La Nota Roja podcast was nominated this week for Best Spanish Language Podcast at the iHeart Podcast Awards, one of the major annual events recognizing achievements in podcasting across a wide range of genres and formats. The nomination was announced as part of the full list of finalists for the 2021 ceremony organized by iHeartMedia, with shortlisted titles in categories that span news, culture, comedy, storytelling and language-specific programming.

The iHeart Podcast Awards are presented each year by iHeartRadio to acknowledge popular and influential podcasts from around the world. In the Spanish language category for the 2021 awards, La Nota Roja was selected alongside other Spanish podcasts including Duolingo Spanish Podcast, Leyendas Legendarias, Radio Ambulante, and Spanish Aqui Presents.

La Nota Roja is a ten-episode documentary series, also available in English as The Red Note, that investigates femicides in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The podcast combines reporting, archival research, interviews with families and insights from journalists and specialists to trace the history of gender-based violence in the region across nearly three decades. The production team worked to depict how social, economic and institutional factors have intersected with the persistence of femicides, as well as how families and activists have responded to unresolved cases.

Director Craig Whitney has described the project’s emphasis on deeper contextual understanding rather than isolated incidents, noting that producing the series involved historic research and narrative structuring to reflect long-term trends and lived experience. Buildings, community memory and patterns in cases formed the backbone of the reporting. Whitney said this approach aimed to show how the phenomenon unfolded over time and why it remained a matter of public concern for listeners unfamiliar with the region’s history.