CELESTINA DURING THE FRANCO REGIME: NOTES ON A FRUSTRATED FILM PROJECT BY JOSÉ LUIS SÁENZ DE HEREDIA

Abstract

This article focuses on an intriguing and overlooked chapter in the reception of La Celestina in the twentieth century. Based on archival documents transcribed in the appendix, it sheds light on a Celestina film project suggested to the General Director of Spanish Cinematography in fall 1955 by the Francoist film director, José Luis Sáenz de Heredia. The epistolary exchange took place a few months after Basilio Martín Patino wrote on this very subject in Cinema universitario, and after the famous Conversaciones de Salamanca, in which young dissident film producers argued in favour of neorealism as a model for Spanish cinema. According to the paper given at that conference by Communist Party member Ricardo Muñoz Suay, Celestina represented just such a form of artistic understanding. Despite an interest in the classic work inspired by Ramiro de Maeztu, Sáenz de Heredia was well aware of the many problems that a film adaptation of the Tragicomedia of Calisto and Melibea could face under strict Francoist censorship. The film director ultimately abandoned the project, later declaring that “Celestina was a taboo during that period”.