Original subtitles

This is the Bataclan nightclub.

The before and after.

The tactics the bad guys employ aren't very sophisticated.

At all. They don't have very good military training.

They just shoot when they feel like it.

When we are mobilized for something like this,

we have to be fully prepared, 200%.

Let me be clear about this, it is not an easy kind of mission at all.

PARIS, NOVEMBER 13, 2015. MULTIPLE JIHADIST ATTACKS ACROSS THE CITY.

THE MOST SERIOUS, AT THE "BATACLAN" CONCERT HALL.

131 CIVILIANS ARE KILLED AND 415 ARE WOUNDED.

We can't follow the usual protocols,

"Stop, this is the police. Identify yourself."

"Get on the ground." No. We're talking about people

who want to cause as much damage as possible

and want to do us as much harm as possible.

NICE, JULY 14, 2016.

A TERRORIST DRIVES A 19-TON CARGO TRUCK INTO A CROWD OF TOURISTS.

HE KILLS 86 AND INJURES 434.

Istanbul Airport.

A terrorist with an explosive belt.

He has made the personal decision to take up the jihad

and is going to carry it out until the end.

He is going to die. Because, to him, it's a good thing.

ISTANBUL, JUNE 28, 2016.

SUICIDE BOMBING AT ATATÜRK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.

42 CIVILIANS ARE KILLED, 239 ARE INJURED.

Carrying out an attack is as simple as that.

You don't need a lot of technical or military training

to make a big mess like the one we're looking at.

They may improvise, with a machete or two,

whatever they have, a fake explosive belt,

and that's enough to spark panic.

LONDON, JUNE 3, 2017.

THREE TERRORISTS STAB PEDESTRIANS IN A CROWDED AREA

AFTER A MULTIPLE HIT-AND-RUN.

11 PEOPLE DIE, 148 ARE INJURED.

When we get to a key location,

if they have opened fire, we know what we have to do.

If they've already opened fired,

we still know what to do. The response will vary a little.

Okay?

When police respond to these attacks,

we are always a prime target.

This is a consequence of police arriving on scene.

You become their target, not the victims.

A cop is worth five people to them.

And if they're from a tactical unit, they're worth ten.

This could happen tomorrow. We could be deployed tonight.

It can happen at the Kapital nightclub, in Atocha, you name it.

In a movie theater.

And the G.E.O. will have to intervene.

This is the main G.E.O. duty that we are going to have.

This is the reason why units like ours are created

and why the selection process is so hard and so tough.

Because we need people who can perform in that.

That's the way it is.

We will not hesitate in these situations.

SPAIN'S ELITE POLICE: BEYOND LIMITS

EPISODE 7 THE ENEMY

VIENNA, NOVEMBER 2, 2020.

A TERRORIST OPENS FIRE AT SEVERAL LOCATIONS IN THE CITY CENTER.

HE KILLS 5 PEOPLE AND INJURES 22.

Yesterday, we started with advanced tactical training with shield,

with speed, with changes, with sectorization.

The concept of an active shooter.

And, incidentally, that was in the morning

and, in the afternoon, the attacks in Vienna happened.

It all seems to go together.

In the end, this is what we're here for.

Special units

are always trying to anticipate this kind of thing.

We are now going to focus on anti-jihadist operations.

We are going to see what we have created here

in this holy house to deal with them.

-Read it to me, for God's sake. -Yes, Instructor.

"NUNE, acronym for neutralization nucleus.

"Offensive intervention cell,

"created to neutralize armed jihadist incidents

"in which the perpetrators are threatening people's lives."

If there's someone in a movie theater,

wielding a Kalashnikov, shooting, killing people,

shooting at the police, and he has two grenades,

the resolution is not going to be as clean, as surgical as we are used to

with a planned tactical approach, such as the one

normally performed by the G.E.O. or any other tactical unit in the world.

That's what NUNE is.

In the face of total chaos, to aim to be as efficient as possible.

Santiago 220, I need operational support from NUNE Bravo.

NUNE is like a moving tank.

A tank with a bunch of rotating turrets that shoots all over the place.

The corridor zone, the dead zone, still exists.

So dancing like this...

Negative.

Negative. I don't dance.

I move forward.

There is no plan B. You are there on your own.

You have to handle, as well as you can, whatever situation they throw at you.

Come on, come on!

Let's keep moving.

It's a situation that we have to put an end to

with a policy of trying to save as many people as possible,

even assuming that, during the resolution of the incident,

some people may die because you didn't get there in time.

One more concept that you don't know,

which is essential,

and that is the Zulu callsign.

"Z," "the last ones," that's where it comes from. They're at the end.

What do these people do? When the shield team

moves over an area that hasn't been checked,

they're on the lookout for ambushes.

We must be on the lookout for anything that might surprise us.

Looking, searching. And we all know

that if somebody comes out and I'm in this position, looking,

this is 0.05 seconds.

If I'm a good G.E.O. operative, I'll beat him.

I must have that mindset.

Not a panicked mindset. I'm on the hunt.

I'm on the hunt.

Coming, Álvaro.

Zulu! This is what you need to worry about. This right here.

When facing a terrorist, is there any moral conflict?

None.

You have to look.

Someone who is doing that kind of thing has to be stopped.

The moral conflict would haunt you if you don't stop them,

if you don't take them down. Then you'll have a guilty conscience.

We still have trouble understanding what Zulu does.

It's like a trap.

If I release team NUNE, Zulu is ready for the catch.

I release NUNE, bad luck,

and I go hunting. I say, "Let's see what comes up."

NUNE goes past and waits at the back.

Zulu is there for that sort of process.

Let's go.

Every operative would want to be there at that moment to bring that person down.

I would like to be there.

I think it's what we'd all want.

If something happens, we would all want to face it.

That's what we're being trained to do, to get into those situations.

You can't hesitate in a situation like that.

Stop!

After all, it's our duty to the public.

You give him distance here to hunt him down.

And when you move,

you pass by and take a look, because you're also a target.

Go on. No, not that much.

That's it.

If we don't do it,

or they don't do it,

who will?

A guy with a knife.

Anyone with a knife in a crowded square

can take out whoever he wants before anyone gets there.

TERRORISM STRIKES VIENNA

A knife is unstoppable.

Either you stop him or he won't stop.

-That's what the instructor said. -He won't stop.

-So it's shoot, shoot, shoot, until... -If you don't stop him...

That's the way it is.

Seriously, I swear,

I've been really worried lately.

There are a lot of people when you travel.

They can pop up anywhere in Europe.

I realize you're doing this while you have a newborn.

For example, I don't tell my family much because...

Imagine telling a mother that you have to go to the front lines

and that the day that something happens, the G.E.O. will be there.

We'll be dealing with it.

And it's true, it's...

It sounds tough to say, "We have to neutralize this guy.

"That's my job." But that's the way it is.

If something happens, you'll be there, not someone else.

When the day comes, we will be ready.

Right? Of course.

MANEUVERING AND SHOOTING RANGE UCEDA, GUADALAJARA

Nine, nine.

Who fired on automatic?

-Who fired on automatic? -Me, Instructor.

Do you know what that means in a Bataclan-type situation?

That you have a lot of civilians with your bullet holes in them.

You probably didn't hit the bad guy,

but there'd be a lot of collateral casualties.

That's why the G.E.O. never uses an automatic,

except in situations of attack and total defense of cover fire,

Because it's impossible to be precise and selective with automatic.

They're outgrowing the course. That's a good sign.

How are the shots, Perte? Good?

-The spreads. -Yeah.

One had only two, two that Alcántara let off.

The Zulu guys are getting the hang of it.

Grenade!

We took on some people, with some knowledge,

and now we are creating a mechanism,

pieces of a puzzle that we are shaping...

And the pieces are fitting together.

But, yes, I can see that they're much more mature, more developed,

and I hope they have

that look in their eyes, that wolf-like gaze...

OFFICER PERTEGAZ SHOOTING INSTRUCTOR

...the readiness to give their all,

a refusal to be defeated and the feeling that nothing can stop them.

You have to like it and you have to live it.

And if anything happens, for better or worse, you want to be there.

Because that's what fulfills you, so to speak.

It's what you've been working for, what you've been training for.

You really want to be in that moment.

DEPUTY INSPECTOR MEJÍAS

In that dance.

Internalize everything we have done today.

Today's training needs to remain in your head for a long time.

You must be thinking about it over and over again,

until it becomes automatic.

Practice isn't everything.

Mindfulness is everything.

Barrios.

Tell De La Torre that he has to trade guns with me.

We are going to do an individual shooting test.

You have to shoot down the targets,

which will be designated by a laser pointer.

Come on, quickly.

Let's go, let's go.

That's it. Quick. That's it.

Let's go, quickly.

Move forward.

That's it.

Ceasefire. Lights, please.

Come over here.

-Alcántara. -Yes, sir.

You're getting old.

These months have been hard on you.

You've aged five years.

The G.E.O. course is not good for your complexion.

What we are going through here is very intense.

Sometimes it's hard for us to see it because we're exhausted,

because psychologically it's tiring to be in this Groundhog Day...

But when you have those moments of joy, of personal satisfaction

for having achieved something that you've worked so hard for

and, on top of that, you are living it in this unit,

I don't know, it's spectacular.

Come on.

Let's go for the sixth, come on.

Let's go for number seven.

Come on, it's there. It's right there.

But at the same time, when you see that things are going well,

you get motivated, you believe in yourself,

you can visualize yourself and the satisfaction is doubled.

We are moving at an intense pace, but when you manage to step back

and think a little bit...

Shit, this is what I was dreaming of.

Fire!

What have we got there? What have we got?

Let's go, let's go!

Come on, clean up, come on!

The course changes you.

In my case, I think it is changing me because

there are things within me, that are coming out,

things I didn't know were part of me.

Whatever happens in the rest of the course,

whether I finish it or not,

I have realized that I have been able to overcome things

that even I didn't think I could overcome.

Well, it's up to you.

-What? -It's up to you.

It's up to me whether to stay here or not?

-Sure. -Shit.

We've faced so many new things here, and many of them

depend on instinct, so you don't know what you're dealing with

-and you can't foresee them. -But that's always going to happen.

Right, that's it.

If you're around for 15 years, you'll get here and say,

"Okay, something new." We have to pull through.

That happens to me and it happens to everybody.

-You always show up and say, "This is it." -I didn't expect it.

-Something new. -Right.

So, what do we do?

-Pull through. -Handle it and do it right.

No one is coming here to assist us.

-Yeah. -That's the way it is.

So, we use the whole gun, okay?

We know what we're up against, or we think we know what we're up against.

But, as they say, reality is always stranger than fiction

and we still have a long, long way to go

before we are even half-aware

that this is not a game.

That's it.

AIRPORT CIUDAD REAL

2001. 9/11.

It totally changed the way we perceive aircrafts.

Now a non-compliant aircraft in flight is seen as a kind of weapon.

It's a tube, at the end of the day,

it's 60-odd meters in length,

with a high number of victims, of hostages,

and the consequences of an incident

in an aircraft of this type can be devastating.

The facts speak for themselves.

The situation can arise without warning,

and we have to intervene immediately as police officers.

We have to carry out an emergency assault.

Begin ascent, Alpha, Bravo.

Okay, push.

We can't hit the fuselage.

You're hitting it, it's vibrating too much.

This resonates a lot on the inside.

This slow "bam, bam, bam" that you're doing is very loud.

Climb slower. You're fumbling around.

The planned assault is a tactical one.

Attack.

Tight, Diego.

-Who was opening it? -Me.

Your arm was visible.

And, Couto, the first guy can't go in without a gun.

We might as well let a civilian go in without a gun, not the G.E.O.

Down, everybody, let's do it again.

If you were to go in

and there was an armed response, would you go in without a gun?

I'm just asking.

Maybe you'll say, "I would, I prefer to go through comfortably

"and then I'll take it out."

You might even have to fire from the ladder.

It's better that a colleague falls down

than to have the guy who's climbing get shot in the face.

That's what we get paid for.

The "special" bit in our name carries that responsibility.

Come on, up, up, up.

The secret is making the assault

from as many different places as we can at the same time.

The bad guys are overwhelmed, with guys coming at them from all sides.

Because we're adding the element of surprise.

Five seconds of surprise is worth its weight in gold.

It means they aren't waiting to fill you full of lead.

Attention, cover sectors.

Let's go.

Five seconds faster,

and you fuck them up, which is the goal,

to save as many people as possible.

Five seconds late, and they can fuck you up.

We are moving in a very thin line.

A very thin imaginary line.

And falling on either side leads us to failure, to chaos.

Five seconds in this profession is an unbridgeable abyss.

Five seconds is the difference between life and death.

Anything that gets in the way of the vector from point A to point B,

run over it.

That's the overall mindset of what we're up against.

Stand by.

Initiating approach, emergency assault.

Let's go!

Go!

Go!

AIR FORCE PARACHUTING SCHOOL ALCANTARILLA, MURCIA

We started with a technical foundation,

now we're moving into a very high level of specialization.

It's not too late.

-Do you want to go back? -No, Instructor.

When you see yourself doing things, you're already on an aircraft,

you think, "Wow.

"What I did before was good, but this is something else."

This is what a tactical unit of this caliber does.

What it must be prepared to do when necessary.

Jump!

I love my job!

The desire, the enthusiasm

that those of us here have for our work,

we must pass these things on to them.

They should have the same enthusiasm that the rest of us have

every time the phone rings and we're needed for a job.

Let's go, Romerini!

Yeah!

So cool!

Fucking awesome!

Amazing!

Everyone okay?

Good.

-Good. -Good.

Congratulations to all of you, you are now parachutists!

You're an...

Automatic parachutist.

It opens automatically, but...

Congratulations, gentlemen.

You're all paratrooper legionnaires.

I think that everything evolves,

the relationship between students, as well as the relationship

between students and instructors.

Obviously we are all bonding.

After all, I am selecting those who will be my colleagues in the future.

G.E.O. BASE GUADALAJARA

I haven't eaten Nutella in so long, since I was a kid, man.

-Did you used to eat it? -Yeah. In sandwiches.

How's the baby girl?

-She's fine. -Was it natural or cesarean?

The stork came.

It came from Paris.

After Carla was born, I thought...

OFFICER MARTÍNEZ SANTOS

...that it was going to affect me a little bit, lower my spirits,

or take away some of the concentration that you need to have here.

I thought my mind would be distracted.

But her birth has given me a shot of energy,

to grit my teeth

and to push myself to the point... As far as I can go.

Is Delta in the same circumstances?

Delta is better. He's about average.

Delta's physical condition doesn't worry me.

It's about average.

I think that, from what the course director is saying,

in Charlie's case, we should propose a discharge

and we can review Delta's case.

Delta is possibly

the colleague who's given me the most headaches, to put it bluntly.

I've taken it upon myself to look after him

and say, "What do we do with him?"

He and Charlie roughly share a technical profile.

He's a little better physically, a little worse in this.

They kind of cancel each other out.

They're very similar. There's just one thing,

like I told you, boss, which is his issue with water.

That's the problem I have with him. If it wasn't for that,

we could give him a chance. I would.

It's a difficult subject, isn't it?

Here's what I propose.

I wonder if we can test him,

if we can do some work in water to bring this out

and confirm that he does actually have this difficulty?

Because it does disqualifies him.

He might be excellent on another police force, no doubt,

but with us it's essential because we storm ships.

-All right? -Yes, sir.

Okay, thank you.

Do it four times.

Four cycles.

The same, all four times.

Are you okay?

The fear is always there,

and the question is how you deal with it

and the way you react to it,

because there is fear, that's for sure.

Anyone who says that they are fearless in this life,

I say they're lying.

Water had never been a big problem for me.

On the contrary.

During an aquathlon,

I got caught in some algae in the river,

and I couldn't break free from the algae.

I couldn't break free, and it dragged me to the bottom.

In Ávila, we did some freediving tests.

The problem was that I couldn't get the oxygen to hold my breath.

I couldn't. I had to maintain buoyancy,

but when it was time to dive, to try to get to the bottom,

I couldn't hold my breath because I couldn't get the air into my lungs.

That was what was blocking me, because I am used to...

To doing any kind of exercise. But that situation

was something that... I didn't understand why it was happening.

Julián, how are we supposed to take you on a ship like this?

I felt really bad for Julián.

He's a great person.

I said it the other day and I'll say it again.

I think that the best person has left us.

For me, as a person, he's the best of the 13 of us who are left.

When we told them that everything has a meaning,

that everything happens for a reason, everything has a purpose,

I think they realized, they've seen the script.

And they understood the reason for all this.

When you get to a naval base,

you can't even imagine

how tainted everything is.

The extent to which money corrupts everybody.

No matter who it is.

THE CANTABRIAN SEA VIVEIRO, LUGO

It's an evil.

It's the purest demon that we have, and we have to outsmart it.

Advance your position.

The G.E.O. unit has boarded 71 ships.

That number isn't just a little higher

compared to any other special operations unit in Europe.

It beats them by a mile.

Seventy-one ships, 125,000 kilos of cocaine,

and that's just cocaine,

461 arrests resulting from these operations.

The mistakes that can be made during training in water

have the same consequences as in a real operation.

The guys are now playing in the major leagues.

Be alert.

Only jump when I say so.

Wave!

-Now! -Go, push on! Come on!

Go, go! Take the boat! Come on!

-First boat boarded, boys. -First one!

Obviously, the boat assault mission is one of the missions that

requires more training and more concentration

when it comes to carrying out the assault.

And he cohesion of the group has to be perfect,

because all the members of the team

have to do their job 100%.

Any mistake by any of them could lead to a serious incident.

Training at sea is very demanding.

The sea is very tough.

-Everybody ready at the back? -Let's board!

Come on.

Help him and go.

That's it. Orderly.

On a personal level, they've made us all grow as people.

Emotionally, too.

And professionally, they have turned us into professionals.

You can't go through a window two guys at a time.

If your partner is climbing, help him and then you go.

They've taken 12 guys, who didn't know each other from Adam,

and made us work successfully as a team.

I enjoyed the wind, the waves, the sea, the noise.

The sea always made me feel at peace.

I remember the Destiny Empress,

as it rose with the waves and came down,

our stomachs would churn whenever the ship was about to turn.

It swallows you up. But that's the way of the sea.

We either boarded or we didn't.

Now that's a gamble.

This is the G.E.O.

It's easy to get yourself killed on this job.

Lord, you who command the wind and the sea,

you make the calm, the storm,

have mercy on us, Lord.

Mercy, Lord. Lord have mercy.

It was around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning.

Zero light conditions,

and the sea was very rough.

The boarding got complicated. We were climbing as best we could.

There was a sea swell, and the ladder I was about to jump to,

when I jumped, I slipped down three or four steps,

and I got my hands caught on the last one.

No human being can fight a wave when it hits.

As I pulled up,

the boat pulled in the opposite direction

and I was about to lose my grip and fall into the water

with the risk of falling under the engines.

Two, three attempts... But our strength is finite.

There came a moment when I thought I...

Well, my life flashed before my eyes.

I thought, "This is the end."

Luckily, my last attempt to pull myself up worked.

The ladder came down.

So not only did I make it, it was more than enough.

So then, like a torpedo, I went up.

Automatically, at that moment,

everything was fine, I forgot the whole thing.

We stormed the ship and there was no problem.

But I did experience those critical fractions of a second where...

I've faced the might of the sea a few times.

And this has shown me how small you are in the face of such a brutal force.

The best way to sum it up, I think,

is that it puts you in your place in a swift, deadly way.

They've realized that even a half minute can be vital in many situations.

They now understand what this whole project was about.

Now they know why we made them do

many of the things they didn't understand at the time.

The instructors aren't just there to screw with you.

They convince you to deal with the pain and keep going.

And it has served us well in the end.

All that cold was worth it.

Nothing is random here.

Unlawful interference on an aircraft has been reported

at Asturias Airport.

The number of members of this terrorist cell is unknown.

G.E.O. team, ready.

Attack! Go, go! Push!

Come on, gentlemen, don't just stand there!

-Come on, quick! -Let's go!

Cover your sector.

Forward! Keep moving.

When they got here a year ago, they worked individually.

Many of them had never really worked as a team.

Teamwork is not a group of 20 people, each doing what they want.

Teamwork is 20 people working together seamlessly.

Thoroughly check any gaps and clear all the areas.

Hands where I can see them!

It has changed.

On your knees.

They are no longer students. They are now members of a team.

They're still new, sure.

But they've just started the work.

Jesús, this is Cotton 20. We have secured the plane.

Victims freed and men down.

We're going to advance to the web zone.

They now feel comfortable and have acquired confidence,

so the verbal language,

the body language that they express is totally different.

At the beginning, they were filled with doubts.

They didn't know if they would endure this or what was going to happen,

they didn't see themselves as capable and they would express fear, insecurity.

Now they are totally different. You can see the confidence in their eyes.

They say, "Throw anything you want at me, I'll do it.

"Order me to do anything, I'll endure it.

"I even want to prove to myself that I'm capable of doing it."

That tells us that we've achieved the objectives we had at the beginning.

Jump!

Blood runs through the veins of these people, G.E.O. blood.

You can't explain it. It's something they have in them.

I don't know, they have an animal inside them and they let it out.

When you work with beasts, you become a beast.

I think what makes these people unique is that there's something about them.

They have a plus factor. They bear a mark. They're a rare breed.

And all of that that pushes them to break into houses, board a ship...

Anything.

I think there's something special about them.

Today is the day we earn our beret and patch, gentlemen.

A hundred men wanted to be here, but it's just us now.

-Welcome to hell! -Hold on tight!

I think that, from day one of the course, this is what they teach you here.

That even if you can't go on, even if you're hungry,

even if you're cold, even if you feel like you want to rest,

your body can take it. That's what they teach you in this course.

And that is what is happening to all of us.

In the end, all that work is paying off.

I'd go with them to war.

Lejido told me that he already saw in them the ultimate goal of all this.

That they feel, that they think they are immortal.

And it is a way of ending this. Of course, you're not immortal.

But on an operation, you have to believe you are.

And at the end of the training phase in the water,

at the end of all this time, almost a year,

I noticed that they believed in themselves and in the team.

And that's an objective achieved.

It may not have seemed like it, but I'm tired of...

I realized it on the way here. Maybe it seemed like I was absentminded,

but when you realize it, you look at yourself and you're like...

That's it. Right now, my brain is like...

-Right. -So angry.

No wonder. Take it easy, man.

In times like these you have to stay calm.

That's what the boss told me this morning,

"Now is the time when you have to show

"that you can handle things going wrong."

I said, "Well, that's easy to say."

Two days ago, I was doing two parachute jumps a day,

one even at night, and everything was fine.

And now, during a routine exercise, getting out of a Humvee

that we have gotten in and out of a thousand times,

I tore my Achilles tendon.

It felt like I'd been kicked, or hit with a rock,

and I looked back thinking that my partner had fallen on me,

and when I saw that he wasn't even close,

I said, "It's ruptured."

And it didn't even hurt. Because all I could think was,

"It can't be. This can't be happening to me. It can't be."

I have to see the course director, Inspector Pelayo, and, well...

I understand that he and the other directors

and the staff and so on, will want to...

I don't know.