The series was conceived by screenwriter Álex Pina and director Jesús Colmenar during their years of collaboration since 2008. After finishing their work on the Spanish prison drama Locked Up (Vis a vis), they left Globomedia to set up their own production company, named Vancouver Media, in 2016. For their first project, they considered either filming a comedy or developing a heist story for television, with the latter having never been attempted before on Spanish television. Along with former Locked Up colleagues, they developed Money Heist as a passion project to try new things without outside interference. Pina was firm about making it a limited series, feeling that dilution had become a problem for his previous productions.
