The different Spanish governments have therefore implemented measures aimed at supporting local film production and the movie theaters, which currently include the assurance of funding from the main television broadcasters.

The rural drama La aldea maldita –The Cursed Village– (Florian Rey, 1929) was a hit in Paris, where, at the same time, Buñuel and Salvador Dalí premiered Un chien andalou.

They were also responsible for Don Quijote de la Mancha (Rafael Gil, 1947), the most elaborate version of the Cervantes classic up to that time.

Highlights in this era are El difunto es un vivo (Ignacio F. Iquino, 1941), Traces of Light (Rafael Gil, 1941), Madness for Love (Juan de Orduña, 1948), Last Stand in the Philippines (Antonio Román, 1945), Raza (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia with screenplay by Franco himself, 1942), and The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (Edgar Neville, 1944).

Cifesa produced Ella, él y sus millones (de Orduña, 1944) as well as Fedra (Manuel Mur Oti, 1956).

In 1951, the regime instituted the Ministry of Information and Tourism to safeguard and develop the Spanish brand, the social imagery and the public image under the slogan "Spain is different" which was launched in the 1920s and then internationally spread in the 1960s.

Under the Spanish-American agreements, part of the foreign profits locked in Spain since the war were invested in runaway productions to be distributed abroad.

These movies employed many Spanish technical professionals, and as a byproduct caused that some film stars, like Ava Gardner and Orson Welles lived in Spain for years.

Many international actors starred in Spanish films: Italians Vittorio de Sica, Vittorio Gassman and Rossano Brazzi with Mexican María Félix in The Black Crown (Luis Saslavsky, 1951); Italian couple Raf Vallone and Elena Varzi in The Eyes Leave a Trace (Sáenz de Heredia, 1952), Mexican Arturo de Córdova in The Red Fish (Nieves Conde, 1955), Americans Betsy Blair in Calle Mayor (Bardem, 1956); Edmund Gwenn in Calabuch (García Berlanga, 1956), or Richard Basehart in Miracles of Thursday (García Berlanga, 1957) among many others.

Apart from this line of directors, Fernando Fernán Gómez made El extraño viaje (1964)[10][11] and Life Goes On (1965),[12] Víctor Erice The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), and Jaime de Armiñan My Dearest Senorita (1971).

From the so-called Escuela de Barcelona, originally more experimentalist and cosmopolitan, come Jacinto Esteva, Pere Portabella, Joaquin Jordan, Vicente Aranda, Jaime Camino, and Gonzalo Suárez, who made their master works in the 1980s.

In the Basque country the directors Fernando Larruquert, Nestor Basterretxea, José María Zabalza and the producer Elías Querejeta stood out.

[13] In the 1960s (and 1970s), a new sort of españolada different from the previous one brought the formulation of an "Iberian" model of masculininity associated to casticismo [es], represented by a male star system consisting of the likes of José Luis López Vázquez, Alfredo Landa, Andrés Pajares, and Fernando Esteso.

[16] With the end of dictatorship in the mid 1970s, censorship was greatly loosened and cultural works were permitted in other languages spoken in Spain besides Spanish, resulting in the founding of the Centro Galego de Artes da Imaxe or the Institut del Cinema Català [ca], among others.

Also with the end of censorship and repression, a commercial cinema –of low quality and minimal cost– with a high erotic content and gratuitous nudity –mostly feminine– appeared, which was called cine de destape [es] and which lasted until the early 1980s.

[20] These films (whose lead performers sometimes were delinquent themselves)[21] also ended up contributing to the promotion of an imaginary of symbolic violence associated to the naturalization of the punitive and non-rehabilitating function of the prison system.

Jaime Chávarri, Víctor Erice, José Luis Garci, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Eloy de la Iglesia, Pilar Miró and Pedro Olea were some of these who directed great films.

The Spanish cinema, however, depends on the great hits of the so-called comedia madrileña by Fernando Colomo or Fernando Trueba, the sophisticated melodramas by Pedro Almodóvar, Alex de la Iglesia and Santiago Segura's black humour or Alejandro Amenábar's works, in such a manner that, according to producer José Antonio Félez [es], "fifty per cent of total box office revenues comes from five titles, and between eight and ten films give eighty per cent of the total" during the year 2004.

Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn, Steven Spielberg, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor are some of the stars that have participated in this festival, the most important in Spain.

They were established in 1987,[27] a year after the founding of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain, and recognize excellence in many aspects of Spanish motion picture making such as acting, directing and screenwriting.

[33] This system, which favours the attempt to approach the break-even point before the first window of theatrical exhibition, has received criticism from within the industry because it might discourage the pursuit of "commercial success".