Screening the Transition : Spanish Cinema and the Challenges of Democracy

Examines how post-Franco Spanish cinema reflected personal and social challenges of democratic transition, revealing new freedoms, lingering prejudices, and the difficulty of moving beyond dictatorship despite the 'pact of forgetting' promoted by political elites to facilitate national reconciliation.

Screening the Transition examines how Spanish cinema produced in the years immediately following Franco’s death articulated—through its narratives and characterizations—the social and cultural challenges encountered during the country’s transition to democracy. These films reflect emergent post-dictatorship realities, including increased openness toward sexuality and nudity; the erosion of traditional family structures; persistent attachments to, and reckonings with, the Francoist past; the development of political plurality and expanded freedom of expression; and various forms of marginalization, whether economic or based on gender and sexuality. In doing so, the analysis conceptualizes Spain’s transition not solely in political terms, as is commonly the case, but as a profoundly personal and affective process. Bonaddio demonstrates the limitations of cinema in this period, which at times revealed an inability to transcend deep-seated prejudices and forms of reticence cultivated over nearly four decades of authoritarian rule. These limitations surface in the prurient treatment of female nudity and sexual violence; in the deployment of comedy to belittle or trivialize democratic change; in a preference for metaphor and allegory over direct political engagement; and in the restricted investigative ambitions of historical dramas. Considering both popular and auteur cinema, the book is primarily concerned with how filmmaking registered the difficulties of consigning the dictatorship fully to the past, despite the so-called 'pact of forgetting' promoted by political elites to facilitate national reconciliation. It provides a timely and valuable contribution to the study of Spanish cinema during the Transition, illuminating a politically charged period through close analysis of key films. By uncovering little-studied works—such as the films of the destape—it fills an important scholarly gap and enriches our understanding of this transformative era.