Pedro Almodóvar's Cinema and Madrid's LGBTIQ+ World: What Place for Chueca?

Abstract

This article explores the role of the Madrid neighbourhood of Chueca in the films of director Pedro Almodóvar. Through a study of the representations of the neighbourhood in films belonging to four different decades, a socio-spatial analysis of the evolution of the neighbourhood itself is traced: from a degraded and marginalised area to a fashionable specialised (LGBTIQ+) neighbourhood. Rather than a critical analysis of the works or an evaluation of their artistic value, an investigation is therefore carried out in order to identify referents and models, social practices and spatial particularities. The focus is not so much on the identity of place understood as an identity substructure, but rather on the identity of a physical place: the neighbourhood. The results discuss, on the one hand, the possible reasons for the director's lack of attention, in his first film productions, to the LGBTIQ+ world itself and to the territory of Chueca. On the other hand, it analyses the history of the neighbourhood as an LGBTIQ+ space and how this is intertwined with his representations. Finally, in the conclusions, it is highlighted that the polyhedral image of Chueca that emerges from the films of the Spanish director derives from a fusion of spatial and temporal indices, that is, those generated by the passage of time on a specific territory. At the same time, the evolution of the trajectory of Almodóvar's relationship with LGBTIQ+ militancy is traced, that means, from the scarce commitment of the Movida years to the most current implications.