Spanish cinema has a long and troubled history, marked by Franco-era censorship and an extraordinary rebirth after the return of democracy. Today it is one of Europe's most awarded film industries, and Spain is also a sought-after location for international series and films.
Origins and Buñuel
The first great name in Spanish cinema is Luis Buñuel, who with Dalí made Un chien andalou in 1929, a surrealist manifesto, and later worked mainly in France and Mexico. In the 1930s Spanish cinema produced popular musical comedies and folkloric films; Florián Rey and the actress and singer Imperio Argentina were the stars of the time.
Under Franco
After the civil war censorship imposed a patriotic, religious and folkloric cinema. But in the 1950s some directors managed to portray reality with irony: Luis García Berlanga, with Welcome Mr Marshall! (1953) and The Executioner (1963), and Juan Antonio Bardem, with Death of a Cyclist (1955). Buñuel returned to Spain to shoot Viridiana (1961), which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and was immediately banned. In the 1960s and 1970s Carlos Saura used metaphor to criticise the regime, with The Hunt and Cría cuervos (1976); Víctor Erice made The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), a masterpiece of visual poetry. Meanwhile Spain hosted major international productions and Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns in the Tabernas desert, in the province of Almería.
Democracy and Almodóvar
With the end of censorship in 1977, Spanish cinema exploded. From the Movida madrileña emerged Pedro Almodóvar, born in 1949 in Castile-La Mancha, with colourful, ironic and daring melodramas: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), All About My Mother (1999, Oscar for best foreign film), Talk to Her (2002, Oscar for screenplay), Volver (2006), Pain and Glory (2019) and The Room Next Door (2024), Golden Lion in Venice. In 1983 José Luis Garci's Volver a empezar won Spain's first Oscar; it was followed by Fernando Trueba's Belle Époque (1993) and The Sea Inside by Alejandro Amenábar (2004), also director of Tesis and The Others.
Spanish actors have made it in Hollywood: Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz, best supporting actress Oscar for Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Javier Bardem, Oscar for No Country for Old Men. Recent directors include J. A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible), Icíar Bollaín, Isabel Coixet, Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Carla Simón, Golden Bear in Berlin in 2022 with Alcarràs. The international success of series such as Money Heist and Elite has made Spain a hub of streaming production.
Awards and festivals
The Goya Awards, presented every year by the Spanish Film Academy, are the equivalent of the Oscars. The main festivals are San Sebastián, the most important in the Spanish-speaking world, the Málaga Festival, devoted to Spanish cinema, and the Sitges Festival, specialising in fantasy and horror.
Ten films to watch
Viridiana (Buñuel, 1961), The Executioner (Berlanga, 1963), The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973), Cría cuervos (Saura, 1976), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodóvar, 1988), Jamón jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992), Tesis (Amenábar, 1996), All About My Mother (Almodóvar, 1999), Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006, a Spanish-Mexican co-production), Marshland (Alberto Rodríguez, 2014).