In April 2018, Netflix announced that Spanish heist thriller “Money Heist” (“La Casa de Papel”) had become the U.S. streaming service’s most-watched non-English series ever.

With a Spanish series crowned as the first foreign-language blockbuster at the company that has transformed entertainment worldwide, Spain’s expansion — long nurtured by hits such as “The Red Band Society,” “Grand Hotel” and “Locked Up” — well and truly lifted off.

Building on that success, in March 2021, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez unveiled the AVS Hub Plan, which would invest €1.6 billion ($1.8 billion) into Spain’s audiovisual sector.

For a country in which the word españolada was