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The Cable Girls
Lidia Aguilar/Alba Romero
Played by: Blanca Suárez
Planning on stealing from the telephone company, Alba assumes the false identity of Lidia Aguilar and starts working as an operator.
- All Just a Dream: Season 3 begins with Lidia dreaming that she miscarried after falling off the hospital railing. Thankfully, it is revealed that Eva, Lidia's daughter, is alive and well.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: As a result of her Dark and Troubled Past she can be emotionally closed off.
- Becoming the Mask: She is so deep in her false identity as Lidia, that by Season 2 she has a That Woman Is Dead response to being called Alba."Alba died a long time ago."
- Brainy Brunette: Uses stealth and quick wits to get out of tough situations. And, it must be said, she's genuinely good at her job as assistant manager at the company.
- Cool Big Sis: To Marga. Doubles as Big Sister Mentor.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Has quite a lengthy one. It starts with her getting arrested as a young teenager for a crime she didn't commit, and then it goes From Bad to Worse. She even had a dangerous abortion at one point.
- Guile Hero: She can be very manipulative when she needs to.
- In Love with the Mark: Her plan is to be with Carlos as she needs his money because she is being blackmailed. Her feelings for him complicate this.
- Mama Bear: After Eva goes missing at the start of season 3, Lidia spends the rests of the season doing whatever it takes to find her. She also runs into a warzone for adopted daughter Sofia, who has ran off to fight in the Civil War in season 5.
- Never Going Back to Prison: Nor are any of her friends going there if she can help it.
- Old Flame: To Francisco.
- Surprise Pregnancy: In the middle of season 2, Lidia finds out she is pregnant with Carlos's child.
- Plucky Office Girl: A period-specific example. As part of her deal for the transfer of the company over to the Uribes, Lidia demands that her friends must not lose their switchboard jobs and she must have a position in management. In season 2, Uribe treats her more as an errand girl than his Assistant Manager, a fact which she pushes back against, insisting that he let her actually do some management.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Over the course of season 1. At the start of the season, Lidia is a Consummate Liar, who manipulates the girls with Crocodile Tears and has no qualms about lying to both Francisco and Carlos. She is also only with Carlos for his money, at first. By the end of the season the other cable girls have become her first real friends and she would do anything for them.
Carlota Rodriguez de Senillosa
Played by: Ana Fernández
A modern, free-spirited, and independent woman, she works at the telephone company despite her father's wishes.
- Cool Big Sis: To Marga. Doubles as Big Sister Mentor.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: To such an extent that her Dad tried to pay Miguel to break up with her.
- Erotic Dream: Has one about Sara.
- Go-Getter Girl: Having a full-time job and independence is the only lifestyle she'll accept. She also attends suffragette meetings, and leads the strike at the telephone company when new, extreme security measures make it near impossible for the workers to function.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A gorgeous, courageous blonde who will go to great lengths to help her friends.
- The Flapper: She embodies this trope the most out of the main women with her free spirit attitude, sexual liberty, and long cigarette holder.
- Military Brat: She's the daughter of a well-to-do general. As a result, she tends to be rebellious while he tends to be a Control Freak.
- Rebellious Princess: Comes from a wealthy and influential family, and wants nothing to do with their strict, upper-class lifestyle.
Maria Inmaculada "Marga" Suárez
Played by: Nadia de Santiago
A small town girl, she engages in a flirtation over the phone with Pablo.
- Accidental Adultery: Marga accidentally has sex with Julio when he was pretending to be Pablo.
- Brainy Brunette: She learned how to be a telephone operator by watching her working mother, and despite being nervous, she passes the company's entrance exam for potential operators with flying colors.
- Character Development: She's grown from a timid country girl to a confidant working woman. Not to mention that in Season 1 she was horrified and shocked when she accidentally walked in on a couple (Mario and Carolina) having sex. By Season 2, she's more than eager to jump into bed with her fiance, Pablo.
- The Cutie: She's innocent and The Baby of the Bunch.
- Country Mouse: She has moved from the countryside to Madrid.
- Beautiful All Along: She was never ugly, but when she first moved to Madrid she had shabby clothes and an unflattering haircut. However, once she settles into her job, makes some fashionable new city friends, and snags a great boyfriend, her style and confidence really comes out.
- Shrinking Violet: Is very shy and anxious, especially around her crush Pablo.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She just wants a happy ending with Pablo.
Ángeles Vidal
Played by: Maggie Civantos
Ángeles is the most experienced telephone operator at the company.
- Family Versus Career: She wants to stay at her job, but her husband Mario wants her to quit and look after their children at home.
- Good Parents: She'll do anything for her daughter. Even kill her abusive husband to free them both from him.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's a genuinely good person who never wanted to hurt anyone. All she wanted was a quiet, safe life for her and her daughter away from her violently abusive husband. Unfortunately, since the law wouldn't let her divorce him or leave him without giving up her daughter, she had to kill him. Can you blame her?
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Mario is much taller and stronger than her, which leaves her at a great disadvantage when it comes to defending herself against his abuse.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: After Mario dies she gets a haircut and indulges in some new clothes and makeup. Widowhood's a good look for her.
- The Infiltration: In exchange for avoiding jail time, Ángeles agrees to help police officer Gonzales and helps him arrest a major criminal.
- Trauma Conga Line: Her husband cheats on her, and beats her badly enough to cause a miscarriage. She can't divorce him because it's illegal, and when she tries to escape he takes their daughter and stops Ángeles from seeing her.
Sara Millán
Played by: Ana Polvorosa
The supervisor of the telephone operators.
- Trans Tribulations: Gender identity struggles are even more difficult in a Period Drama. Checks into a Bedlam House facility for treatment in Season 2.
Marisol
Pablo's jealous ex-girlfriend who takes a job as an operator in order to spy on him and Marga.
Played by: Agnès Llobet.
- Brainy Brunette: Is a talented seamstress, and an elaborate schemer. It's safe to say that she would be quite successful in life if she focused her time and energy on something other than sabotaging Pablo and Marga's relationship.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: And how. She's this to Pablo even before he breaks up with her.
- The Determinator: Pablo will come back to her and marry her, whether he likes it or not.
- Easily Forgiven: Pablo's far too nice to simply tell her to get lost, despite all the time she's been caught tampering with his private life.
- Manipulative Bitch: Her schemes to break up Pablo and Marga include convincing Marga's protective and conservative landlady that Pablo's a dangerous womanzier (he's not, because he's a virgin) and lying to a priest about her and Pablo already being married with a child (they're obviously not, and she bribed a kid with sweets to say Pablo was his father).
- Stalker with a Crush: She won't let Pablo go, and she takes a job at the company just to be near him, even though he's in a committed relationship with someone else.
- Unlucky Childhood Friend: She and Pablo grew up in the same town, and her father was his mentor. However, she's determined to turn things around and become the Victorious Childhood Friend, at any cost.
- Woman Scorned: Pablo made the terrible mistake of proposing to her while he was drunk. After he breaks up with her, she can't go back to their hometown and face the humiliation of being jilted for another woman. Her solution? Stay in Madrid and meddle with his life until he changes his mind.
Workers at The Telephone Company
Carlos Cifuentes
Played by: Martiño Rivas
The son of the owner of the Telephone Company.
- The Charmer: His charm even works on Lidia who is wise to that kind of thing, and on Alex Uribe in the second season.
- Derailing Love Interests: In season 5, the Lidia/Carlos/Francisco love triangle has been resolved; Lidia has chosen Francisco and taken Eva to New York, Carlos stays in Spain, acting as a double agent for the fascists despite previously having progressive views (such as running Carlota's feminist radio program).
- Handsome Lech: Routinely ogles women and uses his position to his advantage, such as criticizing Lidia's arm span as an excuse to take her measurements.
- Hidden Depths: His ambitions for the company. He wants to modernise by introducing a rotary dial system, but his father is actively preventing its implication because it will stop their secret scheme of listening in on phone calls.
- Inadequate Inheritor: His father does not want him to inherit, because of his irresponsibility with money.
- Ladykiller in Love: With Lidia.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: He makes a lot of bad decisions, and is genuinely considered an incompetent playboy by his family.
Francisco Gómez
Played by: Yon González
Works in management at the Telephone Company. Moved to Madrid with Alba, who was his girlfriend when they were teenagers, but they got separated.
- Old Flame: To Lidia.
- Married to the Job: According to Carlos, Francisco is this. When Elisa asks if Francisco is having an affair, Carlos jokes that he is and it is with the Telephone Company.
- Why Are You Not My Son?: Ricardo Cifuentes sees Francisco as a much better option to inherit and manage the Telephone Company then his own son Carlos.
- Unwanted Spouse: By Season 2, he and Elisa are separated, and Elisa's desperate to get an annulment so that she can move on with her life.
Carolina Moreno
Played by: Iria del Río
The secretary at the telephone company.
- Alpha Bitch: She's oddly alright with being seen as this.
- The Mistress: To Mario, she hopes he will leave Ángeles for her. She also had a thing with the married Ricardo Cifuentes. She seems to have a taste for married men.
- Sexy Secretary: She is the telephone company's secretary and has had affairs with both Mario Pérez and Ricardo Cifuentes.
Miguel Pascual
Played by: Borja Luna
An engineer who is working on creating a rotary machine. The boyfriend of Carlota.
- Career Versus Man: Miguel is a rare male example, especially in the time period. He decides to quit his work on the rotary because his girlfriend Carlota views it as a betrayal as when it is implemented she will be laid off.
- Demoted to Extra: In the second season he is much less important.
- Recovered Addict: Has this as part of his backstory with Carlota. He falls Off the Wagon in Season 2 as a result of jealousy because of Sara and Carlota leaving him out and keeping secrets.
- Understanding Boyfriend: One of the main reasons why Carlota loves him is because of his tolerance/support of her feminist agenda. A rare find in this time period, when most men see their girlfriends as their future housewife.
Mario Pérez
Played by: Sergio Mur
Ángeles's abusive husband and an employee at the telephone company.
- Abusive Parents: He sees his young daughter as his property rather than as someone he needs to care for. To him, nurturing a child is woman's work. In one scene, when his daughter is crying, he roughly picks her up and hands her over to his mother. He also uses his daughter as a tool in his power struggle against his wife, threatening to take her somewhere far away if Ángeles does not comply with his demands.
- Asshole Victim: Did anyone care when he died?
- Domestic Abuse: The perpetrator. Even his own mother isn't that shocked when Ángeles shows her the injures he gave her.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: He has a fit over the slightest provocation.
- Hate Sink: The audience is intended to hate Mario for his abuse of Ángeles.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: He's way taller and physically stronger than his wife and he uses these attributes against her.
- Jerkass: An abuser, a cheater, a petty bully, and, to top it all off, a thief. He steals a fat wad of company cash off Pablo's desk while the latter was counting it to pay off his pregnant mistress. Then when he dies Pablo and his wife Ángeles are left to take the blame, and everyone at the company has to pay the price for his actions as stricter security rules are enforced on employees.
- Karmic Death: His abused and fed-up wife delivers the killing blow while he's fighting her and her friends on the company rooftop. Her friends, whom he repeatedly insulted and threatened for trying to help his wife escape from him, help her dump his body in the river. No burial, no ceremony, no grief for him personally. A very fitting end for a very horrible man.
- Killed Off for Real: Good riddance.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Reacts this way when he realizes his brutal beating of his wife caused her to lose their baby.
- Psychopathic Manchild: He throws massive, threatening tantrums when he doesn't get his way, and he bullies his coworkers as well as abuses his wife. It's also quite clear that he's incapable of taking care of himself domestically, as he has a furious meltdown when Ángeles (who has just found out about his cheating) refuses to iron his work shirt or cook him breakfast.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The brutal manly man to Pablo's sweet, harmless, sensitive guy.
Pablo Santos
Played by: Nico Romero
A clerk at the Telephone Company who has a romance with Marga.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Initially he can not believe that his "friend" Mario is a domestic abuser, despite the fact that Mario is always a jerk with him and does nothing to hide his misogyny.
- Impersonating the Evil Twin: Switches places with Julio during the hold up at the telephone company.
- Nice Guy: Without a doubt the nicest male character on the show.
- Must Make Amends: He feels terrible for breaking up with Marisol, and tries to patch things up by securing her a good job with a relative so that she doesn't have to go home humiliated and face the people in their hometown. She doesn't accept.
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The sensitive guy to Mario's (very toxic and cruel) manly man.
Julio Santos
Played by: Nico Romero
Pablo's twin brother who comes to Madrid. Introduced in series 3.- Evil Twin: He's not totally evil per se, but certainly compared to Pablo.
- Twin Switch: Impersonates Pablo and does his job at the telephone company while he's ill.
Other Characters
Elisa Cifuentes
Played by: Ángela Cremonte
The daughter of Ricardo Cifuentes, owner of the telephone company. She is married to Francisco.
- Broken Bird: Suffers from mental illness, gets cheated on by her husband, tries to commit suicide and is forced to spend time on an asylum for it (which, given her own comments and what we see from Sarah's own hospitalization, was NOT a pleasant experience, then her own mother tries to commit her AGAIN for her own selfish reasons. Fortunately, she seems to be getting better as of Season 2.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Not consistently, though. In Season 1, she arranges for her husband's secretary to spy on him for her. By Season 2, she's over her jealousy and simply wants out of the marriage, through an annulment.
- Green-Eyed Monster: She's very upset at the thought that her husband is having an affair.
- Spurned into Suicide: She cuts her wrists with a knife when she finds evidence of her husbands affair.
Doña Carmen de Cifuentes
Played by: Concha Velasco
The wife of Ricardo Cifuentes, she is the ambitious Cifuentes matriarch.
- Apron Matron: falls somewhere between this and Grande Dame as a rich and stern mother with business ambitions of her own and plenty of Tough Love for her children.
- Evil Matriarch: Definitely crosses a
Moral Event Horizon when she arranges for Lidia to be kidnapped and have a forced abortion. - Love-Obstructing Parents: The kind of Obnoxious In-Laws that would go so far as to attempt to force an abortion on Lidia in order to try and stop her son Carlos from marrying her.
- My Beloved Smother: A major Control Freak when it comes to her children's lives. Carlos will run the company, and Elisa will be confined in a mental asylum for her erratic behaviour, because she said so. Elisa escapes this fate.
- Marriage of Convenience: Her marriage to Ricardo is highly implied to be this. They have little romantic affection for each other, and their relationship is like that of long-time business partners. She knows all about his love affairs, including that with his secretary Carolina and she couldn't care less.
Victoria
Played by: Kiti Mánver
A brothel mistress and con woman and Alba/Lidia's former boss.
- The Atoner: There's no excuse for her turning Francisco away when he came to her establishment looking for Alba. When Alba (now Lidia) finds out many years later, she's rightfully furious, so Victoria murders Inspector Beltran to free Lidia from his endless blackmailing. Subverted in that she never tells Lidia that it was her who did it.
- Cool Old Lady: She's quite helpful towards Lidia and her friends, securing them false papers and information whenever they're in trouble. She has a lot of contacts and can arrange pretty much anything.
- Never Mess with Granny: Shoots Inspector Beltran and gets away with it.
- The Mentor: She taught Lidia everything she knows, and seems to have genuine affection for her.
- Miss Kitty: She runs a high-end brothel, and has connections. Lots of connections.
Inspector Cristobal Cuevas
Played by: Antonio Velázquez
First appearing in Season 2, he is a detective trying to solve Mario's disappearance/murder.
- By-the-Book Cop: Seems like that at first. Subverted in that he's using unorthodox, psychologically manipulative methods to try and trick Angeles into admitting to murdering Mario. He suspected her the whole time.
- Fair Cop: Handsome and a police officer.
- Romancing the Widow: His storyline with Angeles. He's seducing her for information about Mario's murder, while Angeles is seducing him in return in order to get her hands on/destroy evidence.
Marga's grandmother
Played by: María Garralón
- Cool Old Lady: Despite being from the same time period as people like Carlota's controlling father and the snobbish elder Cifuentes, she is absolutely on board with the idea of her granddaughter living independently in the city, holding a job, and gaining world experience. When a homesick and frightened Marga calls her to beg to come home, she convinces her to stay and give her new life a chance. She clearly wants Marga to enjoy all the opportunities that she and Marga's late mother never did.
- Good Parents: A loving and supportive mother figure for Marga.
- Happily Married: She and Marga's grandfather were this. She talks about him with great affection. She wants Marga and Pablo to have a similar life.
- Parental Substitute: Marga's mother passed away before the events of the series.
- The One That Got Away: While Marga and Pablo are having relationship problems, she reveals to Marga that she was once engaged to someone else before she met Marga's grandfather. They too had a fight, and ultimately broke up and parted ways. She met Marga's grandfather later and loved him, but she never stopped wondering how her life could have been if she and her "Pablo" had worked things out.
- Sweet Tooth: She loves desserts, which leads to her scarfing down the cream puff that Pablo had hidden an engagement ring in for Marga.
- With This Ring: She accidentally swallows the ring Pablo was going to propose to Marga with. She makes up for it by giving Pablo her own ring, and keeping the one she, uhhhh, obtains later.
