SPANISH MUSIC

The Music of Spain has a vibrant and long history which has had an important impact on music in Western culture. Although the music of Spain is often associated with traditions like flamenco and the spanish guitar, Spanish music is in fact incredibly diverse from region to region. Flamenco, for example, is an Andalusian musical genre, which, contrary to popular belief, is not widespread outside that region. In contrast, the music of Galicia has more in common with its Celtic cousins in Ireland and France than with the unique Basque music right next door. Other regional styles of folk music abound in Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, Castile, and Asturias. The contemporary music scene in Spain, centered in Madrid and Barcelona, has made strong contributions to contemporary music within the areas of Pop, rock, hip hop, and heavy metal music. Spain has also had an important role within the history of classical music from Renaissance composers like Tomás Luis de Victoria to the zarzuela of Spanish opera to the passionate ballets of Manuel de Falla and the guitarist Pepe Romero.



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Early history
In Spain, several very different cultural streams came together in the first centuries of the Christian era: the Roman culture, which was dominant for several hundred years, and which brought with it the music and ideas of Ancient Greece; early Christians, who had their own version of the Roman Rite; the Visigoths, an East Germanic tribe who overran the Iberian peninsula in the fifth century; Jews of the diaspora; and eventually the Arabs, or the Moors as the group was sometimes known. Determining exactly which spices flavored the stew, and in what proportion, is difficult after almost two thousand years, but the result was a number of musical styles and traditions, some of them considerably different from what developed in the rest of Europe.

Isidore of Seville wrote about music in the sixth century. His influences were predominantly Greek, and yet he was an original thinker, and recorded some of the first information about the early music of the Christian church. He perhaps is most famous in music history for declaring that it was not possible to notate sounds—an assertion which reveals his ignorance of the notational system of ancient Greece, so that knowledge had to have been lost by the time he was writing.
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Under the Moors, who were usually tolerant of other religions during the seven hundred years of
their influence, both Christianity and Judaism, with their associated music and ritual, flourished. Music notation developed in Spain as early as the eighth century (the so-called Visigothic neumes) to notate the chant and other sacred music of the Christian church, but this obscure notation has not yet been deciphered by scholars, and exists only in small fragments. The music of the Christian church in Spain is known as Mozarabic Chant, and developed in isolation, not subject to the enforced codification of Gregorian chant under the guidance of Rome around the time of Charlemagne. At the time of the reconquista, this music was almost entirely extirpated: once Rome had control over the Christians of the Iberian peninsula, the regular Roman rite was imposed, and locally developed sacred music was banned, burned, or otherwise eliminated. The style of Spanish popular songs of the time is presumed to be closely related to the style of Moorish music. Music of the King Alfonso X Cantigas de Santa Maria is considered likely to show influence from Islamic sources. Other important medieval sources include the Codex Calixtinus collection from Santiago de Compostela and the Codex Las Huelgas. The so-called Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (red book) is an important devotional collection from the fourteenth century.


Renaissance and Baroque

In the early Renaissance, Mateo Flecha el viejo and the Castilian dramatist Juan del Encina rank among the main composers in the post-Ars Nova period. Some renaissance songbooks are the Cancionero de Palacio, the Cancionero de Medinaceli, the Cancionero de Upsala (it is kept in Carolina Rediviva library), the Cancionero de la Colombina, and the later Cancionero de la Sablonara. The organist Antonio de Cabezón stands out for his keyboard compostions and mastery.

Early 16th century polyphonic vocal style developed in Spain was closely related to the style of the Franco-Flemish composers. Melting of styles occurred during the period when the Holy Roman Empire and Burgundy were part of the dominions under Charles I(king of Spain from 1516 to 1556), since composers from the North both visited Spain, and native Spaniards travelled within the empire, which extended to the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. Music for vihuela by Luis de Milán, Alonso Mudarra and Luis de Narváez stands as one of the main achievements of the period. The Aragonese Gaspar Sanz was the author of the first learning method for guitar. The great Spanish composers of the Renaissance included Francisco Guerrero and Cristóbal de Morales, both of whom spent a significant portion of their careers in Rome. The great Spanish composer of the late Renaissance, who reached a level of polyphonic perfection and expressive intensity equal or even superior to Palestrina and Lassus, was Tomás Luis de Victoria, who also spent much of his life in Rome. Most Spanish composers returned home late in their careers to spread their musical knowledge in their native land or at the service of the Court of Philip II at the late 1500s.


18th to 20th centuries

By the end of the 17th century the "classical" musical culture of Spain was in decline, and was to remain that way until the 19th century. Classicism in Spain, when it arrived, was inspired on Italian models, as in the works of Antonio Soler. Some outstanding Italian composers as Domenico Scarlatti or Luigi Boccherini were appointed at the Madrid court. The short-lived Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga is credited as the main beginner of Romantic sinfonism in Spain.

Fernando Sor, Dionisio Aguado, Francisco Tárrega and Miguel Llobet are known as composers of guitar music. Fine literature for violin was created by Pablo Sarasate and Jesús de Monasterio.

Zarzuela, a native form of light opera, is a secular musical form which developed in the early 17th century. Some beloved zarzuela composers are Ruperto Chapí, Federico Chueca and Tomás Bretón.

Musical creativity mainly moved into areas of folk and popular music until the nationalist revival of the late Romantic era. Spanish composers of this period include Felipe Pedrell, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina, Manuel de Falla, Jesús Guridi, Ernesto Halffter, Federico Mompou, Salvador Bacarisse, and Joaquín Rodrigo.


Flamenco

Main article: Flamenco
Flamenco is an Andalusian traditional folk music. It consists of three forms: the song (cante), the dance (baile) and the guitar (guitarra). The first reference dates back to 1774, from Cadalso's "Cartas Marruecas". Flamenco probably originated in Cádiz, Jérez de la Frontera and Triana, and could be a descendant of musical forms left by Moorish during the 8th-17th century. Influences from the Byzantine church music, Egypt, Pakistan and India could also have been important in shaping the music. Many of the details of the development of flamenco are lost in Spanish history. There are several reasons for this lack of historical evidence:

Flamenco sprang from the lower levels of Andalusian society and thus lacked the prestige of art forms among the middle and higher levels at this time of persecution. The turbulent times of the people involved in flamenco culture. The Muslim Moors, the Gitanos and the Jews were all persecuted and the Muslim Moors (moriscos) and Jews were expelled by the Spanish Inquisition in 1492. The Gitanos have been fundamental in maintaining this art form, but they have an oral culture. Their folk songs were passed on to new generations by repeated performances in their social community. Non-gypsy Andalusian poorer classes, in general, were also illiterate.

Lack of interest from historians and musicologists. "Flamencologists" have usually been flamenco connoisseurs of no specific academic training in the fields of history or musicology. They have tended to rely on a limited number of sources (mainly the writings of 19th century folklorist Demófilo,[1] and notes by foreign travellers. Bias has also been frequent in flamencology. This started to change in the 1980s, when flamenco slowly started to be included in music conservatories, and a growing number of musicologists and historians began to carry out more rigorous research. Since then, some new data have shed new light on it. (Ríos Ruiz, 1997:14). Main stream scholars recognize all these early influences but consider flamenco as an earlier 19th century performance stage music as tango or fado.

There are questions not only about the origins of the music and dances of flamenco, but also about the origins of the very word flamenco. George Borrow writes that the word flemenc is synonymous with "Gypsy"). The word flamenco also means Flemish in Spanish. Some claim that Spanish Jews in Flanders were allowed to perform their music without oppression, and Gypsies that had fought there with distinction in war on behalf of Spain were rewarded by being allowed to settle in Andalusia. Blas Infante, in his book Orígenes de los Flamencos y Secreto del Cante Jondo, controversially argued that the word flamenco comes from Hispano-Arabic word fellahmengu, which would mean "expelled peasant" after the end of the Moorish reign. Some Turkish musicians proudly claim that the world flamenco comes from a character named "Falah Menge", supposedly an Arab gipsy from Turkey who brought the sound to Andalusia. This claim has not been proved, and there is no evidence of the existence of this musician.


Pop Music

Although Spanish pop music is currently flourishing, the industry suffered for many years under Francisco Franco's regime, with few outlets for Spanish performers during the 1930s through the 1970s. Regardless, American and British music, especially rock and roll, had a profound impact on Spanish audiences and musicians. The Benidorm International Song Festival,founded in 1959 in Benidorm, became an early venue where musicians could perform contemporary music for Spanish audiences. Inspired by the Italian San Remo Music Festival, this festival was followed by a wave of similar music festivals in places like Barcelona, Majorca and the Canary Islands. Many of the major Spanish pop stars of the era rose to fame through these music festivals. An injured Real Madrid player-turned-singer, for example, became the world-famous Julio Iglesias.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, tourism boomed, bringing yet more musical styles from the rest of the continent and abroad. However, it wasn't until the 1980s that Spain's burgeoning pop music industry began to take off. During this time a cultural reawakening known as La Movida Madrileña produced an explosion of new art, film and music that reverberates to this day. Once derivative and out-of-step with Anglo-American musical trends, contemporary Spanish pop is as risky and cutting-edge as any scene in the world, and encompasses everything from shiny electronica and Eurodisco, to homegrown blues, rock, punk, ska, reggae and hip-hop to name a few. Artist like Alejandro Sanz, have become successful internationally, selling million of albums worldwide and winning major music awards such as the coveted Grammy Award.

20TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

Modernist

The creation in 1928 of the GATCPAC group in Barcelona, followed by the foundation of GATEPAC (1930) by architects, mainly from Zaragoza, Madrid, San Sebastián and Bilbao, established two groups of young architects practicing the Modern Movement in Spain.

Josep Lluis Sert, Fernando García Mercadal, Jose María de Aizpurúa and Joaquín Labayen among others were organised in three regional groups. Other architects explored the Modern Style with their personal views: Casto Fernández Shaw with his visionary work, most of it on paper, Josep Antoni Coderch, with his integration of the Mediterranean housing and the new style concepts or Luis Gutiérrez Soto, mostly influenced by the Expresionist tendencies.

In 1929 World's Fair was held in Barcelona and the German pavilion designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became an instant icon; amalgamating Rohe's minimalism and notions of truth to materials with a De Stijl influenced treatment of planes in space. The large overhanging roof famously 'hovers' apparently unsupported.

During and after the Spanish civil war and World War II, Spain found herself both politically and economically isolated. The consequent effect of which, in tandem with Franco's preference for "a deadening, nationalistic sort of classical kitsch", was to largely suppress progressive modern architecture in Spain. Nevetheless, some architects could make coexist in their works the official approval and the advance in the construction, like Gutiérrez Soto, interested in tipology and rational distribution of the spaces whose prolific work alternated historical revivals and racionalist image with ease. Luis Moya Blanco's achievements in the construction with brick vaults deserve also a mention. His interest in the traditional brick construction lead him to a deep investigation in the modern formal possibilities of that material.

In the last decades of the Franco's life, a new generation of architects rescued the legacy of the GATEPAC with strength: Alejandro de la Sota was the pioneer in that new way, and young

architects as Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, Fernando Higueras and Miguel Fisac, often with modest budgets, investigated in prefabrication and collective housing typos.

In Catalonia were a special movement of modernist architecture with Antonio Gaudi. When the city of Barcelona was allowed to expand beyond its historic limits in the late 19th century, the resulting Eixample ("extension": larger than the old city; by Ildefons Cerdà), became the site of a burst of architectural energy known as the Modernisme movement. Modernisme broke with past styles and used organic forms for its inspiration in the same way as the concurrent Art-Nouveau and Jugendstil movements in the rest of Europe. Most famous among the architects represented there is Antoni Gaudí, whose works in Barcelona and elsewhere in Catalonia, mixing traditional architectural styles with the new, were a precursor to modern architecture. Perhaps the most famous example of his work is the still-unfinished La Sagrada Família, the largest building in the Eixample.

Other notable Catalan architects of that period include Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch.


Contemporary

The death of Franco and the return of democracy brought a new architectural optimism to Spain in the late 1970s and 1980s. Critical regionalism became the dominant school of thought for serious architecture. The influx of money from EU funding, tourism and a flowering economy strengthened and stabilised Spain's economic base, providing fertile conditions for Spanish architecture. A new generation of architects emerged, amongst whom were Enric Miralles, Carme Pinós, and the architect/engineer Santiago Calatrava. The 1992 Barcelona Olympics and the World's Fair in Seville, further bolstered Spain's reputation on the international stage, to the extent that many architects from countries suffering from recessions, moved to Spain to assist in the boom. In recognition of Barcelona's patronage of architecture, the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded the Royal Gold Medal to Barcelona in 1999, the first time in its history the award was made to a city. Bilbao attracted the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to construct a new gallery which opened in 1997. Designed by Frank Gehry in a deconstructivist manner, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao became world famous and single-handedly raised the profile of Bilbao on the world stage. Such was the success of the museum that the construction of iconic architecture in towns aspiring to raise their international profile has become a recognised town planning strategy known as the "Bilbao effect".

19TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

In the late 19th century a new architectural movement emerged in Madrid as a revival of the Mudéjar architecture. The Neo-Mudéjar soon spread to other regions of the country. Such architects as Emilio Rodríguez Ayuso perceived the Mudéjar art as characteristical and exclusive Spanish style. They started to construct buildings using some of the features of the ancient style, as horse-shoe arches and the use of the abstract shaped brick ornamentations for the façades. It became a popular style for bull rings and for other public constructions, but also for housing, due to its cheap materials, mainly brick for exteriors. The Neo-Mudéjar was often combined with Neo-Gothic features.

NEOCLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

The extremely intellectual postulates of Neoclassicism succeeded in Spain less than the much more expressive of Baroque.

Spanish Neoclassicism was spread by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, founded in 1752. The main figure was Juan de Villanueva, who adapted Burke's achievements about the sublime and the beauty to the requirements of Spanish clime and history. He built the Prado Museum, that combined three programs- an academy, an auditorium and a museum- in one building with three separated entrances. This was part of the ambitious program of Charles III, who intended to make Madrid the Capital of Art and Science. Very close to the museum, Villanueva built the Astronomical Observatory. He also designed several summer houses for the kings in El Escorial and Aranjuez and reconstructed the Major Square of Madrid, among other important works. Villanuevas´ pupils Antonio López Aguado and Isidro González Velázquez spread the Neoclassical style through the center of the country.

BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

As Italian Baroque influences penetrated across the Pyrenees, they gradually superseded in popularity the restrained classicizing approach of Juan de Herrera, which had been in vogue since the late sixteenth century. As early as 1667, the facades of Granada Cathedral (by Alonso Cano) and Jaen Cathedral (by Eufrasio López de Rojas) suggest the artists' fluency in interpreting traditional motifs of Spanish cathedral architecture in the Baroque aesthetic idiom.

Vernacular Baroque with its roots still in Herrera and in traditional brick construction was developed in Madrid throughout the 17th century. Examples include Plaza Mayor and the Major House.

In contrast to the art of Northern Europe, the Spanish art of the period appealed to the emotions rather than seeking to please the intellect. The Churriguera family, which specialized in designing altars and retables, revolted against the sobriety of the Herreresque classicism and promoted an intricate, exaggerated, almost capricious style of surface decoration known as the Churrigueresque. Within half a century, they transformed Salamanca into an exemplary Churrigueresque city.

The evolution of the style passed through three phases. Between 1680 and 1720, the Churriguera popularized Guarini's blend of Solomonic columns and composite order, known as the "supreme order". Between 1720 and 1760, the Churrigueresque column, or estipite, in the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk, was established as a central element of ornamental decoration. The years from 1760 to 1780 saw a gradual shift of interest away from twisted movement and excessive ornamentation toward a neoclassical balance and sobriety.

Two of the most eye-catching creations of Spanish Baroque are the energetic facades of the University of Valladolid (Diego Tome, 1719) and Hospicio de San Fernando in Madrid (Pedro de Ribera, 1722), whose curvilinear extravagance seems to herald Antonio Gaudi and Art Nouveau. In this case as in many others, the design involves a play of tectonic and decorative elements with little relation to structure and function. However, Churrigueresque baroque offered some of the most impressive combinations of space and light with buildings like Granada Charterhouse, considered to be the apotheosis of Churrigueresque styles applied to interior spaces, or the Transparente of the Cathedral of Toledo, by Narciso Tomé, where sculpture and architecture are integrated to achieve notable light dramatic effects.

The Royal Palace of Madrid and the interventions of Paseo del Prado (Salón del Prado and Alcalá Doorgate) in the same city, deserve special mention. They were constructed in a sober Baroque international style, often mistaken for neoclassical, by the Bourbon kings Philip V and Charles III. The Royal Palaces of La Granja de San Ildefonso, in Segovia, and Aranjuez, in Madrid, are good examples of baroque integration of architecture and gardening, with noticeable French influence (La Granja is known as the Spanish Versailles), but with local spatial conceptions which in some ways display the heritage of the Moorish occupation.

Rococo was first introduced to Spain in the (Cathedral of Murcia, west facade, 1733). The greatest practitioner of the Spanish Rococo style was a native master, Ventura Rodríguez, responsible for the dazzling interior of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Saragossa (1750).

RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

Renaissance architecture was that style of architecture which evolved firstly in Florence and then Rome and other parts of Italy as the result of Humanism and a revived interest in Classical architecture. It was part of the general movement known as the Renaissance which spread outwards from Italy and affected many aspects of scholarship and the arts.

In Spain, the Renaissance began to be grafted to Gothic forms in the last decades of the 15th century.

The style started to spread mainly by local architects: that is the cause of the creation of a specifically Spanish Renaissance, that brought the influence of South Italian architecture, sometimes from illuminated books and paintings, mixed with Gothic tradition and local idiosyncrasy. The new style is called Plateresque, because of the extremely decorated facades, that brought to the mind the decorative motifs of the intricately detailed work of silversmiths, the “Plateros”. Classical orders and candelabra motifs (a candelieri) combined freely into symmetrical wholes.

As decades passed, the Gothic influence disappeared and the research of an orthodox classicism reached high levels. Although Plateresco is a commonly used term to define most of the architectural production of the late XV and first half of XVI, some architects acquired a more sober personal style, like Diego Siloe and Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón. Examples include the facades of the University of Salamanca and of the Convent of San Marcos in León. From the mid 16th century, under such architects as Pedro Machuca, Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera there was a much closer adherence to the art of ancient Rome, sometimes anticipating Manierism. An example of this is the palace of Charles V in Granada built by Pedro Machuca. A new style emerged with the work of Juan Bautista de Toledo, and Juan de Herrera in the Escorial: the Herrerian style, extremely sober and naked, reached high levels of perfection in the use of granite ashlar work, and influenced the Spanish architecture of both the peninsula and the colonies for over a century.

GOTIC ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

The gothic style arrived in Spain as a result of European influence in 12th century when late Romanesque alternated with a few expressions of pure Gothic architecture like the Cathedral of Ávila. The High Gothic arrived in all its strength through the Way of Saint James in the 13th century, with some of the purest Gothic cathedrals, with German and French influence: the cathedrals of Burgos, León and Toledo.

The most important post-13th century Gothic styles in Spain are the Levantino and Isabelline Gothic. Levantino Gothic is characterised by its structural achievements and their unification of space, with masterpieces as La Seu (cathedral) in Palma de Mallorca, Valencia's silk market, (Lonja de Valencia), and Santa Maria del Mar (Barcelona).

Isabelline Gothic, created during the times of the Catholic Kings, was part of the transition to Renaissance architecture, but also a strong resistance to Italian Renaissance style. Highlights of the style include Saint John of The Kings in Toledo and the Royal Chapel of Granada.

ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

"Romanesque" was first applied by the archaeologist Charles de Gerville or his associate Arcisse de Caumont, in the early 19th century, to describe Western European architecture from the 5th to the 13th centuries, at a time when the actual dates of many of the buildings so described had not been ascertained. The term is now used for the more restricted period from the late 10th to the 12th century. The word was used to describe the style which was identifiably Medieval and prefigured the Gothic, yet maintained the rounded Roman arch and thus appeared to be a continuation of the Roman tradition of building, albeit a much simplified and less technically competent version.

The term "Pre-romanesque" is sometimes applied to architecture in Germany of the Carolingian and Ottonian periods while "First Romanesque" is applied to buildings in Italy, Spain and parts of France that have Romanesque features but pre-date the influence of the monastery of Cluny.

Romanesque first developed in Spain in the 10th and 11th centuries, before Cluny`s influence, in Lérida, Barcelona, Tarragona and Huesca and in the Pyrenees, simultaneously with the north of Italy, as what is called "First Romanesque" or "Lombard Romanesque". It is a very primitive style, whose characteristics are thick walls, lack of sculpture and the presence of rhythmic ornamental arches, typified by the churches in the Valle de Bohí.

The full Romanesque architecture arrived with the influence of Cluny through the Way of Saint James, that ends in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The model of the Spanish Romanesque in the 12th century was the Cathedral of Jaca, with its characteristic plan and apse, and its "chessboard" decoration in stripes, called taqueado jaqués. As the Christian Kingdoms advanced southwards, this model spread throughout the reconquered areas with some variations. Spanish Romanesque also shows the influence of Spanish pre-Romanesque styles, mainly Asturian and Mozarabic. But there is also a strong Moorish influence, especially the vaults of Córdoba's Mosque, and the multifoil arches. In the 13th century, some churches alternated in style between Romanesque and Gothic. Aragón, Navarra and Castile-Leon are some of the best areas for Spanish Romanesque architecture.

MUDEJAR ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

The architecture of the Moors and native Andalusians who remained in Christian territory but were not converted to Christianity is called Mudéjar Style. It developed mainly from 12th to 16th centuries and was strongly influenced by Moorish taste and workmanship but constructed for the use of Christian owners. Thus, it is not really a pure style: Mudejar architects frequently combined their techniques and artistic language with other styles, depending of the historical moment. Thus we can refer to Mudéjar, but also to Mudejar-Romanesque, Mudejar-Gothic or Mudejar-Renaissance.

The Mudéjar style, a symbiosis of techniques and ways of understanding architecture resulting from Jewish, Muslim and Christian cultures living side by side, emerged as an architectural style in the 12th century. It is characterised by the use of brick as the main building material. Mudéjar did not involve the creation of new structures (unlike Gothic or Romanesque), but reinterpreting Western cultural styles through Islamic influences. The dominant geometrical character, distinctly Islamic, emerged conspicuously in the accessory crafts using cheap materials elaborately worked—tilework, brickwork, wood carving, plaster carving, and ornamental metals. Even after the Muslims were no longer employed, many of their contributions remained an integral part of Spanish architecture.

It is accepted that the Mudéjar style was born in Sahagún. Mudéjar extended to the rest of the Kingdom of León, Toledo, Ávila, Segovia, and later to Andalusia, especially Seville and Granada. The Mudéjar Rooms of the Alcázar of Seville, although classified as Mudéjar, are more closely related to the Nasrid Alhambra than to other buildings of the style as they were created by Pedro of Castile, who brought architects from Granada who experienced very little Christian influence. Centers of Mudéjar art are found in other cities, like Toro, Cuéllar, Arévalo and Madrigal de las Altas Torres. It became highly developed in Aragon, especially in Teruel during the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, where a group of imposing Mudéjar-style towers were built. Other fine examples of Mudéjar can be found in Casa Pilatos (Seville), Santa Clara Monastery, in Tordesillas, or the churches of Toledo, one of the oldest and most outstanding Mudejar centers. In Toledo, the synagogues of Santa María la Blanca and El Tránsito (both Mudejar though not Christian) deserve special mention.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF AL-ANDALUS IN SPAIN

The Caliphate of Cordoba

The Moorish conquest of the former Hispania by the troops of Musa ibn Nusair and Tariq ibn Ziyad, and the overthrowning of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus, led to the creation of an independent Emirate by Abd ar-Rahman I, the only surviving prince who escaped from Abbasids, and established his Capital city in Cordoba. It was to become the cultural capital of Occident from 750 to 1009. The architecture built in Al-Ándalus under the Umayyads evolved from the architecture of Damascus with the addition of aesthetic achievements of local influence: the horse-shoe arch, a distinctive of Spanish Arab architecture was taken from Visigoths. Architects, artists and craftsmen came from the Orient to construct cities like Medina Azahara whose splendour couldn't have been imagined by the European kingdoms of the era.

The most outstanding construction of the Umayyad Cordoba is the Great Mosque, built in consecutive stages by Abd ar-Rahman I, Abd ar-Rahman II, Al-Hakam II and Al-Mansur.


The Taifas

The Caliphate disappeared and was split into several small kingdoms called Taifas. Their political weakness was accompanied by a cultural retreat, and together with a quick advance of the Christian kingdoms, the taifas clung to the prestige of structures and forms of the style of Córdoba. The recession was felt in the construction techniques and in the materials, though not in the profusion of the ornamentation. The lobes of multifoil arches were multiplied and thinned, transformed in lambrequins, and all the Caliphal elements were exaggerated. Some magnificent examples of the Taifa architecture have reached our times, like the Palace of the Aljafería, in Zaragoza, or the small mosque of Bab-Mardum, in Toledo, later transformed into one of the first examples of Mudéjar architecture (Cristo de la Luz hermitage).


Almoravids and Almohads

The Almoravids invaded Al-Andalus from north Africa in 1086, and unified the taifas under their power. They developed their own architecture, but very few of it remains because of the next invasion, that of the Almohads, who imposed Islamic ultra-orthodoxy and destroyed almost every significative Almoravid building, together with Medina Azahara and other Caliphal constructions. Their art was extremely sober and bare, and they used brick as their main material. Virtually their only superficial decoration, the sebka, is based in a grid of rhombuses. The Almohads also used palm decoration, but this was nothing more than a simplification of the much more decorated Almoravid palm. As time passed, the art became slightly more decorative. The best know piece of Almohad architecture is the Giralda, the former minaret of the Mosque of Seville. Classified as Mudéjar, but immersed in the Almohad aesthetic, the synagogue of Santa María la Blanca, in Toledo, is a rare example of architectural collaboration of the three cultures of Medieval Spain.


Nasrid architecture of the Kingdom of Granada

After the dissolution of the Almohad empire, the scattered Moorish kingdoms of the south of the Peninsula were reorganized, and in 1237, the Nasrid kings established their capital city in Granada. The architecture they produced was to be one of the richest produced by Islam in any period. This owed a great deal to the cultural heritage of the former Moorish styles of Al-Ándalus, that the Nasrids eclecticly combined, and to the close contact with the northern Christian Kingdoms. The palaces of Alhambra and the Generalife are the most outstanding constructions of the period. The structural and ornamental elements were taken from Cordobese architecture (horse-shoe arches), from Almohads (sebka and palm decoration), but also created by them, like the prism and cylindrical capitals and mocárabe arches, in a gay combination of interior and exterior spaces, of gardening and architecture, that aimed to please all the senses. Unlike the Ummayad architecture, which made use of expensive and imported materials, the Nasrids used only humble materials: clay, plaster and wood. However, the aesthetic outcome is full of complexity and is mystifying for the beholder: The multiplicity of decoration, the skillful use of light and shadow and the incorporation of water into the architecture are some of the keys features of the style. Epigraphy was also used on the walls of the different rooms, with allusive poems to the beauty of the spaces.

PRE-ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

The Pre-Romanesque art and architecture of Spain (in Spanish, arte prerrománico) refers to the art of Spain after the Classical Age and before Romanesque art and architecture; hence the term Pre-Romanesque. Although Spain as a nation did not exist during this period, the term is used here to describe the artwork that occurred within the geographic boundaries of what is today the Spanish nation. Visigothic art, the art of the Visigoths to 711, is usually classified as Migration Period art by art historians to emphasis its Germanic connections and origins; but can also classified as Pre-Romanesque, particularly in Spain, to emphasis its lineage in Spanish history. The main styles (based on chronological and geographic considerations) of the Spanish Pre-Romanesque were:

Visigothic art

The only remaining examples of their architecture from the sixth century are the church of San Cugat del Vallés in Barcelona, Saint Frutuoso Chapel in (Braga, the church of S.Gião (Nazaré) and the few remnants of the church at Cabeza de Griego, Cuenca. However, their style developed over the next centuries, though the prime remaining examples of it are mostly rural and often run-down. Some of the characteristics of their architecture are: Generally basilican in layout, sometimes a Greek cross plan or, more rarely, a combination of the two. The spaces are highly compartmentalised. Horseshoe arches without keystones. A rectangular, exterior apse. Use of columns and pillars with Corinthian capitals of unique design. Barrel vaults with cupolas at the crosses. Walls of ashlar blocks, occasionally alternating with Roman brickwork. Decoration commonly of animal or plant motifs. Exemplars include: San Juan de Baños de Cerrato (Palencia) Cripta de San Antolín de Palencia San Pedro de la Mata (Toledo) Santa Comba de Bande (Orense) San Pedro de la Nave (Zamora) Santa María de Quintanilla de las Viñas (Burgos) Santa María de Melque (Toledo) São Gião (Nazaré)

Asturian art

In the 5th century, the Goths, a Christianized tribe of Eastern European origin, arrived in the Iberian peninsula after the fall of the Roman empire, and dominated most of the territory, attempting to continue Roman order by the so called Ordo Gothorum. In the year 710, the Visigothic king Witiza died, and instead of being succeeded by the eldest of his three sons, Agila, the throne was usurped by the duke of Baetica, Roderic. The young heir sought support to recover the throne, and apart from local backing, he approached the Muslim Kingdom in northern Africa. Tarik, the caliph of Damascus governor in Tangier, received permission to offer his army and disembark in Spain, ready to face the Visigothic army of King Roderic. On July 19, 711, the battle of Guadalete took place near Gibraltar, where supporters of Witiza's heir, backed by Tarik's Muslim army, killed King Roderic and destroyed the Visigothic army. Tarik and his troops then took advantage of their military superiority, and marched on the Visigothic capital, Toledo, taking it almost without opposition. According to the chronicles, Asturian mercenaries, who had already been recruited by the Romans for their courage and fighting spirit, fought alongside King Roderic. These warriors, together with the rest of the retreating Gothic army, sought refuge in the mountains of Asturias, where they also tried to safeguard some of the sacred relics from Toledo cathedral, the most important of which was the Holy Ark, containing a large number of relics from Jerusalem. The kingdom of Asturias arose exactly seven years later, in 718, when the Astur tribes, rallied in assembly, decided to appoint Pelayo as their leader, a person of uncertain origin, since for some chroniclers he was a Visigothic nobleman who fled from the Muslim conquerors and for others he was an indigenous nobleman associated with the Visigothic kingdom. Whatever the case, Pelayo joined the local tribes and the refuged Visigoths under his command, with the intention of progressively restoring Gothic Order, based on the kingdom of Toledo's political model. The kingdom of Asturias disappeared with King Alfonso III, who died in December of the year 910. In barely two hundred years, the 12 kings of the dynasty founded by Pelayo were to gradually recover territory from the Muslims (León, Galicia and Castile), a process which finally required the court to be moved south, to León, for its strategic position in the struggle that culminated 800 years after it had started (1492) with the taking of Granada and the expulsion of the last Arabic king from the Iberian Peninsula. The symbol of the flag of Asturias, a golden cross (significantly called "La Victoria"), and a blue background with the Latin motto Hoc signo, tvetvr pivs, Hoc signo vincitvr inimicvs (With this sign the pious is protected, With this sign you shall defeat the enemy), sums up the unified character that Christianity gave the armed struggle.


Mozarabic art

The principal characteristics that define the Mozarabic architecture are the following:
• A great command of the technique in construction, employing principally ashlar by length and width.
• Absence or sobriety of exterior decoration.
• Diversity in the floor plans, certainly the majority stand out by the small proportions and discontinuous spaces covered by cupolas (groined, segmented, ribbed of horseshoe transept, etc.).
• Use of the horseshoe arch in the Islamic style, very tight and with the slope being two-thirds of the radius.
• Use of the alfiz.
• Use of the column as support, crowned by a Corinthian capital decorated with very stylized vegetable elements.
• The eaves extend outwards and rest on top of corbels of lobes. The Mozarabic architecture interpreted strictly in its definition, that is to say, that the Mozarabs in Muslim Spain brought to completion, would be reduced to two examples:
• The Church of Bobastro: rock temple located in the place known as Mesas de Villaverde, in Ardales (Málaga), of which only some ruins remain.
• The Church of Santa María de Melque: located in proximity to La Puebla de Montalbán (Toledo). With respect to this temple, its stylistic parentage is in doubt, because it shares Visigothic features with other more proper Mozarabic features, nor its date being clear. Nevertheless, at a popular level, including in encyclopedias and books, the denomination that has kept prevailing is Mozarabic Art and among the most important that can be cited in Spain, the following can be counted as Mozarabic:
• In Castile and León: - San Miguel de Escalada (León) - Santiago de Peñalba (León) - Santo Tomás de las Ollas (León) - San Baudelio de Berlanga (Soria) - San Cebrián de Mazote (Valladolid) - Santa María de Wamba (Valladolid) - San Salvador de Tabara (Zamora) • In Cantabria: - Santa María de Lebeña (Cantabria)
• In Aragón: - San Juan de la Peña (Huesca) - Church of the Serrablo (Huesca), as the Church of San Juan de Busa
• In La Rioja - San Millán de Suso (San Millán de la Cogolla)
• In Catalonia: - San Quirce de Pedret (Barcelona) - Santa María de Marquet (Barcelona) - Church of San Cristóbal (Barcelona), in the municipality of Vilassar de Mar, at 30 km from Barcelona - San Julián de Boada (Gerona), located in the small hamlet of the same name, in the comarca of Baix Empordà (Gerona) - Santa María de Matadars (Barcelona), in the municipality of El Pont de Vilomara i Rocafort
• In Galicia: - San Miguel de Celanova (Orense)


Repoblación art and architecture

The title art and architecture of the Repoblación has recently been applied to the creative works, predominantly architectural, which were completed in the Christian kingdoms of the north of Spain between the ending of the 9th and beginning of the 11th century. This encompasses all the buildings which until recently were regarded as Mozarabic, and so called, and cataloged following the line marked by Manuel Gómez Moreno. The current historiography appears partial to abandoning that title because it is a proven argument that these buildings do not possess the origin that was attributed to them. This does not mean that in the northern peninsular architecture of the 10th century, including in the religious, Muslim influences are not appreciated, inevitable on the other hand when in a situation of neighboring a caliphate, as that of Córdoba, cultural, artistic and very developed economicly, instead it is insisted that those monumental buildings are not owed to the modest groups of Mozarabic immigrants that settled in the areas of repopulation when the living conditions in al-Andalus became barely tolerable. As stated by the professor Isidro Bango Torviso, it should be admitted that: "when produced under the hegemony Asturian-Leonese the repopulation of the Valley of Duero, the northerners lose all their knowledge and experiences to submit themselves to the 'very rich and contrasted creative capacity' of some poor and ruralized southern immigrants." The art and architecture of the Repoblación is identified with the third subset of the Hispanic Pre-Romanesque period, by the phases that correspond to the Visigothic art and Asturian art. Its architecture is a summary of elements of diverse extraction irregularly distributed, of a form that in occasions predominate those of paleo-Christian, Visigothic or Asturian origin, while at other times emphasizes the Muslim impression. In any even, some signs of identity characterizations of this ecclesial architectural style exist that can be summarized in: Basilica or centralized plan; sometimes with opposing apses. Principal chapel of rectangular plan on the exterior and ultra-semicircular in the interior. Use of the horseshoe arch of Muslim evocation, somewhat more closed and sloped than the Visigothic. Generalized use of the alfiz. Use of the geminated and tripled windows of Asturian tradition. Covering by means of segmented vaults, including by the traditional barrel vaults. Grouped columns forming composite pillars, with Corinthian capital decorated with stylized elements and cincture joined to it. Walls re-enforced by exterior buttresses. Evolution of the rafter ornaments to great lobed offsets that support very pronounced eaves. Decoration similar to the Visigothic based in volutes, swastikas, and vegetable and animal themes forming projected borders. A great command of the technique in construction, employing principally ashlar by length and width. Absence or sobriety of exterior decoration. Diversity in the floor plans, certainly the majority stand out by the small proportions and discontinuous spaces covered by cupolas (groined, segmented, ribbed of horseshoe transept, etc.).

In Catalonia and Aragón, a style ancestral to the Romanesque developed early in parallel with the region of Lombardy and it has become common to refer the formerly called late Catalan Pre-Romanesque as "first Romanesque" after the suggestions of Josep Puig i Cadafalch.

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

Roman period

The Roman conquest of Hispania, started in 218 B.C. supposed the almost complete romanization of the Iberian Peninsula. Roman culture was deeply assumed by local population: Former military camps and Iberian, Phoenician and Greek settlements were transformed in large cities where urbanization highly developed in the provinces: Emerita Augusta in the Lusitania, Corduba, Italica, Hispalis, Gades in the Baetica, Tarraco, Caesar Augusta, Asturica Augusta, Legio Septima Gemina and Lucus Augusti in the Tarraconensis were some of the most important cities, linked by a complex net of roads. The construction development includes some monuments of comparable quality to those of the capital, Rome.

Constructions

Civil engineering represented in imposing constructions like the Aqueduct of Segovia or Mérida (acueducto de los Milagros), in bridges like Alcántara Bridge and Mérida bridge, over Tagus River, or Cordoba bridge, over Guadalquivir River. Civil works were widely developed in Hispania under Emperor Trajan (98 a. D.-117 a. D.). Lighthouses like the still in use Hercules Tower, in La Coruña, were also built.

Ludic architecture is represented by such buildings as the theaters of Mérida, Sagunto or Tiermes, the amphi-theaters like the ones in Mérida, Italica, Tarraco or Segobriga and circuses were built in Mérida, Cordoba, Toledo, Sagunto and many others.

Religious architecture also spread thougout the Peninsula, and we can quotate the temples of Cordoba, Vic, Mérida (Diana and Mars), and Talavera la Vieja, among others. The main funerary monuments are the Escipiones tower of Tarragona, the distyle of Zalamea de la Serena in Badajoz, and the Mausoleums of the Atilii family, in Sádaba and of Fabara, in Ampurias, both in Zaragoza. Arches of the Triumph can be found in Caparra (four faced), Bará and Medinaceli.

PREHISTORY ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

Megalithic architecture

In the Stone Age, the most expanded megalith in the Iberian Peninsula was the dolmen. The plans of these funerary chambers used to be pseudocircles or trapezoids, formed by huge stones stuck on the ground, and others over them, forming the roof. As the typology evolved, an entrance corridor appeared, and gradually took prominence and became almost as wide as the chamber. Roofed corridors and false domes were common in the most advanced stage. The complex of Antequera contains the largest dolmens in Europe. The best preserved, the Cueva de Menga, is twenty-five metres deep and four metres high, and was built with thirty-two megaliths.

The best preserved examples of architecture from the Bronze Age are located in the Balearic Islands, where three kinds of construction appeared: the T-shaped taula, the talayot and the naveta. The talayots were troncoconical or troncopiramidal defensive towers. They used to have a central pillar. The navetas, were constructions made of great stones and their shape was similar to a ship named hulk


Iberian and Celtic architecture

The most characteristic constructions of the Celts were the Castros, walled villages usually on the top of hills or mountains. They were developed at the areas occupied by the Celts in the Duero valley and in Galicia. Examples include Las Cogotas, in Ávila and the Castro of Santa Tecla, in Pontevedra.

The houses inside the Castros are about 3.5 to 5 meters long, mostly circular with some rectangular, stone-made and with thatch roofs which rested on a wood column in the center of the building. Their streets are somewhat regular, suggesting some form of central organization.

The towns built by the Arévacos were related to Iberian culture, and some of them reached notable urban development like Numantia. Others were more primitive and usually excavated into the rock, like Termantia. A-201 research work.

SPANISH ARCHITECTURE

Spanish architecture refers to architecture carried out in any area in what is now modern-day Spain, and by Spanish architects worldwide. The term includes buildings within the current geographical limits of Spain before this name was given to those territories (whether they were called Iberia, Hispania or were formed of several Christian kingdoms). Due to its historical and geographical diversity, Spanish architecture has drawn from a host of influences.

Since the first known inhabitants in the Iberian peninsula, the Iberians around 4000 BC and later on the Celtiberians, Iberian architecture started to take shape in parallel with other architectures around the Mediterranean and others from Northern Europe.

A real development came with the arrival of the Romans, who left behind some of their most outstanding monuments in Hispania. The arrival of the Visigoths brought about a profound decline in building techniques which was paralleled in the rest of the former Empire. The Moorish invasion in 711 A.D. lead to a radical change and for the following eight centuries there were great advances in culture, including architecture. For example, Cordoba was established as the cultural Capital of its time under the Umayyad dynasty. Simultaneously, the Christian kingdoms gradually emerged and developed their own styles, at first mostly isolated from European architectural influences, and later integrated into Romanesque and Gothic streams, they reached an extraordinary peak with numerous samples along the whole territory. The Mudéjar style, from the 12th to 17th centuries, was characterised by the blending of cultural European and Arabic influences.

Towards the end of the 15th century, and before influencing Latin America with its Colonial architecture, Spain itself experimented with Renaissance architecture, developed mostly by local architects. Spanish Baroque was distinguished by its exuberant Churrigueresque decoration, developing separately from later international influences. The Colonial style, which has lasted for centuries, still has a strong influence in Latin America. Neoclassicism reached its peak in the work of Juan de Villanueva and his disciples.

The 19th century had two faces: the engineering efforts to achieve a new language and bring about structural improvements using iron and glass as the main building materials, and the academic focus, firstly on revivals and eclecticism, and later on regionalism. The arrival of Modernism in the academic arena produced figures such as Gaudí and much of the architecture of the twentieth century. The International style was led by groups like GATEPAC. Spain is currently experiencing a revolution in contemporary architecture and Spanish architects like Rafael Moneo, Santiago Calatrava, Ricardo Bofill as well as many others have gained worldwide renown.

Because of their artistic relevance, many architectural sites in Spain, and even portions of cities, have been designated World Heritage sites by UNESCO. Spain has the second highest number of World Heritage Sites in the world; only Italy has more. These are listed at List of World Heritage Sites in Europe: Spain.

STAGES:

Prehistory architecture in Spain

Roman architecture in Spain

Pre-romanesque architecture in Spain

Al-andalus arquitecture in Spain

Mudejar architecture in Spain

Romanesque architecture in Spain

Gotic architecture in Spain

Renaissance architecture in Spain

Baroque architecture in Spain

19th century architecture in Spain

20th century architecture in Spain

SPANISH CINEMA

The art of motion-picture making within the nation of Spain or by Spanish filmmakers abroad is collectively known as Spanish Cinema.

In recent years, Spanish cinema has achieved high marks of recognition as a result of its creative and technical excellence. In the long history of Spanish cinema, the great filmmaker Luis Buñuel was the first to achieve universal recognition, followed by Pedro Almodóvar in the 1980s. Spanish cinema has also seen international success over the years with films by directors like Segundo de Chomón, Florián Rey, Luis García Berlanga, Juan Antonio Bardem, Carlos Saura, Julio Medem and Alejandro Amenábar. Woody Allen, upon receiving the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award in 2002 in Oviedo remarked: "when I left New York, the most exciting film in the city at the time was Spanish, Pedro Almodovar's one. I hope that Europeans will continue to lead the way in film making because at the moment not much is coming from the United States."

Non-directors have obtained less international notability like the cinematographer Néstor Almendros, the Art director Gil Parrondo, the screenwriter Rafael Azcona, the actress Penélope Cruz and the actors Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal, Antonio Banderas, Javier Bardem and Fernando Fernán Gómez have obtained significant recognition outside Spain.

Today, 10 to 20% of box office receipts in Spain are generated by domestic films, a situation that repeats itself in many nations of Europe and the Americas. The Spanish government has therefore implemented various measures aimed at supporting local film production and movie theaters, which include the assurance of funding from the main national television stations. The trend is being reversed with the recent screening of productions such as the €30 million film Alatriste (starring Viggo Mortensen), the Academy Award winning Spanish/Mexican film Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno), Volver (starring Penélope Cruz), and Los Borgia (€10 million), all of them sold-out blockbusters in Spain.

Another aspect of Spanish cinema mostly unknown to the general public is the appearance of English-language Spanish films such as The Machinist (starring Christian Bale) The Others (starring Nicole Kidman), Basic Instinct 2 (starring Sharon Stone), and Milos Forman’s Goya's Ghosts (starring Javier Bardem and Natalie Portman). All of these films were produced by Spanish firms. This attests to the dynamism and creativity of Spanish directors and producers. (More on this below.)


Origins

The first Spanish film exhibition took place on May 5, 1895 in Barcelona. Exhibitions of Lumière films were screened in Madrid and Barcelona in May and December of 1896, respectively

The matter of which Spanish film came first is in doubt. The first was either Salida de la misa de doce de la Iglesia del Pilar de Zaragoza (Exit of the Twelve O'Clock Mass from the Church of El Pilar of Zaragoza) by Eduardo Jimeno Peromarta, Plaza del puerto en Barcelona (Plaza of the Port of Barcelona) by Alexandre Promio or the anonymous film Llegada de un tren de Teruel a Segorbe (Arrival of a Train from Teruel in Segorbe). It is also possible that the first film was Riña en un café (Brawl in a Café) by the prolific filmmaker Fructuós Gelabert. These films were all released in 1897.

The first Spanish film director to achieve great success internationally was Segundo de Chomón, who worked in France and Italy but made several famous fantasy films in Spain such as El Hotel eléctrico.


The height of silent cinema

In 1914, Barcelona was the center of the nation's film industry. The españoladas (historical epics of Spain) predominated until the 1960s. Prominent among these were the films of Florián Rey, starring Imperio Argentina, and the first version of Nobleza Baturra (1925). Historical dramas such as Vida de Cristóbal Colón y su Descubrimiento de América (The Life of Christopher Columbus and His Discovery of America) (1917), by the French director Gerald Bourgeois, adaptations of newspaper serials such as Los misterios de Barcelona (The Mysteries of Barcelona) starring Joan Maria Codina (1916), and of stage plays such as Don Juan Tenorio, by Ricardo Baños, and zarzuelas (comedic operettas), were also produced. Even the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Jacinto Benavente, who said that "in film they pay me the scraps," would shoot film versions of his theatrical works.

In 1928, Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Luis Buñuel founded the first cine-club (film society), in Madrid. By that point, Madrid was already the primary center of the industry; 44 of the 58 films released up until that point had been produced there.

The rural drama La aldea maldita (The Cursed Village) (Florian Rey, 1929) was a hit in Paris, where, at the same time, Buñuel and Dalí premiered Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog). Un chien andalou has become one of the most well-known avant-garde films of that era.


The crisis of sound

By 1931, the introduction of audiophonic foreign productions had hurt the Spanish film industry to the point where only a single title was released that year.

In 1935, Manuel Casanova founded the Compañía Industrial Film Española S.A. (Spanish Industrial Film Company Inc, CIFESA) and introduced sound to Spanish film-making. CIFESA would grow to become the biggest production company to ever exist in Spain. Sometimes criticized as an instrument of the right wing, it nevertheless supported young filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel and his pseudo-documentary Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (Breadless Land). In 1933 it was responsible for filming 17 motion pictures and in 1934, 21. The most notable success was Benito Perojo´s La verbena de la paloma (The Dove's Verbena). By 1935 production had risen to 37 films.


The Civil War and its aftermath

Around 1936, both sides of the Civil War began to use cinema as a means of propaganda and censorship. A typical example of this is Luis Buñuel's España 1936, which also contains much rare newsreel footage. The pro-Franco side founded the National Department of Cinematography, causing many actors to go into exile.

The new regime then began to impose obligatory dubbing to highlight directors such as Ignacio F. Iquino, Rafael Gil (Huella de luz (1941)), Juan de Orduña (Locura de amor (1948)), Antonio Román (Los últimos de Filipinas), José Luis Sáenz de Heredia (Raza (film)) (1942)) with scripts of Franco's and Edgar Neville's. It was time of CIFESA film company, with their epic historical films and their comedies such as (Ella, él y sus millones). They also began to highlight Fedra (1956), by Manuel Mur Oti.

For its part, Marcelino, pan y vino (Marcelino, Bread and Wine) (1955) from Ladislao Vajda would trigger a trend of child actors, such as those who would become the protagonists of "Joselito," "Marisol," "Rocío Durcal" or "Pili y Mili."

Finally, in the 1950s, the influence of Neorealism became evident in the works of new directors such as Antonio del Amo, Antonio Nieves Conde's masterpiece Surcos, Juan Antonio Bardem's (Muerte de un ciclista and Calle mayor), and Luis García Berlanga (Bienvenido Mister Marshall, Plácido).

Juan de Orduña would later have an enormous commercial hit with El Último Cuplé (The Final Variety Song) (1957), with leading actress Sara Montiel.

Buñuel sporadically returned to Spain to film the shocking Viridiana (1961) and Tristana (1970), two of his best films.


Coproductions and foreign productions

Numerous coproductions with France and, most of all, Italy along the 50s, 60s and 70s invigorated Spanish cinema both industrially and artistically. Actually the just mentioned Buñuel's movies were coprodctions: Viridiana was Spanish-Mexican, and Tristana Spanish-French-Italian. Also, the hundreds of Spaghetti-westerns and peplums shot in southern Spain by mixed Spanish-Italian teams were coproductions.

On the other hand, several American epic-scale superproductions or blockbusters were shot also in Spain, produced either by Samuel Bronston, ( King of Kings (1961), El Cid (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Circus World (1964)), or by others (The Pride and the Passion (1957), Solomon and Sheba (1959), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965)). These movies employed many Spanish technical professionals, and as a byproduct caused that some filmstars, like Ava Gardner and Orson Welles lived in Spain for years. Actually Welles, with Mr. Arkadin (1955), in fact a French-Spanish-Swiss coproduction, was one of the first American filmmakers to devise Spain as location for his shootings,

Many international actors played in Spanish films: Italians Vittorio Gassman and Rossano Brazzi with Mexican María Félix in La corona negra ; Italian couple Raf Vallone and Elena Varzi in Los ojos dejan huella, Mexican Arturo de Córdova in Los peces rojos, Americans Betsy Blair in Calle mayor; Edmund Gwenn in Calabuch or Richard Basehart in Los jueves, milagro among many others. All the foreign actors were dubbed into Spanish. Mexican actor Gael García Bernal has also recently received international notoriety in films by Spanish directors.


The new Spanish cinema

In 1962, José María García Escudero became the Director General of Cinema, propelling forward state efforts and the Escuela Oficial de Cine (Official Cinema School), from which emerged the majority of new directors, generally from the political left and those opposed to the Franco dictatorship. Among these were Mario Camus, Miguel Picazo, Francisco Regueiro, Manuel Summers, and, above all, Carlos Saura. Apart from this line of directors, Fernando Fernán Gómez made the classic El extraño viaje (The Strange Trip) (1964). From television came Jaime de Armiñan, author of Mi querida señorita (My Dear Lady) (1971).

From the so-called Escuela de Barcelona, originally more experimentalist and cosmopolitan, come Vicente Aranda, Jaime Camino, and Gonzalo Suárez, who made their master works in the 1980s.

The San Sebastian International Film Festival is a major film festival supervised by the FIAPF. It was started in 1953, and it takes place in San Sebastián every year. Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn, Steven Spielberg, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor are some of the stars that have participated in this festival, the most important in Spain and one of the best cinema festivals in the world.

The Festival de Cine de Sitges, now known as the Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya (International Film Festival of Catalonia), was started in 1967. It is considered one of the best cinematographic contests in Europe, and is the best in the specialty of science fiction film.


The cinema of the democratic era

With the end of dictatorship, censorship was greatly loosened and cultural works were permitted in other languages spoken in Spain besides Spanish, resulting in the founding of the Catalan Institute of Cinema, among others.

At the beginning, the popular phenomena of striptease and landismo (from Alfredo Landa) triumph. During the democracy, a whole new series of directors base their films either on controversial topics or on revising the country's history. Jaime Chávarri, Víctor Erice, José Luis Garci, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Eloy de la Iglesia, Pilar Miró and Pedro Olea were some of these who directed great films. Montxo Armendáriz or Juanma Bajo Ulloa's "new Basque cinema" has also been outstanding; another prominent Basque director is Julio Medem.

The Spanish cinema, however, depends on the great hits of the so-called Madrileño comedy by Fernando Colomo or Fernando Trueba, the sophisticated melodramas by Pedro Almodóvar, Alex de la Iglesia and Santiago Segura's black humour or Alejandro Amenábar's works, in such a manner that, according to producer José Antonio Félez, "50% of total box office revenues comes from five titles, and between 8 and 10 films give 80% of the total" during the year 2004.

On the other hand, Spanish pornographic cinema has flourished in the city of Barcelona; one of its stars is Nacho Vidal.

In 1987, a year after the founding of the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España, the Goya Awards were created to recognize excellence in many aspects of Spanish motion picture making such as acting, directing and screenwriting. The first ceremony took place on March 16, 1987 at the Teatro Lope de Vega, Madrid. The ceremony continues to take place annually around the end of January, and awards are given to films produced during the previous year. The award itself is a small bronze bust of Francisco de Goya created by the sculptor José Luis Fernández.


English language Spanish films

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo recently took notice of a phenomenon little-known to general audiences when it wrote: "A new style of producing has been created in our country. world-class stars, English-language shoots and big budgets. Production companies like KanZaman are currently involved in various ambitious projects that import the ways and customs of Hollywood to our industry." English language Spanish films produced by Spanish companies include The Machinist (starring Christian Bale), The Others (starring Nicole Kidman), Basic Instinct 2 (KanZaman, Spain) (starring Sharon Stone), and Milos Forman’s Goya's Ghosts (Xuxa Produciones, Spain) (starring Javier Bardem and Natalie Portman), Two Much (starring Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith).

KanZaman (Spain) and Recorded Picture Company (UK) co-produced Sexy Beast (starring Ben Kingsley) in 1999. Other films co-produced by KanZaman include: The Reckoning (starring Paul Bettany and Willem Dafoe); The Bridge of San Luis Rey, based on the Pulitzer prize winning Thornton Wilder novel of the same name and starring Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Kathy Bates and Pilar Lopez de Ayala; Mike Barker’s A Good Woman (starring Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johansson), and Sahara (starring Matthew McConaughey and Penélope Cruz). In 2004, KanZaman established Reino del Cielo s.l. through which it co-produced Ridley Scott’s epic Kingdom of Heaven (starring Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson), making it the biggest production in the history of Spanish cinema.

SPANISH PAINTING

Baroque

Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary baroque period, important as a portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he created scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family, other notable European figures, and commoners. In many portraits, Velázquez gave a dignified quality to less fortunate members of society like beggars and dwarfs. In contrast to these portraits, the gods and goddesses of Velázquez tend to be portrayed as common people, without divine characteristics. Besides the forty and 22 portraits of Philip by Velázquez, he painted portraits of other members of the royal family, including princes, infantas (princesses), and queens

Rococo

Francisco Goya was a portraitist and court painter to the Spanish Crown, a chronicler of history, and, in his unofficial work, a revolutionary and a visionary. Goya painted the Spanish royal family, including Charles IV of Spain and Ferdinand VII. His themes range from merry festivals for tapestry, draft cartoons, to scenes of war, fighting and corpses. In his early stage, he painted draft cartoons as templates for tapestries and focused on scenes from everyday life with vivid colors. During his lifetime, Goya also made several series of "grabados", etchings which depicted the decadance of society and the horrors of war. His most famous series of "grabados" are the Black Paintings, painted at the end of his life. This series features works that are obscure in both color and meaning, producing uneasiness and shock.

20th Century

Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904),which consisted of somber, blue-tinted paintings was influenced by a trip through Spain. The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picasso's early works, created while he was living in Spain, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso's close friend from his Barcelona days who, for many years, was Picasso's personal secretary. There are many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father's tutelage, as well as rarely seen works from his old age that clearly demonstrate Picasso's firm grounding in classical techniques. Picasso presented the most durable homage to Velázquez in 1957 when he recreated Las Meninas in his characteristically cubist form. While Picasso was worried that if he copied Velázquez's painting, it would be seen only as a copy and not as any sort of unique representation, he proceeded to do so, and the enormous work—the largest he had produced since Guernica in 1937—earned a position of relevance in the Spanish canon of art.


Salvador Dalí was one of the most important painters of the 20th century. In 1922 Dalí moved in to the "Residencia de Estudiantes" (Students' Residence) in Madrid. Exhibitions of his works in Barcelona attracted much attention, and mixtures of praise and puzzled debate from critics. Upon Francisco Franco's coming to power in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Dalí came into conflict with his fellow Surrealists over political beliefs. As such Dalí was officially expelled from the predominantly Marxist Surrealist group. Dalí's response to his expulsion was "Surrealism is me." Andre Breton coined the anagram "Avida Dollars", by which he referred to Dalí after the period of his expulsion; the Surrealists henceforth would speak of Dalí in the past tense, as if he were dead. The surrealist movement and various members thereof (such as Ted Joans) would continue to issue extremely harsh polemics against Dalí until the time of his death and beyond. The fact that he chose to live in Spain while it was ruled by Franco drew criticism from progressives and many other artists. In 1959, Andre Breton asked Dalí to represent Spain in the Homage to Surrealism Exhibition, celebrating the Fortieth Anniversary of Surrealism, among the works of Joan Miró, Enrique Tábara, and Eugenio Granell. In 1960 Dalí began work on the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí in his home town of Figueres. In 1982 King Juan Carlos of Spain bestowed on Dalí the title Marquis of Púbol.