Ruins of the democratic promise: dystopian cityscapes in films of “el desencanto democrático”

ABSTRACT

This article examines two cinematic scenes of dystopia from the period of Spain’s so-called democratic disenchantment in Abre los ojos (Amenábar 1997) and El día de la bestia (De la Iglesia 1995). As the euphoric scene for the movida madrileña, in the 1980s Spain’s capital was largely depicted as a symbol of transition and progress, a center for the cultural production of the country’s post-dictatorship cultural effervescence. However, this article turns to interrogate a far more pessimistic vision of Spain’s capital in the 1990s, as De la Iglesia and Amenábar’s films reveal a darker, more dystopian view of the city’s streets. Released only two years apart, both films set their most crucial exterior sequences in the same two locations: Madrid’s Gran Vía and the postmodern business development at the north end of the Paseo de la Castellana. Both films present these areas as desolate and degraded cityscapes in a way that evokes the iconography of ruins, setting an alienating scene of loss and foreclosure. Through a theoretical engagement with ruins, I argue that these urban scenes of collapse and catastrophe suggest the non-arrival of the democratic promise brought by Spain’s Transition and prefigure a ruin of the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Ruin cinema
• desencanto
• 1990s
• Alejandro Amenábar
• Álex de la Iglesia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Images of a similarly desolate Gran Vía appeared during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and were widely circulated on social media, drawing attention to the fact that, in the words of Matthew Feinberg, “cities are not a mere physical assemblage of buildings”, but are instead brought into being by human action (2022, 3). However, while an analysis of the pandemic is outside the scope of this article, it is worth noting that many of the reactions to the emptiness of the commercial street in the popular press concerned themselves with the economic consequences of desolation. In other words, the dominant discourse evinced a concern for the health of the economy and not the health of the people.

2 Von Moltke identifies similar cinematography in the films he classifies within the “Cinematic Ruin Aesthetic”, including Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero (1948), Wender’s Wings of Desire (1987) and Reggio’s Naqoyqatsi (2002) (2010, 410–414).

3 For an analysis of Bazin’s writings see Von Moltke (2010, 405).

4 See, for example: Faber (2021); Labrador Méndez (2009); Moreiras Menor (2002); Song (2016); Vilarós (2002); Wheeler (2020).

5 For an in-depth analysis of the memory of the Civil War and the culture of amnesia during the Spanish transition see Aguilar Fernández (1996).

6 While La Movida Madrileña is the most widely known of these euphoric post-dictatorship cultural phenomena, movements such as Vigo’s Movida or La Ruta del Bakalao have received far less critical attention.

7 See also Graham (1995, 40); Moreiras Menor (2002, 25).

8 For an analysis of these spaces as late-capitalist ruins, see Amago (2021, 82–100); Martínez (2021, 80–132); Sheean (2018, 327–349).

9 Further illustrating the AZCA development’s connections to the symbols of global capital, the Torre Picasso was designed by the Japanese-American architect, Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center. The buildings shared striking similarities in terms of the vertical lines created by their aluminum façades and narrow windows.

10 The devil only appears to the trio after they have taken LSD. While the film’s frequent references to drug use can be read as another symptom of social collapse, the drugs also introduce an ambiguity into the narrative that has been understudied in the criticism of the film.

11 I am not the first to point out the El día de la bestia’s obvious parallels to Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Many critics have commented on the intertextuality with the Quixote including Compitello (1999), Richardson (2012) and Deveny (2012). De la Iglesia employs the same comic device as Cervantes; the discontinuity between Berriatúa’s fantastic imagination and the reality of daily experience pokes fun at the foolish credulity and simplicity of the protagonist. However, De la Iglesia notes one marked difference between his film and the Quixote. The conclusion to the film, he argues, is different: “los gigantes sí que existen, lo que pasa es que están disfrazados de molinos, dispuestos a partirnos la cara con un bate de béisbol en cuanto nos descuidemos” (quoted in Moreiras Menor 2002, 266). While Cervantes inserts a narrator that insists on a narrative reality that clashes with Don Quixote’s visions of giants, De la Iglesia insists on a reality that aligns with Berriatúa’s. Thus, the priest’s quixotic visions contain a darker, more pessimistic truth; there are real dangers underlying his delusions.

12 In many ways, this democratic project was not so distant from the architecture of the Franco regime. The Puerta de Europa is reminiscent of the Vía de Europa, the proposed project for the La Castellana roadway in the 1946 Plan Bidagor. Both the roadway and the gate connect Spain geographically and symbolically to European identity.

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Jacqueline Sheean

Jacqueline Sheean is an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Utah. Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of media theory and Spanish cultural studies and engage issues related to historical memory, authoritarianism and democracy in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Spain. Her essays on Iberian cinema and media have appeared in venues such as Hispania, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos and Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. Email: [email protected]