Palomitas

12. La chispa de la vida (Álex de la Iglesia, 2011) (with Raquel Martínez Martín)

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.

11. Princesas (Fernando León de Aranoa, 2005) (with Peter Watson)

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%A0 [https://doi.org/%E2%81%A010.1386/slac.11.3.241_1%E2%81%A0] * Montuori, 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 [https://doi.org/10.15695/vejlhs.v8i0.3681]

10. Jamón jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992) (with Santiago Fouz Hernández)

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 [https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/3-14-jam%C3%B3n-jam%C3%B3n-1992-parte-i-con-peter-evans-matt/id1528563824?i=1000713792527] (in Spanish).

9. Flores de otro mundo (Icíar Bollaín, 1999) (with Rosi Song)

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.

8. Belle époque (Fernando Trueba, 1992) (with Peter Watson)

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.