Even back in the days when Catholic grit governed
life, Spain kept a wry smile on its face. After all,Don
Quixote, surely the greatest work of classic Spanish
literature, is laced with satire and parody.The poet
Quevedo was another Golden Age great who poured
amusing scorn on his contemporaries. Faced with
varying degrees of tyranny in the centuries since, Spain
has maintained its attachment to satire. Of course, the
thinking man’s comedy has always operated alongside
something more bawdy, and so it remains today with a
mix of clever caricature and face-slapping indelicacy.Mirth control: comedy under Franco
Comedic cinema provided sporadic light relief under
Franco. Initially, Edgar Neville (Spanish despite the
name) made whimsical populist comedies in the 1940s.
La vida en un hilo(1945) was his best effort.The great
film-maker Luis García Berlanga was apparently inspired
by Neville, although his comedies were subtler, more
questioning of the regime. His¡Bienvenido Mister
Marshall!(1952) was a landmark work of satire (see
section 5.1.3. for more). Beyond cinema there was
little to laugh about. What comedy there was tended
to centre on buffoonery.The double act ofTip y Coll
(or Luis Sánchez Pollack and José Luis Coll) in the 1970s
was indicative of the absurdist, strangely dressed
comedians that appeared onTV and theatre stages.
Some did use comedy to question the regime. Miguel
Gila was fervently anti-Franco but subtle with
his satire. After various brushes with the authorities
he established a routine in the 1950s, talking into a
telephone, spieling amusing tales of woe that
struck a chord with people in the bleak Franco years.
He went too far with a radio broadcast in 1956,
passing comment on political prisoners in Spain, and
was banned from working for six months.210- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Laugh? I nearly died
Comedian Miguel Gila
was always destined to
be a thorn in Franco’s
side. He fought in
various battles on the
Republican side in the
Civil War before finding
himself in front of a
Nationalist firing squad
in Extremadura. The
Moorish soldiers doing
the shooting had,
according to Gila, had
too much to drink and
duly botched the
execution. Gila escaped
after pretending to be
dead. He was captured
again later on in the war,
interned and then, after
Franco’s victory, forced to
join the Nationalist army.
By the early 1940s he
was posting subversive
cartoons to the satirical
magazineLa Codorniz.
Wences the
puppet master
Señor Wences was
a legendary Spanish
ventriloquist. His outlay
on props was low:
sometimes his dummy
was a badly drawn face
on his hand draped in a
blond wig (Johnny),
on other occasions an
unseen head in a box
(Pedro). The speed and
skill with which he
switched voices was
astounding. He cracked
America in the 1930s
and later became a
regular onThe Ed
Sullivan Show,
performing with a thick
Spanish accent. He died
in New York in 1999,
aged 103.
4.2.4 Laughing matters: comedy in modern Spain