Audiovisual narrative and image digitization as a phenomenon of tourist attraction in the city of Madrid

Discovering cities through the images of television series has come about, among other factors, because of the use of urban spaces and their buildings as essential support elements in fictional narrative. Places and settings that are more or less well-known, emblematic, or anonymous scenes in which individuals are diluted in locations that are easily recognizable and assimilated in different latitudes. These images, many of which are digitized and are the result of post-production, mark the development and innovation of different audiovisual television formats and their impact on the society of "platform users". They reach the spectator in the form of altered realities in locations and architectural structures that do not always correspond to the original, whether it be their real location or their real functions. This is what happens in Money Heist (Álex Pina, Netflix: 2017-2021) with the CSIC building, the Nuevos Ministerios building and other locations that are studied in this article. These are representations of elements which create the necessary interconnection and involvement between characters and viewers, and prompt the latter to go see where they are located. This is a visual artifice of cinema and television that enables the illusion of being in altered but somehow identifiable realities, which is why they are familiar and close, that is to say, credible. This is how screen tourism has been created, with tourists choosing their leisure destination based on the places they see in series on digital platforms. The paper’s findings indicate that the series Money Heist reconfigures the image of Madrid, imbuing it with a persona, and makes a significant contribution to the development of innovative experiential tourism. Moreover, the research work unearthed a predominantly favorable attitude amongst viewers towards prior exposure to television series such as Money Heist, which serves to attract visitors to Madrid through motivation and curiosity.