The question of the existence of Galician cinema has long been intensely debated, defended, celebrated, and contested by critics and film professionals alike. It is considered a glass half full or a glass half empty, depending on the degree of optimism, ideological position, and relative perspective of the onlooker. A large part of the debate has historically focused on the definition of the ontological status of “Galician cinema”: that is, what exactly Galician cinema is or should be. It is a long debate deeply embedded in a complex web of related social and political issues about Galicia's struggle for national identity and cultural “normalization,” reflecting a wide spectrum of positions between culturally purist nationalist views, on the one hand, and pragmatic possibilism, on the other. Global aspects of the new economic, technological, and cultural realities have shifted the terms of the debate since the 1990s towards wider notions such as “cinema made in Galicia” or even “audiovisual productions made in Galicia,” while, more recently, others have coined the concept of “New Galician Cinema,” which is sometimes made away from Galicia or on non-Galician topics. Although frequently overlapping, it can be productive to maintain a methodological distinction between these concepts, from a merely analytical point of view.

In this chapter I will address the problematic situation of Galician film production in the larger contexts of the Galician audiovisual sector, the Spanish cinema industry, and the transnational currents of economic and cultural globalization affecting national and subnational cinemas.