When I accepted making the film on Poveda, I had a different idea about who Pedro Poveda was. I knew he was a complex, multidimensional character with many possibilities; but as I got deeper into the story and as I discovered the character, I realized that I was quite short in all my ideas.

In the phase of writing the script, I found out who Poveda was; I tried to find him and in the end he found me. It was a very nice process, especially because of the surprise of meeting with a person of the stature of Poveda, with those ideas and that momentum, and with the determination that characterizes him. So, in the film he is someone with a tenacity above normal. He is the reject of the rejected. Often or always discarded, he manages to overcome the difficult situations he will face during his life.

He was a person with a great sense of humor and often solved problems with large doses of humor and charisma. The character grew on me. To me Poveda seems to be a person with a lot of vitality and energy. Someone who, in difficult times, when his Work or his own life are at risk, he always gives a gentle, conciliatory response.

In reading the story of Poveda I found great humanity. Then I thought that a movie about his life had to contain this humanity. We had to see that fighting character, who is often above circumstances and context. Many people did not understand Poveda, he was rejected even by his own. He is a person who has to leave the place where he worked for a few years of his youth because of jealousy and misunderstanding, because he is taking his pastoral work to a level that I think the Church was not aware of at the turn of the century. There is something very evangelical in his work with the poorest.

Then one perceives a transformation; in his mature Poveda discovers an embarrassing problem for any nation - and for the Spain of the century it so- which is the high rates of illiteracy, especially among women. Poveda decides to remedy that.

There is a very controversial part in the beginning of the Civil War, when Poveda is martyred. But Poveda forgives and is holy. In the film, we could not go against the internal coherence of his character. We could not tell the story from a hurtful perspective. We were always clear that we had to tell the facts from the perspective of reconciliation, forgiveness, tolerance, and even understanding.

Pablo Moreno, screenwriter and film director of POVEDA, 2016.