They'll Make A Man Out Of You

For generations of Spanish families, the phrase was routine: go to the military, it will make a man of you. What it rarely described was what actually happened inside the barracks.

Produced by 3Cat after a year of dedicated research, this documentary gathers ten men, now in their late fifties and sixties, who have carried their experiences largely in silence for four decades. Speaking on camera for the first time, they recount a world of systematic violence within the compulsory military service of the 1980s and 1990s: beatings, psychological abuse, torture, and rape carried out by veteran soldiers, often with the tacit approval of commanding officers.

The investigation began with a specific unit, the Skiers and Climbers Company of Vielha, and expanded to barracks across Spain, from the Canary Islands to Melilla to Bétera. What emerged was not a series of isolated incidents but evidence of structural, systemic abuse that touched nearly eight million recruits over two decades.

The film also examines the long aftermath: the silence, the shame, the difficulty of returning to civilian life, and the deaths that military records obscured. Directed by Joan Torrents and Mireia Prats, it is a precise and deeply considered act of collective testimony.