Spanish animation refers to animation made in Spain.
Contents
Silent era
Segundo de Chomón is considered the pioneer of Spanish animation, with the stop-motion shorts he made in France for Pathé starting with La maison hantée (1907). El toro fenómeno (Fernando Marco, 1917), which was lost, is considered the first Spanish animated film. It was immediately followed by other shorts, including political satires. Joaquín Xaudaró is the best known animator from the interwar period.
Classic era
Spain's first animated feature, Garbancito of La Mancha (1945), was the first European cel-animated and non-American color one, using Dufaycolor. It was a fairy tail where an orphan child loosely based in Don Quixote has to save his friends from a giant with the help of his fairy godmother and goat. Its production company, Balet y Blay, made two more features: Happy Vacations (1948) and The Dreams of Tay-Pi (1952).
Through the 1950 new companies were created. Estudios Moro and Estudios Vara produced the main features in subsequent stages of the Francoist era: The Wizard of Dreams (1966) and The Wardrobe of Time (1971). Cruz Delgado, a Moro animator, created his own studio and directed Magical Adventure (1973), while Manuel García Ferré, who had moved to Argentina, created there features such as The Adventures of Hijitus (1973) and Trapito (1975).
At the later stages of this period underground animation took shape, including the first abstract direct cameraless feature ever, José Antonio Sistiaga's Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren (1970), and during the transition to democracy the first Spanish feature restricted for adults was released: Stories of Love and Massacre (1979).
Modern era
In the 1980s the feature production was diversified under the new autonomous system and films based in the local traditions were produced, such as The Magic Pumpkin (Juan Bautista Berasategi, 1985) in Euskadi and Despertaferro (Jordi Amorós, 1990) in Catalonia. The Town Musicians of Bremen (Cruz Delgado, 1988), which spun a popular series, Los Trotamúsicos (1989), was the first animation film prized at the Goya Awards.
Feature production didn't make an impact for most of the 1990s, and only one Goya award was granted in the first half of the decade, for The Return of the North Wind (Maite Ruiz de Austri, 1993). It was however a period of experimentation: Megasónicos (1997) was the first European CGI animation feature, and A Child's Play (Pablo Lloréns, 1999) was the first Spanish stop-motion feature.
Production rose in the following years, and in 2000 four films competed for the Goya Award for the first time. The Living Forest (2001) was the first widely-distributed CGI feature, but most films were made in traditional animation for the first half of the decade. While most of them were influenced by American animation, Gisaku (Baltasar Pedrosa, 2005) was branded as the first Spanish anime feature and released at nearly the same time in Japan and Spain.
Contemporary era
From the second half of the 2000s CGI has been the dominating trend in family features. Many of them were co-productions with other countries, such as Great Britain in Kandor Graphics' The Missing Lynx (2008) and Justin and the Knights of Valour (2013). The most ambitious of these co-productions was Planet 51 (2009), with a $70 million budget. At the same time, Spanish animation co-produced foreign films such as Michel Ocelot's Azur and Asmar (2006).
Some of the most ambitious projects in more recent years were produced just in Spain with the backing of television networks, such as Mediaset in Lightbox Entertainment's Tad, the Lost Explorer (2012) and Capture the Flag (2015). Meanwhile live-action directors Juan José Campanella and Javier Fesser entered the CGI animation field with Underdogs (2013) and Mortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible (2014) respectively.
Traditional animation is still used in adult projects. Chico and Rita (Fernando Trueba, 2010) won the European Award and was nominated for the Academy Award, while Wrinkles (Ignacio Ferreras, 2011) was nominated for the European Award and the Annie Award. Lastly, stop-motion has been used for horror features such as Going Nuts (Juanjo Ramírez, 2007) and O apóstolo (Fernando Cortizo, 2012).
List of productions
|}
Classic era
Animation first appeared at the Spanish television in commercials and spots. The most famous one was José Luis Moro's The Telerín Family (1964), which was used to tell children it was time to go to bed. Its characters went on to star in the 1966 The Wizard of Dreams feature.
In 1968 former Estudios Moro animator Cruz Delgado created for TVE the first Spanish animated series, Microbio. One year before emigré animator Manuel García Ferré had created in Argentina the Hijitus series.
Modern era
Cruz Delgado's Don Quixote of La Mancha (1979–81) was the first large success in Spanish TV animation, which boosted in the following years. Co-productions were set, with Nippon Animation creating the animation for BRB Internacional's Ruy, the Little Cid (1979), Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (1981) and Around the World with Willy Fog (1984), while The World of David the Gnome (1985) was an international success.