastic and risk the innocent lives inside the bank? As the events unfold, a different picture emerges regarding the motive of the robbers, and a devastating truth comes to light.
A thing to note about ‘Bank Under Siege’ is that while it is based on real events, it presents a version that hasn’t been proven in the eyes of the law. So, while the story uses facts as its foundation, it treads a lot in the territory of fiction and hearsay. It is this legally unproven version that we get in the show, and the following recounting of the show’s plot should be considered as such. SPOILERS AHEAD
What was in the Documents from the Safe?
When the hooded robbers take over the bank in Barcelona, they present the government with a series of demands that they need to comply with to ensure the safety of the hundreds of hostages. The demands include the freedom of Colonel Tejero and a couple of other people who are in prison due to their involvement in the attempted coup that happened three months ago. This, however, is a ploy to throw off the authorities. As expected, everyone starts to wonder whether the robbers are with the Civil Guard, or a far-right group, or someone else.
Meanwhile, the robbers focus on getting the money out of the vault, but that’s not what they secure first. They open a safe that has a document, which is then slipped out of the bank with one of the hostages when about a hundred of them are released in return for food and other stuff. And it is this document that becomes the focal point of the heist. When the heist comes to an end, and Jose Juan Martinez Gomez is arrested, he tells Captain Lopez, aka Paco, the true motive of the heist.
The penultimate episode reveals Jose’s tumultuous past, with a specific focus on his time with Alonso Manglano’s secret unit, the Yellow Centuries. There, Jose and other men were trained, and their skills were used in committing crimes like heists and kidnappings to make money, which could then be used to fund their unit and other more important operations. Eventually, a change in regime took place and the unit was disbanded, which left men like Jose without a job. Because all Jose ever knew was robbing places, he went back to it, eventually landing in prison, where he came across the philosophy of anarchists, which led him to his wife, Cristina.
While he saw many ups and downs, being sent to and released from prison, Jose stuck to robbery as his profession until the job of robbing the bank in Barcelona came along. He says that he was asked to do it by Manglano, whose only interest was in the documents in the safe inside the bank. He needed the heist as a distraction and even offered Jose and his team to take the money from the bank’s vault. Jose does as he is asked, and the whole thing about the demands is also a farce to distract the authorities. The documents were slipped out of the bank (when the first hundred prisoners were released) and delivered to Manglano.
It is later that the audience discovers that the documents contained the list of who would get what position in the new government had Tejero’s coup succeeded. The list was important because it could have exposed the people who had managed to escape the scrutiny following the coup’s failure and were either working within the government or were in considerably safer positions. Manglano was tasked with getting that document out of the bank without drawing any attention to it. In return, he would get the job as the Head of CESID, which was just a preview of the perks that would be extended to him. Sure enough, he rises through the ranks pretty fast, getting exactly what he wants and more out of the heist.
Are All the Robbers Caught? What Happens to Jose, aka Number 1?
For someone who goes through all this trouble to secure a document that could wreak havoc for a lot of powerful people, it makes sense that Manglano had measures in place to ensure that the true motive behind the heist never comes to light. As Jose later realizes, Manglano never intended for Jose and his crew to make it out alive. To begin with, he gave them fake blueprints of the building. He assured them that they could dig a tunnel in the wall of the bank, which would act as their escape route. But later, the robbers discover that there is a solid wall of rock behind the bank’s concrete wall, which means they don’t have an escape route.
With no way out, the robbers had only two options. They could either surrender and go to prison, or they could take their chances and most likely be killed by the authorities. Manglano expected the robbers to hold on to hope that they could leave with at least some of the money. Meanwhile, he lobbied for the special forces to break into the bank and take control of the situation. He knew the robbers would fight back, and it would most likely end with all of their deaths. He knew that it could also result in the deaths of innocent hostages, but he didn’t care about that. As planned, when the bank is stormed by the special forces, one of the robbers is killed. The rest would have fallen, too, if it weren’t for their quick thinking. They do something Manglano never expected, and this is what saves their lives. They blend in with the hostages and release all of them at once.
Because no one had seen the robbers’ faces and the hostages were in the hundreds, no one could know who was a robber and who was a hostage. It is this cover that allows the remaining robbers to slip by, but Paco’s sharp thinking leads to Jose’s arrest. When Jose is arrested, Manglano gets worried about what he will tell the cops. Manglano first takes Paco off the case, so the officer is sent on leave. Then, Manglano makes a very clear offer to Jose. He tells Jose to take the fall for the whole thing, to make a statement saying that the heist was simply about the money, nothing else. If he does this, his family will be taken care of. But if he tries to be smart and tell the truth to anyone, not only will he meet his end, but his family will also suffer the consequences of his actions. By this time, another story has already circulated about Jose’s crew and their connection to a far-right aligned Antonio Luis, who also becomes a person of interest to the authorities. Thus, a different story coming out would not only take the spotlight away from Manglano’s true motive for the heist but also emphasize Jose’s lying nature.
So that even if he tells the truth to anyone later, they would be forced to question its authenticity, as Jose would appear as a person who is concocting stories and telling different versions to different people. In the end, Jose agrees to say what Manglano wants him to and is sentenced to 38 years in prison. The title cards at the end of the show reveal that the real-life Jose was eventually released temporarily after eight years, and he used that as the opportunity to escape prison. It also calls back to a moment during the heist when he hid a stash of cash in one of the documents drawers and marked it with an X. Reportedly, the real-life Jose went back to retrieve that cash once he was out of prison. Still, labelled as a pathalogical liar, his version of the story never found enough legs to stand upon.
Do Maider and Paco Find the Documents? Does the Truth Come Out?
While Manglano takes all the right steps to ensure the truth never gets out, he doesn’t act quickly enough. Before he sends Paco packing, the officer has a quick chat with Jose, who doesn’t think twice about telling him everything because he knows that Manglano wants to kill him anyway. Still, Paco cannot just take his word for it. Before officially continuing the investigation, he is taken off the case and sent on leave. This makes him suspicious, and he does some digging on his own. He remembers the name of Gil Sanchez Valiente, whose name was uttered by the head of the Civil Guard, though he turned out to be wrong. Paco knows that Valiente has been missing since the failed coup, and he also discovers that Valiente is said to have been in possession of confidential documents, which is what he imagines were in the bank that Jose and his crew robbed.
Meanwhile, Maider, too, is entirely unconvinced of the story about Jose’s connection to the far-right people. While she is taken off the case by her editor, she continues to investigate on her own. Of course, the first person she looks for is Paco. He tells her everything he knows, but he also warns her. Considering how much effort was put into keeping the contents of the document a secret, the people behind the heist wouldn’t hesitate to get someone like Maider out of the way. Despite knowing the dangers, Paco doesn’t heed his own warning and joins Maider in her investigation.
Soon after this, Maider is visited by Manglano, who tells her to drop the case. Manglano’s threats make Maider even more adamant about finding the truth about the documents. Eventually, she and Paco find Manuel Vilagran, who got the documents out of the bank under the guise of being one of the hostages. It doesn’t take much for him to spill what the documents were all about. Because the documents are now in Manglano’s hands, Maider and Paco know that it is impossible to get their hands on them, which means that they’ll never be able to prove the truth of Jose’s story. Still, they can keep looking into Manglano and hope to find something.
Before Maider and Paco can contemplate their next steps, Paco’s car is bombed, reminding Maider of the way her father was killed. If Manglano’s friendly visit wasn’t a sign, the burning car is strong enough to remind Paco and Maider how vulnerable they are and how easily they can be removed from the equation. Hoping that time will get the truth out, the cop and the journalist decide not to poke the bear anymore and drop the investigation. Things go on in Spain’s political landscape just as Manglano had predicted. Felipe Gonzalez’s reign begins, the coup and the heist become a faded memory, as several notable changes take place in the country’s policies. A couple of years later, we see Maider reporting on the drug epidemic in the city while Paco, who is now working in Madrid, shows up to say hi to her. They go out for a drink before he leaves town, and there is no mention of the heist, Jose, or Manglano, meaning that they have moved on, having accepted that this is one battle that they cannot win.
Read More: Bank Under Siege: Is the Netflix Show Based on a True Story?
