The Portrait Of Spanishness

Examine the portrayal of Spanishness in one or more films that you have studied in this course.
‘Spanishness’ is a term that can lead to different conceptions or ideas, since it has acquired many different meanings throughout history. The first time that this term was used was in the early 1960’s in Spain, but people was not still conscious enough about social or cultural liberation so it wasfinally accepted after the death of General Francisco Franco on November 20, 1975, because the filmmakers changed ‘their way to present the stories, the language used, and the contemporary influences impinging upon them’ (Besas 1985. p. IX). Then, they started to create films more related to the future they expected to live, with nothing to do with the dark and stormy past that the country hadlived. ‘Españolidad’ implies Spanish authenticity, the concept of ‘Typical Spanish’ (though sometimes this word is used with a pejorative tone), and depending on the film director, different characteristics are attributed to Spanish identity; and, of course, the conception of Spanishness is not the same for a Spanish director than for a British one, for instance, because the former will create anddevelop the characters according to his experience, and the latter will work guided by the stereotypes which not always may be true. Also, different qualities are attributed taking into consideration if male or female characters are analyzed. A good example of one of the first directors that reflected Spanishness as it is conceived nowadays is the Spanish director Carlos Saura, who helped to‘constitute a truer testimony of the country, its mores, and its idiosyncrasies’ (Besas 1985, p. XI). Furthermore, depending on the geographic area, the conception of Spanishness may vary, so this takes us to a huge new world about Spanishness where there will be common factors but very different as well.
In this essay the portrayal of Spanishness will be examined according to the film ‘Jamón, jamón’(1992) by Bigas Luna, which shows the different types of men and women that usually belonged to the working and upper-middle class of the Spanish society during the 90s, with the help of secondary sources such as articles and books about Spanish cinema and identity.

Just before analyzing the portraits of the characters in the film ‘Jamón, jamón’, it is necessary to establish the maincharacteristics of being Spanish, the main attitudes that someone supposed to be Spanish must have, since as it has been said before, there can be different conceptions of the same term, depending on several variations such as the geographic area or the period of time. It is possible that some of the characteristics belonging to the typical Spanish person are similar to that of the typical Greek orItalian, for example, as the Spanish country shows a great influence of these nations since the Imperialist times.
If we look for a definition in the RAE dictionary (the official Spanish language dictionary), we can find that Spanishness means: 1. Quality of Spanish.; 2. Genuinely Spanish character; but it does not explain the concrete details of the quality or the character, because as CristinaSánchez-Conejero says, ‘Even within Spain itself the term “Spanish” may have many meanings and connotations aside from a simple identifier of citizenship.[...] Though relevant, the Spanish language is clearly not a unique identifier of Spanishness in the context of Spain.’ (2007, p. 3). This means that it is not so easy to define the characteristics of the Spanish character because it depends on manydifferent factors, but generally the Spanish character is based on a few asserts, taken from a touristic source webpage, and some of these asserts can be observed in ‘Jamón, jamón’:
1) The Spanish are lazy and love to sleep the siesta.
2) Spain is the land of sunshine and beaches.
3) Spain is the land of bullfights.
4) Spain is the land of flamenco.
5) All Spanish people have...