Introduction: Beyond the Two Spains

In Chapter Seven, we investigate films that challenge the binary of the two Spains, two cines con niño, and genre films. The concept of the two Spains is centralist and elides the country's complex history with plurinationalism. The Second Republic (1932–9) approved the autonomous status of Catalonia in 1932 and the Basque Country in 1935, which were annulled with Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War and then re-established by the constitution of 1978 (Pereira-Muro 2003: 236, 244, 247). In Fernando León Solís's overview of the binary, he considers the conflict between the two Spains and the country's historic nationalities:

Over the course of The Two cines, we have followed how the conflict over appropriation of the child and nation has played out in the narrative of Spain's child-starred cinemas. The majority of these productions, however, collectively contribute to the cultural marginalisation of the periphery of Spain, its languages, its cultures, and its historic nationalities through exclusion. Agustí Villaronga's Pa negre (Black Bread) (2010) and Arantxa Lazkano's Urte ilunak (The Dark Years) (1992) respond to portrayals of the two Spains by problematising and deconstructing the binary through heteroglossia, dialogism, and hybridity.

I will argue that Mallorcan director Agustí Villaronga's Pa negre (2010) shares commonalities with earlier features – El espíritu de la colmena (Víctor Erice 1973), Cría cuervos (Carlos Saura 1976), Urte ilunak (Arantxa Lazkano 1993), Secretos del corazón (Montxo Armendáriz 1997) and La mala educación (Pedro Almodóvar 2004) – but is unique in the nuevo cine con niño for its queering of childhood.