Spanish literature could prove to be a boon for international film and TV adaptations, says Fernando Benzo, author and secretary general of the Spanish Federation of Publishers. 

“Books are a safe intellectual property – that’s the main concept for me,” Benzo told Variety.

“When you work on a book, usually you already have the fan base. You have all the people that have read those books, so it’s a stronger bet than if you work with original material.”

Benzo, who will address the Shanghai Film Festival on Spanish literature’s adaptation potential at June 21’s  Stories Travel Further – Literature and Cinema in Spain-China Dialogue, argues that Spanish-language books offer something many producers are constantly chasing: recognizable material, existing readers and the possibility of reaching far beyond one national market.

“We used to say we have our own petrol, and our own petrol is the language,” he said. “When you think of a Spanish book, you don’t have to think only of a book that is being sold in Spain. It’s a book that can be sold to 600 million people.”

That linguistic advantage arrives at a moment when Spanish audiovisual production has already proven its global pull.

“Right now, TV shows and movies we see in Spain made by Spanish professionals – directors, actors, all the professionals in the industry – are top quality,” he said, citing smash global Netflix hit “Money Heist” (“La Casa de Papel”) as a prime example.

“You have a powerful book industry and a powerful audiovisual industry, so the result has to be good.”

For Benzo, Spain’s literary offer has key strands. There are the classics, first of all.

“We have classic literature, we have an immense background of classics that can be adapted to images,” he said, adding, “I’m still waiting for a really good version of Don Quixote. Someday it will happen.”

But contemporary thrillers might be an even more immediate proposition.

“There’s a powerful generation of writers of thrillers right now,” he stressed. “I don’t know the reason, but it’s now the time for Spanish thrillers.”

He points to Lorenzo Silva’s police procedural series featuring investigators Bevilaqua and Chamorro as material with clear screen potential, praising its vividly visual prose. Silva’s powerful novel “Carte Blanche” has indeed been turned into a film by Gerardo Herrero which caught Variety’s eye at this year’s Cannes Marché du Film.

Adaptation, however, is not all about best sellers.

“You don’t have to measure the success, but you have to measure the potential,” Benzo said.

“When you talk with a TV producer or movie producer, the first question they ask you when you are pitching your material is: ‘Is a sequel possible?’ If you have material but you don’t have the chance to develop new seasons, well, they don’t like that so much.”

He knows that from experience. His thriller “Los Perseguidos” (“The Hunted”) enjoyed modest success before it was spotted by a producer, who approached Benzo about adapting it. The result was a successful audio drama, a format that can benefit from actors, atmosphere and dramatic tension at a fraction of the cost of a film or TV series.

Spanish literature itself has also changed. “We used to be very local in Spain. We used to look at ourselves a lot. Everybody was writing for years about the Spanish Civil War,” Benzo reflected. “The plots, the stories of Spanish books are mainly universal now. Many of the most successful Spanish books, especially thrillers, you could take the story, turn it into a story taking place in London, Scotland, whatever, and it will work.” That same portability, he argues, has helped Spanish series travel.

“It’s what I was saying about ‘La Casa de Papel.’ It doesn’t matter that it takes place in Madrid. You can readily relocate it anywhere.”

Despite Spain’s annual output of around 430 films, only a relatively small share are adaptations, according to Benzo. That could change, he suggests, if the publishing and audiovisual sectors learned how to speak to each other more fluently.

“We have to put together, to get closer, two industries that live their own way,” he said. “If you make adaptations, you will sell more books. If you make good movies, you will have more audiences. It’s a win-win.”

Part of the challenge is cultural. Publishers and producers are used to pitching in radically different ways.

“You go to Netflix, and they tell you: ‘You have three minutes, tell me something interesting.’ If you stall for a moment, you have lost a minute and a half, and the pitching is over,” Benzo observed.

“Publishers have to learn how to sell their product to the visual industry.”

Still, he believes the opportunity is there.

“Spanish book materials are very good,” he said. “There’s been a wonderful evolution in the variety of things that are written about in Spain that makes it very appealing.”

As global platforms and producers keep hunting known properties, scalable worlds and stories that can travel, Spain’s book business may be sitting on one of the country’s most underexploited audiovisual assets.