Palomitas

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.