Film Comedy and Spain: Humour, Genre, and the Nation 1970-2020

What's so funny about Spanish cinema? Throughout the past half-century, film comedies have flourished across Spain, breaking box-office records by reflecting, praising, or scoffing at the fragile transition from Francoist dictatorship to present-day democracy. But how, exactly, does the nation find itself funny onscreen? And, in this cathartic, self-deprecating humour, what ghosts are exorcised, what anxieties released? In this wide-ranging and lively study, Matthew Hilborn reclaims comedy as politically influential, showing how filmmakers like Pedro Almodóvar, Bigas Luna, Santiago Segura, Álex de la Iglesia, Emilio Martínez-Lázaro, and Javier Ruiz Caldera continually reimagine 'Spanishness' amid political contradiction and compromise. How Spain sniggers becomes a vital sign of change, exposing what's really tickling the nation's fancy - or getting under its skin - at key turning-points in recent history.

Matthew Hilborn is Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Spanish Studies and Film Studies at University College Dublin.