‘Salvador’ Review: A Brutal Journey Into the Heart of the Beast (Netflix)
A paramedic finds his daughter wounded in the middle of a clash between soccer hooligans. But she is not a simple victim; rather, she is an active member of a radical group that promotes racist ideals.
If you dropped the protagonist of Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead into a world where he had to contend with a gang of neo-Nazis, the result might look something like Salvador, the Spanish series created by Patria showrunner Aitor Gabilondo and directed in its entirety by Daniel Calparsoro, a seasoned and prolific Spanish filmmaker known for his action and suspense work. The combination of Gabilondo’s overtly political concerns and Calparsoro’s kinetic, high-adrenaline style turns the series into a sustained portrait of tension: the story of a man pulled into a violent clash with a far-right group operating on the streets of Madrid.
The perpetually expressive Luis Tosar—an actor who seems to have more dramatic nerve in a single eyebrow than many performers possess in their entire bodies—plays Salvador, a jittery, abrasive paramedic working the night shifts in Madrid, burdened by a past marked by alcoholism and gambling addiction. His personal via crucis begins during a Champions League match between Real Madrid and Olympique de Marseille. No, Salvador is not a series about football, but that setting serves as the entry point into the world of the White Souls, an extremist group of far-right Real Madrid ultras. Salvador has already witnessed their violent behavior on city buses, and later, while driving his ambulance around the Bernabéu, he comes across the aftermath of a brutal attack: a police officer set on fire by a Molotov cocktail, whom Salvador and his team desperately try to save.
What follows—riots, chases, street battles and unrest, all filmed by Calparsoro with his usual flair for high-impact, adrenaline-fueled sequences—brings together rival fan groups and the police in escalating chaos. In the midst of it all, Salvador makes a devastating discovery: his daughter Milena (Candela Arestegui) is part of the racist, neo-Nazi group. Shocked but not entirely surprised, he attempts to confront her, but she wants nothing to do with him and openly despises him. The White Souls viciously beat a French man, leaving him disfigured, and during a subsequent clash between rival groups, Milena herself is brutally attacked and hospitalized. As the situation grows increasingly grim, Salvador takes it upon himself to investigate who is responsible for what happened to his daughter.
Running parallel to this storyline is that of Julia (Claudia Salas), another member of the same extremist group who is quickly revealed to be a police informant, cooperating in exchange for access to her daughter, whom she has lost custody of and who now lives in a boarding school. The series gradually unfolds two parallel investigations—the police trying to identify who threw the Molotov cocktail at the officer, and Salvador seeking those who assaulted his daughter. Beneath the relentless chases, shootouts, brawls, pursuits, and physical and verbal abuse, Salvador ultimately aims to map out the ecosystem in which these groups operate: who joins them, how they function, and how they manage to recruit followers through hate-filled rhetoric disguised as patriotism.
Assessing the series is no simple task. Calparsoro’s narrative instincts, as seen in films like Cien años de perdón, lean heavily toward intensity, momentum, and action. His approach relies on an accumulation of visual and sonic stimuli—everyone seems to be shouting all the time—which often leaves little room for pause, reflection, or deeper analysis. Still, in Salvador’s encounters with police officers specializing in extremist groups (Patricia Vico) or with the militants themselves (Leonor Watling plays the leader of the White Souls), his personal investigation pushes him further into “the heart of the beast.” In the process, he tries to understand the emotional and ideological mechanisms that ensnared his daughter—and that, if he’s not careful, could ensnare him as well.
Salvador attempts to be critical of nearly all the factions involved in a Spain that—like much of the Western world—exists in a state of constant tension between the rise of far-right movements and a society that struggles to fully grasp what is happening. Beyond the neo-Nazi groups, the series makes clear that there are intersecting interests involving the police, business figures, and political authorities, while also pointing a finger at “antifa” groups, which, at least from this perspective, are not portrayed as doing much to encourage peaceful coexistence either.
As a broad snapshot of a contemporary world in which information is manipulated to mobilize people and create monsters, Salvador is at times sharp and perceptive in its sociopolitical observations. More often, however, it seems primarily interested in delivering visceral impact rather than sustained analysis. Perhaps that’s a deliberate strategy: a way of making these debates accessible to viewers who would never sit through a more sober, well-intentioned drama on the same subject. That may be true. Still, amid so much bloodshed and sensory overload, the force of its social critique occasionally loses some of its bite.
