Let the ‘Game' begin

Girona has for days been prepar­ing for the film­ing of the sixth sea­son of Game of Thrones, which be­gins today and will last for three weeks. Since the US net­work HBO, in­ter­na­tional pro­duc­ers of the show that is broad­cast here by Canal +, made the lo­ca­tions in Girona for this sea­son of­fi­cial in early June, the city has taken on much more of a me­dieval at­mos­phere, mak­ing it seem even more nat­ural as set for a tale of knights, fan­tasy and Shake­spearean-style drama.

With the ar­rival of tech­ni­cal equip­ment and pro­duc­tion crew in the last week of Au­gust, Girona has put the on fin­ish­ing touches. Coun­cil work­ers have re­moved out-of-place garbage bins, benches, street signs and in turn, the crew have set the scene with bas­kets, carts, mar­ket stalls and wharf-side decor. The es­planade in front of the Arab Baths, is now the mar­ket of Braavos , one of the cities of this lit­er­ary saga dreamed up by US writer George RR Mar­tin.

Film­ing will shut down much of the old city, with around fif­teen lo­ca­tions be­tween streets and squares hav­ing ac­cess re­stricted for ve­hi­cles and pedes­tri­ans. The city coun­cil has set up a web­site with a cal­en­dar in­form­ing local res­i­dents and shop­keep­ers who have passes to ac­cess to shops and homes. In ad­di­tion, five busi­nesses, in­clud­ing the bars Arc and Bau-Bar in the cathe­dral square as well as the Bistrot restau­rant in pu­jada St. Do­minic will be forced to close some hours or days dur­ing the film­ing and in this case they will re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion from the pro­ducer.

Se­crecy sur­rounds film­ing and noth­ing about the plot or scenes to be filmed in Girona has got out. The sixth sea­son in fact began film­ing in early July in North­ern Ire­land, as the Anglo-Amer­i­can pro­duc­tion team has its head­quar­ters in Belfast, at Paint Hall Stu­dios, a for­mer ship­yard that is now one of the largest tele­vi­sion stu­dios in Eu­rope. In Girona, scenes cor­re­spond­ing to the city of Braavos will be filmed. The fifth sea­son ended there with Arya Stark be­com­ing a novice in house of the Face­less Men. Braavos is an im­por­tant en­clave for an­other promi­nent fe­male char­ac­ter: Daen­erys Tar­garyen.