Fair enough, the numbers are clear. Around 72% of Spain’s audiovisual industry is based in the capital region, and in recent years more than half of all Spanish film productions have been led by Madrid-based companies. You could be walking through neighborhoods like Chamberí or Centro at some point and find yourself in a movie shoot. Cameras, cables, someone yelling for silence- all is part of the city’s routine nowadays.
From Franco’s shadow to global screens
To understand where Spanish cinema stands today, we have to look back a few decades ago.During Franco’s regime, film and all forms of art were controlled. Censorship tried to suffocate creativity, in vain… Even in those gray years, directors like Luis García Berlanga or Juan Antonio Bardemfound ways to smuggle social critique into their films. When Franco died in 1975, the curtain opened, and the show began.The years that followed were amazing. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the Movida Madrileña emerged, a wild cultural explosion that spread from Madrid throughout Spain. A revolution in music, fashion, the visual arts, nightlife, and, of course, cinema. Amid all that energy, a young La Mancha native was shooting short films with a Super-8 camera – one he’d paid for with his Telefónica paycheck. A name that had yet to become famous: Pedro Almodóvar.
In this course you will not only learn how to communicate in Spanish, whatever your proficiency level is, but you will also master the basics of Flamenco, our most beloved universal dance and music.
Almodóvar and the city of his movies
Pedro arrived in Madrid as a teenager in the late 1960s, and the city left a deep impression on him, until he became that “Pedrooo!” that Penélope Cruz called out when he received his Oscar. Almodóvar’s early films were a bit “raw,” provocative, and sometimes strange, but they were always tied to these streets and are part of his essence.“Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios” (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) in 1988 was his first victory: a nomination as Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, a glimpse of what he would achieve years later. Suddenly the world was paying attention to what was happening in Spain.Then, the classic “Todo sobre mi madre” (All About My Mother) in 1999. That was when Penelope called out to him with that passionate cheer to receive the award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2024, his film “La habitación del al lado” (The Room Next Door) won the Golden Lion at Venice. His career, stretching across five decades, has turned Madrid’s plazas, apartments and hospitals into movie scenes recognized worldwide.
We keep growing like Spanish cinema.
Spanish cinema is far bigger than one director; there are many other names that we’ll be sharing little by little in this section. José Luis Garci won Spain’s first Oscar back in 1983. Fernando Trueba followed in 1993. Alejandro Amenábar added another in 2005 with “Mar Adentro” (The Sea Inside).
Oscars aside, a younger generation continues to blaze new trails, such as Carla Simón, winner of the Golden Bear at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival for “Alcarràs”. Proof that women also deserve their place in the spotlight.Madrid remains the powerhouse of Spanish cinema. The Goya Awards, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars, have been held in the capital since their first ceremony in 1987. Madrid is home to most production studios, film schools like ECAM, and a growing number of artists who will continue to bring us many masterpieces.
