General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

El Cid (2020 TV series)

El Cid (also released internationally as The Legend of El Cid) is a Spanish historical drama television series for Amazon Prime Video that dramatizes the youth of the 11th-century Castilian warrior Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, from his arrival at the court of León as a simple page to his emergence as a legend¹. Created by José Velasco and Luis Arranz for Zebra Producciones, it ran for two seasons of five episodes each between December 2020 and July 2021 before being canceled¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Original title / platform	El Cid, an Amazon Prime Video original produced by Zebra Producciones (Madrid)¹
Run	Season 1 premiered 18 December 2020; season 2 premiered 15 July 2021; canceled after two seasons²^•³
Format	10 episodes total, about 60 minutes each, in Spanish¹
Lead cast	Jaime Lorente as Rodrigo (Ruy) Díaz de Vivar, with Alicia Sanz (Infanta Urraca), Francisco Ortiz (Sancho), José Luis García-Pérez (Fernando I), Elia Galera (Queen Sancha), Carlos Bardem (Count of León), and Lucía Guerrero (Jimena)¹
Music	Original score by Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla and Alfonso G. Aguilar¹
Reach	Released in more than 240 countries and territories⁴
Reception	IMDb 6.8/10; TV-14 rating; available in 4K on Prime Video⁵

Spoilers

Story and setting

The series unfolds in 11th-century Iberia, where Christians, Muslims, and Jewish people lived side by side amid wars and shifting alliances⁴. Season 1 follows Rodrigo's childhood and youth at the court of Fernando I the Great (José Luis García-Pérez), count of Castile and king of León, where he trains as a page and squire amid internal and external political tensions and personal rivalries⁶. Rodrigo, serving loyally while trying to stand out at court with his swordsmanship, becomes entangled in a conspiracy to depose the king that brings blood, pain, and death to both the Christian kingdoms and the Muslim taifas (independent Muslim-ruled principalities in medieval Iberia)⁷. The season culminates in the historical battle of Graus (1063), where the series, although it is not known whether the real Rodrigo was present, places his warrior epiphany and the birth of his epithets Campeador and Sidi, the latter bestowed by the Muslims, who see the young warrior as overflowing with baraka (charisma, luck); it ends with Fernando's death in 1065 and the division of his kingdom among his children Alfonso, Sancho, García, Urraca, and Elvira⁶. The drama's stated starting point is the battle of Atapuerca (1054), in which Fernando I of Castile fought his brother Sancho III of Pamplona, who was killed⁸.

Season 2, first broadcast on 15 July 2021, continues the story through the conflict among Fernando's heirs; its finale, "El camino del odio", ends with Sancho deciding to execute his brother Alfonso and the Leonese nobles who support him, and offering Ruy the title of Count as a reward for his services²^•⁹.

Production

The project originated with an idea from Luis Arranz at Zebra Producciones. Producer Sara Fernández-Velasco said the company had long considered the subject too ambitious until Amazon Prime Video arrived in Spain; the show was pitched in 2017, and after a long development and preproduction period filming began in September 2019⁴. She described it as having "never-before-seen production values in Spain" and said it had been hailed as one of Amazon's most ambitious original European productions⁴.

The score was composed by Gustavo Santaolalla, winner of Academy Awards for Brokeback Mountain and Babel, together with Alfonso González Aguilar, composer of the Academy Award-nominated Klaus⁴. Episode directors included Miguel Alcantud, Adolfo Martínez-Pérez, Marco A. Castillo, Arantxa Echevarría, Alberto Ruiz Rojo, and Manuel Carballo¹.

Historical accuracy

The series deliberately targets a period of Rodrigo's life about which the historical sources say almost nothing. As El País observed, the sources offer hardly any indication of Rodrigo Díaz's life before his service under Sancho II as crowned heir, so the first season is set at a time when practically anything can be invented about the Cid, leaving the most debated episodes of the legend, such as the Oath of Santa Gadea, for later⁶. RTVE, consulting the historian David Porrinas González, author of the monograph El Cid. Historia y mito de un señor de la guerra (Desperta Ferro), noted that the series mixes fiction and reality and builds a choral narrative centered on court figures about whom more data exist¹⁰.

Documented liberties. Critics and historians identified several anachronisms: the use of a stirrup crossbow, a weapon generalized only from the mid-12th century; the celebration of a joust, a chivalric spectacle not yet established in the Cid's time; and the banners shown⁸. Porrinas also pointed out that there was no bishop named Bernardo during Fernando I's reign, and that the tournament in the first episode contains elements of spectacle not attested until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries¹¹.

The marriage of Rodrigo and Jimena. The series plays the relationship between Jaime Lorente's Rodrigo and Lucía Guerrero's Jimena as a romance, but the historical record supports only their complicity and partnership: their marriage was tactical and political, uniting a Leonese house with an Asturian one, and in the later government of Valencia the Cid treated Jimena as his equal, both signing a carta de arras granting each other powers over all their possessions, the medieval equivalent of a community-property marriage¹⁰.

Rodrigo's origins. The series shows Rodrigo arriving at court as a simple page, but Porrinas calls the humble-origin idea a false myth: a plebeian would not have been married to a count's daughter, and Rodrigo was likely related to the house of Flaín, one of León's most important families; his upbringing at court may even have been as a hostage, since his father's brother was one of the principal leaders of a rebellion against the king¹^•¹⁰.

One praised choice was linguistic: the series has its Andalusi Muslim characters speak in Arabic and Spanish, unlike other recent historical productions such as RTVE's Isabel (2012–2014)¹¹.

Reception and cancellation

The series drew mixed reviews. It was praised for its spectacular production, art direction, and visual effects, while criticized for certain historical liberties¹². La Vanguardia called it "three series in one (and none works)", faulting its mix of teen drama, palace intrigue, and epic¹³. On IMDb it holds a 6.8 rating⁵.

No third season was made; the show is listed as canceled/ended after two seasons²^•³. Jaime Lorente had undergone demanding training in weapons handling, horsemanship, and physical preparation to give the character a credible presence in battle and in his personal evolution¹⁴.

Context: the Cid on screen

The 2020 series joined a long line of Cidian adaptations. The medieval epic Cantar de mio Cid, composed around 1200, is the most famous literary treatment of the hero, and it underpinned the 1961 Anthony Mann film El Cid starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren, a production later used by the Franco regime to legitimize its national-Catholic narrative¹⁵^•¹⁶. The Amazon series belongs to a recent wave of works, including Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel Sidi, un relato de frontera and Porrinas's essay, that try to pull the historical figure out from under the myth⁶.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026