Children of the War. Traumatic Memories of the Civil War on Spanish Contemporary Cinema

Abstract

Spanish Civil War films have traditionally been made according to the schemes of the political, social and historical drama. Over the last ten years, in addition to that dramatic tradition a new generation of movies has distanced itself from historical rigor, social and political reflections and the revision of the memory. This article looks at a group of contemporary fantasy and horror Spanish films: El mar / The Sea (2000) and Pa negre / Black Bread (2010), by Agustí Villaronga; El espinazo del Diablo I The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and El laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), by the Mexican Guillermo del Toro; just as Alex de la Iglesia’s Balada triste de trompeta / The Last Circus (2010). All of them have a common topic: a childhood traumatized by the disasters of war. This essay explores how the fiction mechanisms allow such a stylized film genre treatment to deal with these controversial topics in terms of emotions and ideology. One of the most useful instruments utilized in this material is the poetic nature of the “uncanny”, which whose versatility is analyzed in the mentioned movies.