A series reveals the existence of a city that corresponds to the one described by Plato.
According to director Michael Donnellan, “if it wasn’t Atlantis, it would be even more interesting.”
The South International Series Festival has hosted this Saturday the press conference presentation of
Atlantica
an international co-production of the U.S. company Ingenio Films and the British company Merlin Burrows, which has already completed the three episodes that make up its first season. The series describes the discovery and study of a submerged city that resembles the capital of the empire described by Plato in his texts that has transcended under the name of Atlantis.
The adventure of
Atlantica
dates back to 2015, when Merlin Burrows, a research team based in England, initiated an expedition to southern Spain following an intriguing discovery detected by their advanced satellite technologies, this finding led to collaboration between Merlin Burrows and a group of Spanish divers, who had discovered secrets hidden beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. During seven intense years of painstaking scientific work, numerous dives and a series of exhaustive underwater scans, they have uncovered evidence that seems to mirror every detail of Plato’s accounts of Atlantis.
Viewers in Cadiz will be able to see for the first time the first underwater images and graphic evidence of part of the investigation, in a special one-hour montage of the series, made exclusively for South. At the meeting with the media held at the Palacio de Congresos and presented by José Manuel Cossi, the protagonists of this adventure explained some of the details of this process.
Executive producer Claudia Hidalgo does not hesitate to describe the finding as “amazing”, both for its similarities with Plato’s description and for the characteristics of the site. “When the world sees the series, let them judge for themselves,” he said, while Cádiz was the ideal place to present it “because it is a city full of history”.
Boris Martínez Abad, one of the divers involved in the expedition, commented that, although the absolute protagonist is the discovery, the documentary is also “a story of friendship. As in the myth of the red thread, fate seemed to have it in store for us to come together,” he says.
“Ten years ago we found some abnormal structures, we proceeded to mark the spot, went back, dived in the area, and came across some high walls three, four and five meters high,” adds his colleague Antonio Fernández Olivero, while ; José Manuel Ávila Tirado, dive chief and Underwater Camera Technician, attributes to fortune the fact that “we came across these striking structures” that could revolutionize the field of archaeology. “I’ve seen documentaries that are conjectures. We have something physical, which matches what Plato described.”
Finally, Michael Donnellan, director and presenter of the project, pointed out that
Atlantica
has been possible thanks to the conjunction of new technologies, from drones to satellites. “The day we dived that site many times, when we scanned it, was the most impressive day of my life. I’m aware that this is a sensitive subject, but we’re still doing research, and what we have so far is magnificent.”
“Plato speaks of a huge empire, and describes the capital in many details: circular in shape, concentric, gives the dimensions in stadiums (184 meters) and it measured about the equivalent of two kilometers in diameter. There lived 20,000 people, the elite of the empire. Plato says that the city was destroyed ‘in a night and a day’, and we have verified that the collapses of the rings are oriented towards the north face. If what we have is not Atlantis, it’s even more interesting.”
Mercedes de Caso Bernal, a Ph.D. in Maritime History and Archaeology who has collaborated with the team, has been unstinting in her praise of Donnellan: “In these years I have seen Michael very tired, but without ever throwing in the towel.”
South International Series Festival is a private initiative sponsored by the Consejería de Turismo, Cultura y Deporte de la Junta de Andalucía, co-financed with European funds, Ayuntamiento de Cádiz, Diputación de Cádiz, and the participation of Mediaset España as main media sponsor. Also collaborating in this first edition are Movistar Plus+, Spain Film Commission, Fundación SGAE, Fundación Bancaria Unicaja and Canal Sur.
