Refiguring Spanish cultures. An approach to “Spanishnesses” through the film costumbrismo of the early 1990s in Spain

Abstract

Film costumbrismo has historically represented Spanish local and regional immaterial culture. This thesis focuses on Spanish film costumbrismo of the early nineties as it is a period of transculturalization and of internal refigurations within Spain. After all, the transculturalization that characterizes postmodernity’s cultures in a globalized world interplays in Spain in the nineties with the country’s renegotiation of cultural identities caused by their necessary self-redefinition after totalitarian years. Then, how is the representation of cultural customs in Spanish film costumbrismo during the early nineties interlinked with the anxieties for the preservation of cultural identities? Furthermore, to what extent can the representation of regional and local immaterial culture and customs in the Spanish film production of the early nineties be explained by postmodernist interpretations of cultural identity?