Conflicts persist across a turbulent world. The shock of recent news from Europe, where the Ukrainian war remains unresolved, lingers. A new chapter in the long-standing confrontation between Israel and Palestine seems to push boundaries once more. Yet this should not obscure the many wars and ongoing clashes around the globe. They deserve attention, even as other events emerge from a momentary fog of indifference.
War correspondent Marc Marginedas: “I’m not a superhero; for me, the kidnapping made sense”
To recall an event that shook a distant country, the most infamous kidnapping of twenty international journalists and collaborators by the Islamic State is revisited, including the El Periódico correspondent. Iberian Press Group, and journalist Marc Marginedas, are central to the feature “Nits sense ficció,” premiering this month on Tuesday the 7th at 22:05. The documentary Return to Raqqa follows Marginedas as he revisits the nightmare endured with nineteen colleagues, fifteen men and four women, through daily beatings and death threats. Six could not speak freely because they were executed. One did not return.
A work by Albert Solé
The documentary, produced by Minimal Films and co-produced by 3Cat, chronicles how the Catalan journalist endured captivity after being captured in Syria on September 3, 2013. The El Periódico reporter and conflict zones ambassador has not returned to the country where that nightmare began and remains absent from that place. The project aired in March 2014.
Years later, a shift in perspective allowed him to accept the project led by Albert Solé, the documentary’s director and author of other works such as Bucharest, Lost Memory, a personal inquiry into his father Jordi Solé Tura, a draftee of the Constitution who died in 2009. The film has earned multiple recognitions, including a Goya Award for Best Documentary, along with Gaudí awards, several Biznaga recognitions from the Malaga Festival, and other honors in international circuits.
Return to Raqqa has also been acknowledged with the Panorama Award for DocsValència, highlighting the documentary’s value, the measured storytelling, and the careful use of audiovisual sources that illuminate history. The El Periódico family and colleagues contributed to contacting captors and seeking help to bring him home.
To reconstruct the ordeal, the film uses illustrations and animations to convey the mistreatment, humiliation, fear, and helplessness experienced inside the three buildings converted into prisons. Marginedas is shown alongside fellow captive Javier Espinosa and photojournalist Ricard Garcia Vilanova, who also endured captivity. The group encountered the so-called Beatles, a set of four British-born ISIS fighters noted for extreme cruelty.
In the hands of psychopaths
“Returning to Syria helped close this life chapter and confront the ghosts of the past,” Marginedas explained. A senior jihadist commander once told him, after his prior coverage in the region, that the next time would be the end. “They thrived on making people suffer. Now the light is clear: there are movie-like psychopaths,” he reflected. Espinosa recalled the imagined executions, the gun to the head and the knife to the neck, the cruelty that marked those hours inside the prisons. Marginedas was the first to be released, abandoned in a field near the Turkish border. Espinosa, Garcia Planas, and the remaining nine detainees were later freed; those of American or British nationality were executed. John Cantlie, an ISIS propagandist, remains the only figure whose fate is unknown since.
“To be both informer and symbol of resilience,” Marginedas noted in an El Periódico interview after returning, reflecting on the experience. During a month-long stay in Aleppo, the stark reality stood out: blankets on the floor, a bottle of water nearby. For him, happiness became a personal choice, a truth he asserts even now. His words to the journalist linger: this is what I choose to hold onto when everything else falls away.
Speaking about the journey shown in Return to Raqqa, he described a sensation similar to that of a survivor of a German concentration camp, yet clarified it was not therapy. It was a personal pursuit aimed at presenting the truth to the public, a story that refused to end.
Another documentary about prisons
After the 23:15 broadcast of Return to Raqqa, Hostage Guards will air again, recounting the harrowing stories of the so-called Beatles and the brutal guards of the ISIS cell that terrorized captives. The program will be shown anew on TV3, offering another window into the same dark episode of recent history.