Palomitas

This week on Palomitas, we're diving into what many consider Pedro Almodóvar's masterpiece - and the film that made him a global name. Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother, 1999) won Best Director at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and remains one of his most emotionally powerful works.Manuela, a nurse in Madrid, loses her teenage son Esteban in a road accident just as he sets out to find the father he never knew. Her journey to Barcelona in search of Lola - a transsexual sex worker dying of AIDS - leads her to a new family of women: the pregnant nun Rosa, the actress Huma Rojo, her troubled co-star Nina, and the irrepressible Agrado.Professor Mark Allinson, author of A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar (2001) and Academic Director at the University of Porsmouth, joins us to explore:- how Almodóvar rewrites melodrama's rules- how the film prioritises the 'logical' family over the 'biological' one - what character Agrado's famous monologue - "the more you become like what you have dreamed for yourself, the more authentic you are" - says about performance, gender, and identity.We discuss the film's web of references (All About Eve, A Streetcar Named Desire, Lorca, Douglas Sirk), the startling restraint of the accident scene, and the ending's uneasy question: are we talking about genuine hope, or survival through endless substitution?Selected scholarship cited in this episode:Mark Allinson, 2000. A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar (London: I.B. Tauris).Linda Craig, 2010. "From national to transnational in Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother," Transnational Cinemas 1(2), 161–174.Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz, 2004. "The Body and Spain: Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother," Quarterly Review of Film & Video 21(1), 25-38. Paul Julian Smith, 2014. Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar (London: Verso). 3rd edn.

This week on Palomitas, we’re turning the lens inward - not on Spain's economic crisis or infrastructure, but on a crisis of the body, justice, and belief. We’re diving into Bàrbara Mestanza and Marc Pujolar’s extraordinary 2026 documentary, Sucia (Filthy) - a six-year, no-budget, shot-on-whatever-camera-was-available chronicle of one woman’s refusal to remain quiet.After she was sexually assaulted during a massage in Madrid in 2015, Mestanza decides to confront what happened not just in court, but on stage, in a novel, and finally on camera. The film explicitly addresses the question that haunts survivors - ¿Por qué no hiciste nada? (“Why didn’t you do anything?”) - and turns those assumptions on their head. Winner of the Audience Award and a Special Jury Mention at Festival de Málaga, Grand Jury Prize at Sheffield DocFest, Sucia is a triptych of theatre, literature, and film: an internal conversation with her brain during the assault; the self-destruction afterward; and the judicial process that follows. It’s a film about performance and believability, about the male gaze and the courtroom gaze, and about what happens when a “non-archetypal victim” (in the film's own words) refuses to perform silence.We’re joined by Professor Duncan Wheeler, Chair of Spanish Studies at the University of Leeds, President-Elect of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, and 2023 Tecmerin Medal recipient. Together we discuss Spain’s #MeToo reckoning, the 2016 La Manada case, the 2022 ley del solo sí es sí, Gisèle Pelicot’s demand that shame change sides, and the brutal statistics that end the film: there are 400,000 victims of sexual violence each year; only 5% report; and just 9.7% obtain convictions. Is art repair, exposure, or both? And what does Sucia demand of male viewers?Selected scholarship cited in this episode:- Maria Delgado, ed. 2026. Spanish Verbatim Theatre: Putting Justice on Trial (Aberystwyth: Performance Research Books).- Duncan Wheeler, 2020. Following Franco: Spanish Culture and Politics in Transition (Manchester: Manchester University Press).Until next time on Palomitas!

This week on Palomitas, we're heading to Cartagena - to the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre and the ruins of the Spanish economic crisis - with Álex de la Iglesia's searing 2011 comedy-drama, La chispa de la vida (As Luck Would Have It). We're joined by special guest Dr Raquel Martínez Martín, Teaching Associate in Modern Languages (Spanish) at the University of Strathclyde, whose recent PhD examines immobility, agency, and resistance in Spanish crisis cinema.The film follows Roberto (José Mota), a once-successful ad executive who coined a famous slogan for Coca-Cola. Now he's one of nearly five million unemployed, his benefits have run out, and he's just been humiliatingly rejected for a job. On a nostalgic trip to his honeymoon hotel, he falls from a scaffold in a museum built over Roman ruins - and is impaled through the skull by a metal rod. Immobile, conscious, and facing death, he decides to do the only thing he knows: market his own tragedy. He hires an agent, sells exclusive TV rights, and becomes a media spectacle. Salma Hayek co-stars as his wife Luisa.Winner of the Silver Shell for Best Actor at San Sebastián, La chispa is a brutal, absurdist allegory for Spain's housing bubble collapse, the politics of austerity, and the logic that turns human beings into human capital. Raquel helps us unpack why a man impaled on a spike might be the perfect metaphor for precarity.Selected scholarship cited in the episode:Allbritton, Dean. 2014. “Prime Risks: The Politics of Pain and Suffering in Spanish Crisis Cinema.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 15 (1-2): 101–15. doi:10.1080/14636204.2014.931663.Hilborn, Matthew. 2025. Film Comedy and Spain: Humour, Genre, and the Nation 1970-2020. Oxford: Legenda. Hogan, Erin K. 2025. Patriarchy's Remains: An Autopsy of Iberian Cinematic Dark Humour. McGill-Queen's Press.Marr, Matthew J. 2019. “(Im)Mobility at the Movies: El Paro, Property and Prosthesis in Álex de La Iglesia’s La Chispa de La Vida (2011).” Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies 3 (1): 47-65. doi:10.1080/24741604.2019.1584499. Martínez Martín, Raquel. 2024. Stasis Spain: On the Representation of (Im)mobility, Agency and Resistance in Spanish Crisis Cinema (2008-2018). PhD Thesis. University of Strathclyde. Venkatesh, Vinodh. 2016. "Ethics, Spectacle, and Violence in Álex de la Iglesia's La chispa de la vida." Hispanófila 178 (1): 21-35. doi:10.1353/hsf.2016.0057.

This week on Palomitas, we step into the shadows of Madrid's margins with Fernando León de Aranoa's searing 2005 drama, Princesas - a film that asks: what happens when the women who sell sex are rendered invisible by the very state that profits from their labour? We're joined by special guest Dr Peter Watson, Associate Professor in Hispanic Studies at the University of Leeds.Set against a backdrop of police raids, violent clients, and a legal system that defines prostitution as "no-trabajo" (not actual work), the film follows two women: Caye (Candela Peña), a sharp-tongued Spanish call girl saving for breast augmentation, and Zule (Micaela Nevárez), an undocumented Dominican streetwalker sending money home to her son. Their unlikely friendship becomes the film's beating heart - until Zule's HIV diagnosis forces a devastating choice.Princesas won three Goyas including Best Actress for Candela Peña and Best New Actress for Micaela Nevárez. But more than that, it forced Spain to confront its own hypocrisy: a nation with Europe's largest brothel, where nearly 90% of sex workers are immigrants - yet where those same women have no legal right to exist. Peter helps us see why the film's cruelty and its tenderness both matter.Selected scholarship cited in the episode:Murray, N. Michelle. 2014. "The politics of looking in Fernando León de Aranoa's Princesas (2005)", Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas, 11:3, https://doi.org/%E2%81%A010.1386/slac.11.3.241_1%E2%81%A0Montuori, Chad. 2012. "Tonight We’re Not Whores. Tonight We’re Princesses. Sex Work and Immigration in Spain: Fernando León de Aranoa’s Princesas", Vanderbilt E-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies, 8. https://doi.org/10.15695/vejlhs.v8i0.3681

This week on Palomitas, we get tangled in a web of desire, ham, and hyper-masculinity with Bigas Luna's outrageously provocative 1992 comedy-drama, Jamón jamón - so good they named it twice. We're joined by special guest Prof. Santiago Fouz Hernández, Professor of Iberian Studies & Film at Durham University and author of the definitive new study, The Films of Bigas Luna (Manchester University Press, 2025).Set in the arid Monegros region, the film follows Silvia (Penélope Cruz), a young factory worker pregnant by the wealthy but immature José Luis (Jordi Mollà). His domineering mother, Conchita (Stefania Sandrelli), hires the virile Raúl (Javier Bardem) - a ham warehouse worker and aspiring bullfighter - to seduce Silvia away. What ensues is a frenetic, darkly comic, and visually excessive exploration of sex, class, consumerism, and the clichés of Spanish identity.We unpack:1992, "Spain's Year": How the film's release the year of the Barcelona Olympics and Seville Expo - a moment of aggressive nation-branding - shapes its satirical bite. Was Bigas Luna holding up a mirror or a funhouse mirror to the "new" Spain?Masculinity in Crisis: Raúl (the "macho ibérico") vs. José Luis (the infantilised "niño bien"). How both are performances, both are commodified, and both ultimately destructive.The Gaze: From Conchita reviewing underwear audition tapes to José Luis voyeuristically watching Raúl and Silvia, how does the film complicate the traditional male gaze through commercial and maternal looking?Food as Metaphor: Why jamón becomes everything - commodity, weapon, aphrodisiac, and national signifier. And yes, we discuss the legendary ham bone duel, directly citing Goya's Duelo a garrotazos.Scholarship cited in the episode:Fouz-Hernández, Santiago. The Films of Bigas Luna. Manchester University Press, 2025.Fouz-Hernández, Santiago, and Alfredo Martínez-Expósito. Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema. I.B. Tauris, 2007.Hilborn, Matthew. Film Comedy and Spain: Humour, Genre, and the Nation 1970-2020. Legenda, 2025. [Chapter 3 on Bigas Luna's Iberian Trilogy]Jordan, Barry, and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas. Contemporary Spanish Cinema. Manchester University Press, 1998.Kinder, Marsha. Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain. University of California Press, 1993.And for the episode of Santiago's own podcast, 'El legado cinematográfico de Bigas Luna', on Jamón jamón, which also features our host Matthew Hilborn, ⁠click here⁠ (in Spanish).

This week on Palomitas, we journey to the heart of rural Castile to explore Icíar Bollaín's compassionate and clear-eyed comedy-drama, Flores de otro mundo [Flowers from Another World] (1999) - with special guest Prof. Rosi Song, Professor of Hispanic Studies at Durham University.The film follows three women - Patricia from the Dominican Republic, Milady from Cuba, and Mari Rosi from Bilbao - who arrive in a depopulated Spanish village as part of a "women's caravan", organised by local bachelors in search of wives and girlfriends. What unfolds is a tender, tense, and quietly radical portrait of love, loneliness, and the search for home in a Spain on the brink of profound social change.We unpack:How Bollaín balances documentary realism with fiction to capture the human stories behind Spain's demographic shifts.The film's nuanced portrayal of migration through three very different women - international, internal, and in transit.Whether Patricia's story represents "successful" integration, or something more complex: compromise, adaptation, and mutual transformation.How food, silence, and the vast Castilian landscape become characters in their own right.The film's legacy, twenty-five years on: does it still speak to debates about migration, belonging, and the España vacía/vaciada?Scholarship cited in the episode:Ballesteros, Isolina. Immigration Cinema in the New Europe. Intellect, 2015.Corbalán, Ana. "Cartografías de la otredad: Nuevo racismo en el cine español." In Nuevas aproximaciones al cine hispánico, edited by Santiago-Juan Navarro and Joan Torres-Pou. Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, 2011.Deveny, Thomas. Migration in Contemporary Hispanic Cinema. Scarecrow Press, 2012.Sánchez Noriega, José Luis. "Viajes transformadores de personajes en el cine de Icíar Bollaín." Quintana: Revista de Estudios do Departamento de Historia da Arte, no. 20, 1-11 (2021).Santaolalla, Isabel. "Body Matters: Immigrants in Recent Spanish, Italian and Greek Cinemas." In European Cinema in Motion, edited by Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg. Palgrave, 2010.Marín, Karmentxu. "'Caravana de mujeres' para los solteros de Plan." El País, 1985.

This week on Palomitas, we dive into the sunlit, sensual daydream of Belle Époque (Fernando Trueba, 1992) - with special guest Dr. Peter Watson, Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds.An Oscar-winning comedy of manners and desire, the film follows Fernando, a young army deserter in 1931, who stumbles into a rural paradise presided over by four spirited sisters. What unfolds is a wine-soaked pastoral fantasy - a bittersweet elegy for a lost “age of beauty” just before Spain’s descent into civil war.We unpack:Whether the film is a utopian celebration of freedom or a dangerously embellished piece of historical amnesia.How its carnivalesque masquerade upends traditional gender roles and Spanish machismo.Why this nostalgic sex comedy became a global phenomenon and Spain’s cinematic calling card in the 1990s.The film’s lasting legacy: is it a poignant escape, a political fairy tale, or a little of both?Can you rewrite history as a beautiful dream? Tune in to find out.Scholarship cited in the episode:Colmeiro, José F. “Paradise Found? Ana/chronic Nostalgia in Belle Époque.” Film Historia 1, no. 2 (1997): 131-40. Davies, Ann. Penélope Cruz. Bloomsbury, 2014.Gasta, Chad M. “(De)constructing and (Re)negotiating Identities: (Re)dressing for Carnival in Fernando Trueba's Belle Époque (1992).” Hispania 87, no. 2 (2004): 177–84.Jordan, Barry. “Refiguring the Past in the Post-Franco Fiction Film: Fernando Trueba’s Belle Époque.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 76, no. 1 (1999): 139–56.

Episode 7 descends into a dark, enchanted maze. We're discussing Guillermo del Toro's modern masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth (2006), with our special guest, world-renowned expert Professor Ann Davies, Emeritus Professor of Spanish at the University of Stirling.In the brutal Spain of 1944, young Ofelia confronts the monstrous fascist Captain Vidal, her stepfather, and undertakes a terrifying quest in an ancient labyrinth for a mythical faun. Is she a lost princess of an underground realm, or is she crafting a fantasy to survive? A haunting fusion of historical drama and brutal fairy tale.We explore:The two equally real (?) worlds: How del Toro makes the fantasy quest and the historical trauma of post-Civil War Spain feel intertwined and equally threatening.Monsters as mirrors: From the child-eating Pale Man to Captain Vidal - decoding the film’s allegories for fascism, consumption, and patriarchal violence.Obedience vs. Disobedience: How Ofelia’s key trait becomes the ultimate act of resistance against a regime obsessed with order and cleanliness.A transnational haunting: What does a Mexican director bring to this specifically Spanish story, and why did this film about the maquis resonate with a global audience?An ambiguous ending: Is Ofelia’s fate a tragic consolation or a hopeful victory? What does the film’s conclusion tell us about historical memory and resistance?Scholarship & further exploration cited in the episode:(For the books, ask your library - university and/or public - to buy a copy! Trust us: librarians are always eager for requests!)Davies, Ann, Deborah Shaw, and Dolores Tierney, eds. 2014. The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo del Toro. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Davies, Ann. 2025. The Nightmares of Presence: Space and Place in Spanish Gothic and Horror Film. London: Bloomsbury.Orme, Jennifer. 2010. “Narrative Desire and Disobedience in Pan’s Labyrinth.” Marvels & Tales 24 (2): 219–234.Zipes, Jack. 2011. The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films. New York: Routledge.Film Recommendations:The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001), The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973), The Orphanage (J.A. Bayona, 2007).

This week on Palomitas, we dive into the explosive, darkly comic world of Fe de etarras [Bomb Scared] (Borja Cobeaga, 2017) with special guest Dr. Alison Posey, (newly appointed) Assistant Professor of Spanish at Transylvania University. A tragicomic farce that turns terrorism into a punchline, the film traps four bumbling ETA members in a flat during Spain’s euphoric 2010 World Cup victory, waiting for orders that never come. As national pride erupts around them, their revolutionary ideals unravel into absurdity, ego clashes, and crockpot nationalism.We unpack:How Cobeaga uses food, football, and Trivial Pursuit to skewer Basque identity myths and the failure of radical dreams.The film’s controversial place as one of Netflix España's first original films and the firestorm over its provocative marketing campaign.Whether satire can effectively process historical trauma or if it risks trivialising ETA’s violent legacy.The film’s bold departure from solemn ETA dramas, offering a shocking, laugh-out-loud, and surprisingly poignant critique of nationalism in post-ceasefire Spain.Can reducing a terrorist to a joke be a victory for society? Tune in to find out.Scholarship cited in the episode:Barrenetxea Marañón, Igor, and Gabriela Viadero Carral. “El fin de ETA y Ocho apellidos vascos (2013), de Emilio Martínez Lázaro.” Aportes Revista de historia contemporánea 32, no. 94 (2017).Castro, Deborah, and Concepción Cascajosa Virino. “From Netflix to Movistar+: How Subscription Video-on-Demand Services Have Transformed Spanish TV Production.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 59, no. 3 (2020): 154–60. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2020.0019.Hilborn, Matthew. Film Comedy and Spain. Oxford: Legenda, 2025.Mueller, Stephanie A. “Terrorist-Turned-Entrepreneur: Basque Masculinities in Fe de etarras.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 55, no. 1 (2021): 139–63. https://doi.org/10.1353/rvs.2021.0008.Posey, Alison. “The Ocho apellidos vascos Effect: Disavowing Difference in Fe de etarras.” In Center and Periphery: Twenty-First-Century Literature, Cinema, Media from Spain, edited by Amparo Alpañés, 3–30. Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2025.

Episode 5 dives into two explosive Spanish documentaries - both on Netflix - shaking up the fight for gender justice, with special guest Dr. Abigail Loxham, Reader in Hispanic Film Studies at the University of Liverpool.No estás sola: la lucha contra la Manada (Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, 2024) - The harrowing story of the La Manada gang rape case and the feminist uprising that forced Spain to reckon with its sexual assault laws. #SeAcabó: El diario de las campeonas (Joanna Pardos, 2024) - Inside the Spanish women’s football team’s World Cup triumph and their battle against the RFEF’s toxic misogyny - from Rubiales’ infamous kiss to systemic abuse.We unpack: - How these films expose institutional violence - from courtrooms to locker rooms. - The activist power of documentary storytelling about, and as part of, Spain’s feminist movements. - What’s still missing? Which voices remain sidelined? Scholarship cited in the episode:(For the books, ask your library - university and/or public - to buy a copy! Trust us: librarians are always eager for requests!)Cabezas, Marta. 2022. “Silencing Feminism? Gender and the Rise of the Nationalist Far Right in Spain.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 47 (2): 319–345. ⁠Fowler, Catherine, and Sergio Moro. 2024. “⁠Introduction: #(No)SeAcabó/It Is (Not) Over: The Rubiales/Hermoso Non-Consensual Kiss and the Growth of a Culture of Concern⁠.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 28 (1): 217–222. Itoiz Rodrigo-Jusue, Katie Liston, Mark Doidge, Jack Black,Gary Sinclair, Thomas Fletcher, Colm Kearns, Daniel Kilvington, and Theo Lynn. 2025. “⁠#SeAcabó: How a Mass-Mediated ‘Social Drama’ Made Visible and Confronted (Subjective and Objective) Violence in Women’s Football in Spain⁠.” Feminist Media Studies. Loxham, Abigail, and Anja Louis. 2024. Femininity and Feminism in Spanish TV Dramas. Cham: Springer.Loxham, Abigail, and Deborah Shaw. 2024. “⁠‘You Are Not Alone’: Powerful New Film Documents How Women’s Protest Against Misogyny Helped Change Spain’s Rape Laws.⁠” The Conversation, April 4.