Spanish animation refers toanimation made inSpain.
Segundo de Chomón is considered the pioneer of Spanish animation, with the stop-motion shorts he made in France forPathé starting withLa maison hantée (1907).
An animated sequence within family footage on theFirst Communion of a child called Mercedes Cura is thought to be the first piece of animation made in Spain. For a long timeEl toro fenómeno (Fernando Marco, 1917), which was lost, was considered the first Spanish animated production, but nowadaysEl apache de Londres, also lost, is thought to date from 1915, and thus the centenary of Spanish animation was held in 2015.[1]
They were immediately followed by other shorts, including political satires.[2] Starting in 1917 withLa apertura de las Cortes: Dato no entiende de indirectas animated sketches were included in newsreels, and that same yearJoaquín Xaudaró, the best known Spanish animator from theinterwar period, made his first film,Las aventuras de Jim Trot, and in 1920 he created the first Spanish sci-fi-themed animated film,La fórmula del Doctor Nap.
In 1932 Xaudaró foundedSEDA, the first animation production company in the country, and the directed its first film,Un drama en la costa, which turned out to be his last film as he died in 1933. The company outlived him briefly, producing three more films:El rata primero,Francisca, la mujer fatal andSerenata.En los pasillos del Congreso, a satire of theSecond Republic's politics, was left unfinished. By then other cartoonists were experimenting with animation on their own, likeJosé Escobar withLa rateta que escrombrara l'escaleta.
Stop-motion was introduced in Spanish animation bySalvador Gijón in 1935, withSortilegio vacuno andEspañolada. It seemed to catch on, and three films (El intrépido Raúl,Pipo y Pipa en busca de Cocolín andArte, amor y estacazos) were created by different teams in the following year's first months, but theCivil War's outbreak put a halt to all animated productions.
Spain's first animated feature,Garbancito of La Mancha (1945), was the first Europeancel-animated and non-American color one, usingDufaycolor.[3] It was a fairy tale where an orphan child loosely based inDon 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) andThe Dreams of Tay-Pi (1952).
Through the 1950 new companies were created.Estudios Moro andEstudios Vara produced the main features in subsequent stages of theFrancoist era:The Wizard of Dreams (1966) andThe Wardrobe of Time (1971).Cruz Delgado, a Moro animator, created his own studio and directedMagical Adventure (1973), whileManuel García Ferré, who had moved toArgentina, created there features such asThe Adventures of Hijitus (1973) andTrapito (1975).
At the later stages of this period underground animation took shape, including the firstabstract direct cameraless feature ever,José Antonio Sistiaga'sEre erera baleibu icik subua aruaren (1970), and during thetransition to democracy the first Spanish feature restricted for adults was released:Stories of Love and Massacre (1979).
In the 1980s the feature production was diversified under the newautonomous system and films based in the local traditions were produced, such asThe Magic Pumpkin (Juan Bautista Berasategi, 1985) in Euskadi andDespertaferro (Jordi Amorós, 1990) in Catalonia. "Katy The Caterpillar" (1984) was a coproduction with Mexico andThe Town Musicians of Bremen (Cruz Delgado, 1988), spun a popular series,Los Trotamúsicos (1989), was the first animation film prized at theGoya Awards.[4]
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, forThe Return of the North Wind (Maite Ruiz de Austri, 1993). It was however a period of experimentation:Megasónicos (1997) was the first EuropeanCGI animation feature,[5] andA Child's Play (Pablo Lloréns, 1999) was the first Spanishstop-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 byAmerican animation,Gisaku (Baltasar Pedrosa, 2005) was branded asthe first Spanishanime feature[6] and released at nearly the same time in Japan and Spain.
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 asGreat Britain inKandor Graphics'The Missing Lynx (2008) andJustin and the Knights of Valour (2013). The most ambitious of these co-productions wasPlanet 51 (2009), with a $70 million budget. At the same time, Spanish animation co-produced foreign films such asMichel Ocelot'sAzur 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 asMediaset inLightbox Entertainment'sTad, the Lost Explorer (2012) and Capture the Flag (2015). Meanwhile live-action directorsJuan José Campanella andJavier Fesser entered the CGI animation field withUnderdogs (2013) andMortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible (2014) respectively.
Traditional animation is still used in adult projects.Chico and Rita (Fernando Trueba, 2010) won theEuropean Award and was nominated for theAcademy Award, whileWrinkles (Ignacio Ferreras, 2011) was nominated for the European Award and theAnnie Award. Lastly, stop-motion has been used for horror features such asGoing Nuts (Juanjo Ramírez, 2007) andO Apóstolo (Fernando Cortizo, 2012).
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Animation first appeared onTelevisión Española (TVE) in commercials and spots. The most famous short wasJosé Luis Moro'sFamilia Telerín (1964), which was used to tell children it was time to go to bed. Its characters went on to star in the 1966The Dream Wizard feature directed and produced byFrancisco Macián.
In 1968, Cruz Delgado created for TVE the first Spanish animated series,Microbio.[9] One year before, émigré animatorManuel García Ferré had created in Argentina theHijitus series.
Cruz Delgado's seriesDon Quixote of La Mancha (1979–81) was the first large success in Spanish animation for television, which boosted in the following years.
BRB Internacional, –founded byClaudio Biern Boyd, José Luis Rodríguez and Títo Bastoas– and TVE co-producedRuy, the Little Cid (1979),Around the World with Willy Fog (1984) –both with animation made byNippon Animation–, andThe World of David the Gnome (1985). BRB Internacional also producedDogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (1981) –with animation by Nippon Animation–.
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