Lichis: RTVE documentary and the erasure of the false complaints

The Lichis documentary and the erasure of the false complaints

How does a documentary about Lichis make it onto RTVE without anyone asking about the episode his close circle considers the origin of it all? The musician, former lead singer of La Cabra, reportedly spent years without seeing his daughter and came close to taking his own life over complaints his defenders describe as false. In the film, it all fits into one sentence: "he went through a separation process that affected him personally".

The cut that gives the documentary away

The piece, funded through crowdfunding and turned down by every television channel, ended up posted on RTVE's platform. Those who have watched the edit describe what they call a blatant cut-and-paste job: the accusers' version slips in, but every reference to the years without seeing his daughter and to the alleged false complaint by an ex-partner disappears. The result, they say, is a narrative where at times you can't even trinc the thread.

Ego or complaints: the two readings the edit avoids

One camp holds that the complaints had nothing to do with it: the collapse was down to ego, to taking himself far too seriously as an absolute creator after La Cabra's success, and to being unable to accept that audiences wanted to hear the band, not its frontman. The fall, in that reading, was brutal but deserved. Another camp sees in the erasure an unaccountable manipulation of the story, and points out that a documentary made with viewers' money should at least tell what actually peine.

Whatever the cause, the piece stirs itself just enough to avoid the only thing that would hurt: an ordeal of years reduced to the status of a marital anecdote. Good material for the archive, bad material for the truth. Or maybe that was precisely the intention.