Hunting Nazis

Earlier this summer I caught up on a Spanish drama that a number of my fellow Spanish teachers use for their classes, El Internado (The Boarding School, in English). An excellent story in general (though not appropriate for my school situation), but one scene in particular jumped into my memory last weekend, and I went back to rewatch the scene.

[Some spoilers below]

Fermín is a a jokester who's been in the school since before the first season, working as a cook. By now it's the final season, so we know his full story: that he's been undercover at the school, and his real purpose is to track down Nazis who came to Spain after World War II and still exert their influence in mysterious and deadly ways. He's easily one of my favorite characters in what's a pretty sprawling cast.

In this scene, he's exploring the secret passages with a soldier who has a complicated history with the secret organization founded by the former Nazis. We as viewers know more than Fermín, that Lt. Garrido was on their side until he got trapped behind a quarantine, but we aren't totally sure yet whether he's helping the students who are trapped or still hoping to betray them to get back in the good graces of the organization.

Anyway, Fermín is giving Garrido a hard time about never joking. Garrido doesn't answer directly, just asks if Fermín does his work out of some sense of vocation.


Fermín answers, "Well, man, the cooking—that relaxes me. But this hunting for Nazis, that's more for fun."


You can see the episode (with English subtitles if you need it) at http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2sqx4x (the whole series may also be on Netflix--it's been on and off since I started hearing about it from other teachers, and I don't have Netflix myself to check). The key scene is about 28 minutes in.

May we have many more Fermíns these days...

Comments