Trivia / The Ministry of Time

• Acting for Two:
  • On episode 4, Juan Gea plays both Ernesto (his usual role) and Tomás de Torquemada. The two characters briefly come face-to-face toward the end of the episode.
  • On episode 39, Carolina has a conversation with her self from two weeks prior. Manuela Vellés plays both Carolinas.
• Actor Leaves, Character Dies: Julián's fate in the season 3 premiere after negotiations to keep Rodolfo Sancho in the cast failed.
• Colbert Bump: El anacronópete, the obscure Spanish 1887 novel by Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau that predated H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, received an absolutely gigantic bump in June 2020 after being used for one of the Ministry's episodes.
• Fandom Nod: One of the subplots in Episode 19 deals with the ministérico phenomenon, with the famous "gate photos" being mentioned.
• Fan Community Nickname: "Ministéricos" (portmanteau of "Ministerio" - ministry - and "histéricos" - hysterical).
• Follow the Leader:
  • In May 2016, NBC introduced during its Upfronts one of its upcoming series, Timeless, which was flat out accused by some Spanish media of being a rip-off. Series co-creator Javier Olivares, who has gained a reputation as a social media Snark Knight, added fuel to the fire by posting a text on his Facebook account in which he explained how both shows "are nothing like each other". In August, the controversy was revived when another Timeless trailer revealed further similarities with the series, and in early September it was revealed that Onza Entertainment and Cliffhanger, the production companies behind El Ministerio del Tiempo, were suing NBC and Sony Pictures for copyright infringement.
  • After the accusations, some people started bashing the producers and Olivares himself for supposedly believing any time travel series was a rip-off of theirs. Cue Olivares revealing that there had been earlier talks with Sony Pictures about a possible American remake, and that the real reason behind the lawsuit was that Sony had had access to all the season 1 scripts before talks were cut short and NBC suspiciously announced Timeless. The lawsuit was settled off court in May 2017, but that wouldn't prevent Olivares from throwing one last jab at Timeless on Twitter when it was cancelled for the second and definitive time in June 2018, sarcastically commenting: "Shame. It was a good idea."
  • Consider the Darrow Ltd. It's an American corporation that uses a nuclear-powered device to travel through time, often to steal works of art from Spain, and is usually facing a public-owned Spanish organisation. It's half and half a reference to Timeless' Rittenhouse organisation and Sony. Salvador Martí even reflects on the idea of private travel time on chapter 5: "Privatise time travel? But what head can think such a folly? There are things that must not be privatised: education, health care, time travel!"
• Only Barely Renewed: According to the director, this is essentially how the series gets renewed after every season. Season 3 was particularly difficult to pull, and it probably would have never happened had Netflix not stepped in; the creators had already stated that the crew was ready to dismantle the sets if the renovation didn't come soon.
• Outlived Its Creator: Co-creator Pablo Olivares died from ALS three months before the series premiered; he only got to see an unfinished cut of the first episode.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Javier Olivares has stated that Julián's rage for not being able to save his wife and Federico García Lorca was influenced by his own rage for not being able to save his brother (and series co-creator) Pablo Olivares, who had terminal ALS when they were developing the show.
  • The constant mentions of the Ministry undergoing cuts could be made just as well about RTVE's limitations to the series' budget, which is why it can't hire more extras or have prolonged fight scenes.
  • Though the script doesn't mention either, Episode 13 is a brutal hour-long Take That! against former health minister Ana Mato and how she handled the 2014 ebola crisis. To explain: in 2014 a nurse got infected, and the regional Minister of Health made a snarky remark about how the special protective suits weren't that hard to put on (in fact, there are some strict protocols for the process, which the personnel weren't properly taught). Criticism was so huge (even worse, since he was a doctor himself and should know better) that he resigned. Cue an almost identical remark said by Susana Torres in the episode, and a reaction from a doctor and Ernesto.
  • The Olivares brothers are (were, in Pablo's case) friends with Alatriste's creator Arturo Pérez-Reverte, which can be noted in the character of Alonso and his contemporaries.
  • The dismay Ernesto receives the young queen Isabel II with at Episode 7 reflects how badly received was her actress in the infamous Alatriste TV series, where her role (along with many others) was panned by critics and fans alike. At the time, fans of El Ministerio panicked that the series might suffer if she happened to be added to the cast.
  • The two-parter about the Siege of Baler is Olivares' way to make up for a movie script based on it that he wrote back in the 1990s and was never picked up for production. The only time this event had received a film adaptation before El Ministerio was in 1945, and you can figure from the episode that Olivares doesn't think very highly of it. Ironically, another movie about this premiered in December 2016, months after the Ministry episode was broadcast, but although this was quite successful, it had its own fair of criticisms for its portrayal of history (Olivares' friend Pérez-Reverte would famously call it "garbage").
  • Pacino mentioning in "Tiempo de ilustrados" that some ideas are more original than others has been construed to be a Take That! against Timeless, whose creation and broadcast led to a demand by El Ministerio del Tiempo's producers for plagiarism. Also, during the finale, Ureña mentions that his series about the Ministry was a smash hit and that it's getting an American remake with higher budget and better looks. The line can be interpreted as another potshot at Timeless.
  • The first episode of Season 4 featured a tract by Salvador speaking against The New '10s' political correctness, with the previous seasons' recap even emphasizing specifically Luis Buñuel's line about charging deliberately against anything forbidden, and re-introduced Franco as a shocking mastermind. This seemed to address old accusations of the show presenting Politically Correct History (which it has done several times, frankly speaking, even if not to the extent some accuse it of) or being too slanted towards left-wing politics (ditto). Olivares being friends with Pérez-Reverte, a famous critic of those concepts, probably explained it.
• Real-Life Relative: Jan Fresneda, Nacho Fresneda's (Alonso) son, appears twice in the series. The first, Alonso's son as a pre-teen in "Tiempo de gloria", and the second as Alonso's younger self in "Deshaciendo el tiempo".
• Role Reprise: Michelle Jenner and Eusebio Poncela once again portray Queen Isabella of Castille and Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, respectively, after playing them in Isabel.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • It has been theorized by many that RTVE learned the wrong lessons from screwing constantly Águila Roja, as they proceeded to do the same with El Ministerio del Tiempo despite they didn't have the certainty that its popularity would endure it as stoically. Among the many detriments done to El Ministerio, the first one was the decision to include long, spoiler-ridden advances after each episode (esentially butchering the next and showing even its deepest plot details), which came to a turning point when they nonchalantly unveiled the shocking twist of Lombardi pulling a gun on Salvador, but this was hardly the last.
  • Many people saw this in the decision to change the series from its original Tuesday slot to Monday night, as it directly set it to clash with Telecinco's powerhouse series Los Nuestros and other strong TV competition.
  • The baffling airing hiatus after Episode 16, which was not announced until after the episode had been already aired. Olivares wanted two mid-seasons separated by months in American fashion; the network only agreed to two weeks.
  • The lack of promotion for Season 3 altogether (in contrast with Season 1, which was promoted discreetly but well before its premiere, and Season 2, which was advertised ad nauseam thanks to the success of the first) was noted with surprise, especially considering that the producers worked with a way bigger budget and had announced to have plans to strengthen the series.
  • With only three episodes left to finish Season 3, the series suffered a last-minute switch from Monday nights to Wednesday nights to make room for the revival of Operación Triunfo. Creator Javier Olivares, who was already pissed with RTVE because they kept on extending the controversial "access prime-time" show Hora punta, and thus delaying the start of the episode, was none too pleased. And the fans had reason to not be happy, too: the new timeslot meant El Ministerio was being set up to fail against Telecinco's La que se avecina, which still is a ratings juggernaut ten seasons into its run. Thankfully, Telecinco moved La que se avecina to Mondays, presumably to face off with OT.
• Throw It In!: Raúl Cimas improvised many of his lines in episode 20 when playing episodic character Isaac Vila.
• Un-Canceled: After its cancellation in late 2017, the series returned with a fourth season in May 2020.
• What Could Have Been:
  • TVE vetoed a Season 1 script called "The Count of Time", arguing that the subject was too obscure. It had the patrol traveling to 780 AD to rescue a missing agent, then accidentally creating the legend of Bernardo del Carpio, whose existence is rejected by modern historians. Elements of this episode found its way into the episodes "Time of Rascals", "Time of Vengeance" and "Time of Legend". The story was later adapted into the first part of the tie-in novel "Time is What It Is".
  • It's been confirmed that the intended storyline after Season 1 changed dramatically because of Rodolfo Sancho's inability to shoot El Ministerio and Mar de Plástico at the same time. Season 3 shelves the arc for good, killing Julián and (temporarily?) sending Amelia away because of Aura Garrido's own schedule conflicts.
  • Olivares wanted Season 2 to be divided in two mid-seasons united by a TV movie.
  • Olivares has also stated that there would be more episodes set outside Madrid if the series' budget was not so meager. In particular, he cited how he could not even make a trip to the beach to shoot Columbus arriving to America (thus when Columbus appears in the series it's his 1485 version, still looking for money to make his trip). It is rumored that Blas de Lezo and María Pita's appearances as agents in the Ministry HQ in Season 2 are a way to include them without the astronomical expenses that an episode centered on either's real life exploits would demand. The two other stories in the novel mentioned above were "coastal" episodes considered too expensive for the series: "After the fair weather [same word as "time" in Spanish], the storm", set in Cartagena, Cádiz and aboard a galleon bound for the Caribbean in 1603; and "Time of Spies", set in 1943 and revolving around Operation Mincemeat.
  • The issue above was solved with the injection of new cash by Netflix in Season 3, which has a good number of episodes set in coastal areas including "Time of Spies" (now with Pacino filling the role of Julián). The trailer of the second mid-season reveals at least one episode featuring the Spanish treasure fleet.
• Writer Revolt: This seems to underlie to many of the writing. Seasons previous to the 4, produced during the double term of right-wing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, would usually take potshots towards his party's right-wing stance, most famously taking the Adolf Hitlarious approach when portraying Francisco Franco. Now under the term of the left-oriented Pedro Sánchez, however, they took the opposite route instead, re-introducing Franco as a The Chessmaster and making sex-positive jokes about prostitution (another big no-no for the time) in the same episode.