'The crime of Cuenca' and 'Rocío': The limits of freedom

Abstract

We intend in this paper to review the discourse of the Democratic Transition in Spain through the evolution of film censorship these years. We will focus specially in the judicial processes that "Cuenca’s crime" ("El crimen de Cuenca", Pilar Miró, 1981) and "Rocío" (Fernando Ruiz Vergara, 1983) suffered then. We will make a brief account of the last years of an institution that biased reception of movies for the Spanish public for at least 40 years. We will stress that its formal disappearance matched similar legislation in other countries of democratic Europe. We are going to try the limits of freedom of speech during the Transition years through the study of the press at that time and what was published concerning the polemic exhibition of both films. Using the analysis of the media discourse from different ideological angles we think we have contributed to put into perspective the hopes, conflicts and resistances that the political changes of late 70s and early 80s. These came into birth with much more difficulty than it has usually been accepted. Finally, in coherence with this interdisciplinary effort of gaining perspective, we find it important to show the socio-economic changes of those years in a supranational scale: the emergence of economic neoliberalism, the establishment of the affluent society and the appearance of the consensual society as a consequence of the previous factors.