Is Netflix’s Under Siege (Palacio) a True Story? What Happened at Colombia’s Palace of Justice in 1985, Who Plays Whom, What the Courts Decided, and Why I Think Calling It Fiction Is the Honest Choice

Most true-story dramas ask for your trust. Under Siege asks you to trust a story that Colombia itself has never fully settled. Netflix released the eight-episode series, titled Palacio in Spanish, on Friday, Nov. 6, 2026, exactly 41 years after a guerrilla commando drove into the basement of Bogotá’s Palace of Justice.

If you searched “Is Under Siege a true story?”, the short answer is yes and no. The siege happened, the people at the center of it are real, and Netflix calls its own series a fiction inspired by true and publicly known events. Below I separate what is on the record from what a drama has to invent, walk through what courts have decided in the decades since, and then tell you what I think about retelling this as entertainment.

One honest caveat first. I have not watched the series, and I could not find published critic reviews, so there is no Rotten Tomatoes score to report. This is a guide to the history and the premise, not a review of the episodes. Reporting is labeled as reporting; opinions are labeled as mine.

Is Under Siege a true story? Yes and no, and the line matters

Netflix’s own description is careful: a fictional series inspired by true and publicly known events. That phrase does a lot of work. It tells you the frame is real and the scenes are dramatized. According to Netflix, the scripts grew out of seven years of research, and the story follows the siege and then the victims’ families as they pursue justice for more than two decades.

What happened inside the Palace of Justice, step by step

Here is the sequence as the public record and the main summaries give it. Times and tolls vary a little between sources, so I keep to the points they agree on.

1. Nov. 6, 1985 · about 11:35 a.m.The takeover

   Thirty-five M-19 guerrillas, 25 men and 10 women, arrive in three vehicles and enter through the basement. Two security guards and the building manager are killed at the start. More than 300 people end up as hostages, Supreme Court justices among them.

2. Nov. 6 · afternoonThe demand and the response

   The commando calls itself the Iván Marino Ospina Company and says it wants to put President Betancur on trial. Army troops move in within hours, and many hostages are led out of the lower floors while the guerrillas and the remaining hostages hold the upper ones.

3. Nov. 6–7The assault and the fire

   Armored vehicles knock down the main doorway. A fire breaks out and burns for about two days, destroying more than 6,000 documents. Wikipedia’s summary says later forensic tests pointed to the army’s rocket fire as the most likely cause.

4. Nov. 7 · nightThe president speaks

   The army has retaken the building. On national television, Betancur says he takes full responsibility for what he calls a “terrible nightmare.”

5. AfterwardThe toll

   Chief Justice Reyes Echandía and the M-19 commander Andrés Almarales are among the dead. People who walked out of the building alive, many of them cafeteria workers, are never seen again.

Why the numbers don’t line up

If you have read two accounts of the siege, you have probably seen two different tolls. That is not sloppiness; it is the nature of the event. A fire destroyed evidence, bodies were hard to identify, and some people stayed on the missing list for years. My reading is that any single figure deserves caution, and the range tells you more than the number.

• Dead or disappearedAt least 94, including justices, guerrillas, civilians and soldiers (Netflix).About 101 dead, in Wikipedia’s summary of published sources.
• How long it lastedAbout 27 hours (Netflix’s Spanish tagline, and the Washington Post’s 1985 headline).About 28 hours (Wikipedia).
• HostagesMore than 300 (Netflix).Roughly 350 (Wikipedia).
• The missingAbout 11 people were first reported missing, most of them cafeteria workers.Remains of some have since been identified, so the number whose fate is unknown has shrunk.

What courts and commissions have decided since

This is the part most summaries skip, and it is the backbone of the series’ second timeline. The record is not one-sided. M-19 attacked the Palace and killed guards in the opening minutes. And Colombian courts and an international tribunal have found that state agents were responsible for disappearances and killings during the retaking.

• 1986

  A special commission created by Betancur’s government reports in June. It concludes that destroying court files was not a goal of the M-19 operation.

• 1990

  M-19 signs a peace treaty with the government in March.

• 1998

  Eduardo Umaña, the first lawyer for some of the families, is assassinated.

• 2005

  The Supreme Court’s Truth Commission begins its work on Nov. 3.

• 2010

  Retired Col. Alfonso Plazas Vega is sentenced to 30 years for forced disappearances.

• 2014

  On Nov. 14, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights holds Colombia responsible for the forced disappearance of a guerrilla, seven cafeteria workers and two visitors, and for the torture and execution of Magistrate Carlos Horacio Urán.

• 2015

  Colombia’s Supreme Court acquits Plazas Vega by a 5–3 vote on Dec. 16, after questioning witness testimony.

• 2019

  Retired Gen. Jesús Armando Arias Cabrales, who led the retaking, is sentenced to 35 years.

• 2021

  Five other former officers are sentenced to 40 years each by a Bogotá tribunal.

• 2022

  Three of Magistrate Urán’s daughters sue Plazas Vega in U.S. federal court in Florida.

The highlighted rows are the two rulings that point in different directions: an international court faulting the state, and the national Supreme Court overturning one conviction.

A separate claim, that drug traffickers financed the raid, remains disputed. Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 member who went on to become Colombia’s president, has denied it, and I treat it as unproven. I have no way to know yet whether the series touches that thread at all.

Who plays whom

The cast list reads like the index of a case file. Here are the main roles, with what is on the record about each real person.

• Natalia ReyesPlays Pilar NavarreteThe lead. Martin Cid Magazine reports that Navarrete is a real name: her husband, Héctor Jaime Beltrán, worked in the Palace cafeteria and disappeared during the retaking.
• Luna BaxterPlays Olga BeharA journalist and, per Martin Cid Magazine, the author of a testimonial book about the takeover.
• Mariana GómezPlays La MonaA surviving guerrilla fighter, according to Netflix.
• Carlos Manuel VesgaPlays Alfonso Plazas VegaThe retired colonel who oversaw the retaking. Convicted in 2010, acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2015.
• Robinson DíazPlays Belisario BetancurThe president in 1985, who went on television the night the army retook the building.
• Santiago AlarcónPlays Alfonso Reyes EchandíaThe Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, killed during the siege.
• Andrés CastañedaPlays Eduardo UmañaThe lawyer who first represented several families. He was assassinated in 1998.

Behind the camera, Natalia Santa is the showrunner and head writer, with Enrique Videla, Enrique Lozano, Jenny Ceballos and Estefanía Piñeres. Dynamo produces. Netflix says the series was filmed mainly in Bogotá on a set of more than 4,000 square meters that took over three months to build.

A court just ruled on how to label a fiction about this building

There is a recent Colombian fight that explains why Netflix’s wording matters. Noviembre, a 2025 feature by Tomás Corredor, also dramatizes the siege. On Oct. 15, 2026, Colombia’s Constitutional Court voted 6–3 on a complaint from the family of Magistrate Manuel Gaona Cruz, who was killed in the Palace. According to La Silla Vacía and Vanguardia, the court found that the film itself did not violate the rights of Gaona Cruz or his family, because it is a work of fiction. It found that advertising the film as “the truth” did, and it ordered the director and producer to apologize publicly within 15 days and to add a notice that the work is fiction.

Netflix used its “inspired by” wording in an announcement on Oct. 9, six days before that ruling, so I will not pretend the two are connected. But the ruling draws the line in public: a drama can invent a conversation, and it cannot sell that conversation as the verdict.

My take: why fiction is a fair way to tell it

The Palace story is usually told in 27 hours. The injustice lasted four decades.

I will say it plainly: I think fiction is a fair way to tell this story, and arguably the most honest one. A documentary has to stand behind every claim, and in this case the record still has holes, with people who disappeared, contested numbers and an acquittal sitting beside convictions. A drama can admit that it is reconstructing. What it cannot do is hide behind the label. “Inspired by” is permission to invent a conversation, not permission to invent a verdict.

The smartest choice, in my opinion, is the second timeline. Most retellings treat the Palace as a 27-hour event that ends with a burning building. The part that shaped Colombia is what came after: relatives holding photographs, lawyers threatened or killed, courts reversing each other. By giving the families as much weight as the assault, the series puts the injustice where it actually lived, in the years of waiting.

My worry is symmetry and spectacle. The record is brutal in both directions: guerrillas who killed guards in the opening minutes, and state agents who disappeared people who had walked out alive. A fair series holds both truths without turning either side into a cartoon. And a recreated Palace is impressive, but a set is not the story. If the series lingers on the explosions and hurries past the cafeteria workers, it will have the priorities backward.

Here is what would make me trust it:

1. The families’ scenes carry as much weight as the assault.
2. The violence on both sides is shown without softening either one.
3. Real names are handled with care, and the show is clear when it is inventing.

Before you press play

• Where: Netflix, eight episodes, released Nov. 6, 2026.
• Language: a Colombian production released in Spanish as Palacio. I have not confirmed the dubbed audio and subtitle options, so check the title page.
• Tone: it dramatizes a deadly armed attack, a military assault and enforced disappearances. It is heavy material.
• Homework: none. It stands alone, but the timeline above will help you follow who is who.
• Reviews: none published when I checked, so there is no critic score yet.

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