‘Murder in Galicia’ Season 1 Review: When the Real Villain Is the Paperwork
Netflix released ‘Murder in Galicia’ on 13 November 2026. It is a three episode Spanish drama, known in its original language as El crimen de Pazos. It is set in a quiet Galician village and inspired by the 2015 attack and hospital killing of Isabel Fuentes, with Carlos Sedes directing for Bambú Producciones.
The series lands right after a documentary about the same case, so anyone who tuned in a week earlier already knows where the story is heading. The names are changed here. Tristán Ulloa plays Civil Guard Sergeant Elías Lago, who becomes certain that Aniceto, played by Miguel Borines, is responsible for the attack on his wife Irene while she fights for her life in hospital.
What struck me first is that this drama refuses to behave like a whodunit. The question of who did it is answered almost immediately, and the tension comes from watching a man who is right struggle to make anyone with authority act on it. That is a bold choice for a crime series, and it gives the show a sober, uncomfortable integrity that I respected even when I wished it had more bite.
Ulloa is the reason to stay. He plays Elías as a man worn thin by closed doors and shrugging colleagues, and his stubbornness feels earned rather than heroic. Carlos Blanco, Fer Fraga, Verónica Sánchez and Marta Nieto fill out the ensemble, and while none of them get as much to chew on, they keep the village and the institutions around it believable.
The series is deliberately cold, and the pace is slow even at only three episodes. Missed warnings, delayed procedures and bureaucratic shrugs pile up in a way that is meant to make your blood pressure rise. For long stretches it works, but in the middle the drama settles into a repetitive rhythm of one obstacle after another.
The writing is where I felt the most friction. Dialogue tends to state its themes outright, and Sedes seems more interested in the outer shape of the failure than in the inner lives of the people caught inside it. The anger the story is clearly reaching for never quite boils over, and the finale lands more as a sad exhale than a gut punch.
Still, I came away respecting what this drama is trying to do. It is serious, humane toward its subject, and anchored by a lead performance that never begs for sympathy. It stumbles in depth and urgency, but it holds your attention and leaves a real ache behind. I give ‘Murder in Galicia’ 7 out of 10.
If you have watched ‘Murder in Galicia’, do you agree with this verdict, or did the slow burn and the quiet fury work better for you, so let me know in the comments.
